Principal Product Designer

About the Role

This is a rare opportunity to define what consumer-grade AI coaching experiences look like at enterprise scale. You’ll join as a senior design leader on a small, high-velocity product-design-engineering team, where your work will directly shape how millions of users interact with AI coaching every day.

• Redefine the paradigm: Conversational and LLM-driven interfaces are still early. You’ll challenge existing patterns and establish new standards for AI-native product experiences.
• Design as a strategic unlock: At Valence, design isn’t decoration — it’s central to trust, engagement, and adoption. Your work will directly accelerate our product and company.
• True partnership: You’ll work alongside product and engineering leaders who deeply value design and involve it in every major decision.
• AI-native from day one: We’re building from first principles, not layering AI onto legacy systems.
• High performing PDE culture: We operate as a tight, collaborative team with intentional practices that make distributed work effective and energizing.

About Valence

We're the only company pioneering leadership coaching for large enterprises in an AI-first way. Our mission is to transform how the world's biggest companies approach learning and development, helping teams work better together through AI-powered personalization that adapts to individual goals and organizational culture using the latest advances in machine learning and natural language processing.

We've been featured in Harvard Business Review, TIME, World Economic Forum, Financial Times, Forbes and as an Inc. 5000 fastest-growing private company in America. Our clients represent the most diverse and sophisticated enterprise AI implementations globally, including Coca-Cola, Delta, Nestlé, General Mills, Schneider Electric, Deutsche Telekom, AstraZeneca, Prudential, CVS and Bristol Myers Squibb.

Working at Valence means you'll work directly with Fortune 500 technology leaders, building expertise through the most complex enterprise deployments while gaining insight into diverse organizational approaches to AI transformation. These aren't just any enterprise clients—they're the companies defining what AI-first business transformation looks like across every major industry.

Responsibilities

• Design features that evolve Nadia from 1:1 coaching into a multiplayer collaboration platform, including context-sharing, team dynamics, and manager tooling.
• Establish and evolve our design system to maintain craft and consistency as we scale.
• Work embedded with product and engineering to ship high-quality experiences weekly, not quarterly.
• Balance strategic thinking with hands-on execution—designing flows, refining interactions, and writing product copy yourself.
• Collaborate intensively through working sessions, critiques, and paired design work.
• Bring curiosity and experimentation to integrating AI into the user experience, exploring innovative UI and adaptive workflows.

Requirements

• 8+ years of product design experience with a strong portfolio demonstrating consumer-grade craft.
• Proven experience building and maintaining design systems that enable team velocity.
• A track record of shipping quickly on small, scrappy design teams (not large orgs with specialized roles).
• Experience at a high-growth startup, helping scale from early stage to meaningful traction.
• Shipped products used by millions of users, with measurable impact on engagement or retention.
• Bonus if you have experience designing conversational interfaces, chat products, or LLM-powered experiences.

Skills

You thrive when you’re:

• Collaborating intensively—thinking out loud, riffing in Figma, and building on others’ ideas.
• Making fast decisions with incomplete information, then iterating based on what you learn.
• Balancing craft with pragmatism—knowing when to polish and when to ship and learn.
• Working across the full stack of design, from product strategy to interaction details to content design.

This isn’t the right fit if you:

• Need to personally review and approve everything before it ships.
• Prefer long stretches of solo, heads-down work.
• Want clearly defined swim lanes and minimal ambiguity.
• Need large teams or heavy processes to feel productive.

Benefits

• Competitive salary including base + bonuses.
• Comprehensive health coverage (medical, dental, vision) from day one.
• Generous PTO, company-wide R&R shutdowns, and paid parental leave.
• Retirement plan support for US and global employees.
• Equity: Meaningful ownership in a venture-backed company at a growth inflection point, with financial upside that comes from scaling fast. Top-up grants as we scale and you deliver exceptional performance—your compensation grows alongside your impact.

Why Valence

• Ownership & Rapid Growth: Outsized missions from day one, with direct responsibility for company-defining projects. Work alongside the executive team with transparency into strategy and decision-making. Influence direction through real-time customer feedback and market insights.
• AI-First Operator: Work directly with cutting-edge AI models and next-generation platforms. Build expertise in enterprise AI implementation across Fortune 500 companies and multiple industries. Establish yourself as a recognized leader among peers in shaping how AI transforms work at a global scale.
• Top-Performing Culture: A culture built for top talent: intensity to win, growth without limits, and a team that solves hard problems and celebrates big wins together.

Location and Work Environment

This can be a remote or hybrid role. NYC-based candidates will be 3 days a week in office in Union Square. Candidates must be comfortable balancing colleagues in global time zones, as needed. Candidates must have valid ID/passport and must not have any restrictions on their travel abilities due to work authorization or permits.