Principal Designer, Document Cloud

The opportunity

Adobe Design is looking visionary Principal Designer to join our Document Cloud team working on extending Adobe Acrobat features and functionalities across a multitude of surfaces and partnerships. As well as infusing key functionality from Adobe Express into Acrobat to democratize beautiful designs for the everyday knowledge worker, solopreneaur, and individual around the world.

With more than 650 million monthly active users, Adobe Document Cloud products (which include Adobe Acrobat, Sign, and Scan, to name just a few) are ubiquitous in the lives and work of more than 600 million monthly active users. Document cloud also remains the fastest growing cloud in all of Adobe.

Document Cloud design team has a long and rich legacy while still being recognized for innovation year after year. We were recognized for TIME’s Best Inventions of 2023 with our work in Liquid Mode. And that legacy of visionary experiences continues with, Acrobat's AI Assistant was named one of TIME's Best Inventions of 2024.

Do you thrive in ambiguity, enjoy rallying diverse stakeholders, and have a passion for strategic design thinking? Are you ready to craft visionary concepts and influence senior leadership to invest in transformative ideas? Join us to make a lasting impact on how the world works with documents.

In this role, you will:

• Visionary Design Leadership: Craft high-quality, expert-level concepts for the future of document workflows, powered by generative AI, and persuasively advocate for strategic pivots to achieve this vision.
• Strategic Innovation: Develop and drive long-term strategies, proactively identifying uncharted business opportunities and aligning them with user needs.
• Rapid Prototyping: Visualize and prototype ideas through sketches, storyboards, high-fidelity mockups, and interactive prototypes to push the boundaries of what’s possible.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Facilitate design sprints and collaborate with product managers, engineers, researchers, and designers across Adobe’s product lines to deliver cohesive experiences.
• User Advocacy: Use customer feedback, research, and data analytics to uncover insights and inform design decisions that delight users and solve complex problems.
• Executive Communication: Present design strategies and concepts to senior executives, leveraging storytelling and data to inspire alignment and action.

What you need to succeed

Must-haves:

• Experience: A related degree or 8+ years of equivalent experience in product design, with a proven track record of success.
• Technical Expertise: Proficiency with understanding AI capabilities, Figma and other AI prototyping software, and a skilled visual designer able to not only follow brand guidelines but uplevel them.
• Leadership Skills: Experience mentoring and fostering an inclusive environment that empowers designers to innovate and deliver impactful work.
• Communication Excellence: Confidence in presenting work at all organizational levels, including the CEO, and navigating ambiguity with clarity and purpose.
• Strategic Thinking: Ability to identify new business opportunities, advocate for changes in roadmaps, and bridge design and business objectives.
• Collaboration: A history of working closely with cross-functional teams, including product management, engineering, and research, to bring ideas to life.

Nice-to-haves:

• Deep experience working with generative AI technologies or document-related tools.
• Prior experience in creative agencies or enterprise teams using lean startup methodologies.
• Experience working with a suite of disparate experiences and uniting them for a high quality user experience.

Preferred Accessibility Design Skills:

• Experience designing accessible and inclusive interfaces for people with disabilities.
• Understanding of applying WCAG conformance criteria in design, specifically testing comps, wireframes, and prototypes for accessibility standards.
• Accessibility certifications CPACC, WAS, CPWA, or ADS from the IAAP preferred.

Our compensation reflects the cost of labor across several  U.S. geographic markets, and we pay differently based on those defined markets. The U.S. pay range for this position is $173,400 -- $317,000 annually. Pay within this range varies by work location and may also depend on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for the job location during the hiring process.

At Adobe, for sales roles starting salaries are expressed as total target compensation (TTC = base + commission), and short-term incentives are in the form of sales commission plans. Non-sales roles starting salaries are expressed as base salary and short-term incentives are in the form of the Annual Incentive Plan (AIP).

In addition, certain roles may be eligible for long-term incentives in the form of a new hire equity award.

Adobe will consider qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records for employment in accordance with state and local laws and “fair chance” ordinances.