Design Director

The Trade Desk is a global technology company and the world’s leading independent platform for digital advertising, with nearly 4,000 employees across more than 30 offices. Our technology helps advertisers reach the right audiences across the open internet—from streaming TV and podcasts to mobile apps, news, and more. Advertising powers the content people love. By making it more transparent, effective, and responsible, we help support trusted journalism, quality entertainment, and creators worldwide. The world’s brands and agencies rely on us to reach their customers and grow their businesses responsibly. The scale of our platform brings unique technical challenges—from processing massive datasets in real time to building systems that operate reliably on a global scale. When you work here, your impact is worldwide. We welcome diverse perspectives, encourage curiosity, and build teams that learn from one another. If you’re driven to solve meaningful challenges, we’d love to meet you. Who We Are Looking For The Trade Desk is seeking an innovative Director of Design Technology to lead the technical design practice within our global UX Design organization. This is a senior leadership role responsible for shaping the tools, systems, AI capabilities, and engineering workflows that power how our design team creates and scales world–class product experiences. The Trade Desk is transforming the way advertising is bought, sold, and consumed as a global leader in the programmatic industry. As this industry continues to evolve, you and your team will play a critical role in bridging the worlds of design and engineering—ensuring our platform remains not only powerful, but intuitive, elegant, and highly effective for advertisers and agency partners. Our industry is complicated, but we don’t believe our platform should be. As Director of Design Technology, you will play a critical role in shaping our design system—contributing deep technical expertise to its evolution while partnering closely with the team that owns it. You will also lead our prototyping infrastructure and AI tooling strategy, enabling our designers to move faster and ship with greater confidence. You will bring a rare combination of design sensibility, engineering rigor, and a genuine passion for emerging AI technologies—from generative UI and LLM–assisted workflows to intelligent automation across the design lifecycle. You will serve as a strategic partner to Product, Engineering, and UX Leadership— not only advocating for design craft but building the technical foundation that makes excellence possible at scale. This role reports directly to the Vice President of UX Design and is a key member of the UX leadership team at The Trade Desk. What You Will Be Doing Shape & Advance the Design System: Play a critical role in shaping the evolution of The Trade Desk’s UX design system, bringing deep technical expertise and a strong point of view on scalability, consistency, and adoption. Collaborate closely with the design system’s owners to influence token architecture, component governance, and versioning strategy. Champion design‒to‒code pipelines that reduce friction between design and front‒end development teams. Contribute to and help maintain the shared component library, ensuring it reflects the highest standard of craft across all product surfaces. Lead AI Capabilities, Innovation & Tooling: Serve as the UX Design team’s primary strategist and practitioner for AI‒assisted design workflows, setting direction across tooling, automation, and generative capabilities. Evaluate, pilot, and implement AI tools across the design lifecycle— from ideation and wireframing to UI generation, copy assistance, and automated design QA. Build and maintain an AI tooling roadmap that keeps the design team ahead of the curve on LLM‒powered prototyping, layout generation, and intelligent design systems. Partner with engineering and data science teams to explore how AI capabilities within The Trade Desk platform can be surfaced through smarter, more intuitive UX patterns. Develop internal frameworks and playbooks for responsible, effective AI use in design—balancing innovation with quality, consistency, and accessibility. Identify opportunities to automate repetitive design and documentation tasks, freeing the team to focus on high‒value creative and strategic work. Stay current with the rapidly evolving AI tooling landscape— including Figma AI, Cursor, v0, and generative image and video tools—and make timely, evidence‒based recommendations to leadership. Drive Cross‒Functional Influence: Act as the primary liaison between Design, Engineering, and Product to ensure technical feasibility and design integrity across all initiatives. Lead and mentor a team of design technologists, prototypers, and front‒end‒fluent designers. Partner with engineering leadership to align on shared APIs, component standards, and documentation practices. Evaluate the broader design tool ecosystem and make strategic recommendations on tooling investment and migration. Build deep trust with senior leaders and serve as a thought partner on design‒technology strategy. Ensure Design Excellence at Scale: Set and uphold the technical quality bar for design deliverables, prototypes, and production hand‒offs. Develop best practices for high‒fidelity and functional prototyping, including data‒connected and AI‒powered prototype experiences. Drive workflow improvements that measurably increase design team velocity and output quality. Champion accessibility, responsive design, and multi‒platform implementation standards across all design work. Conduct design technology reviews and provide high‒level strategic guidance on implementation approach. Operational Leadership: Establish and optimize design technology processes that scale across teams and geographies. Lead through rapid growth, evolving product demands, and cross‒team dependencies. Measure and communicate the impact of design tooling and AI adoption through meaningful productivity and quality metrics. Represent the UX Design team’s technology perspective in planning cycles and roadmap discussions. Industry Presence & Thought Leadership: Represent The Trade Desk at industry events and design technology conferences. Position TTD as a company at the forefront of AI‒enabled design practice. Contribute to broader UX and design technology community conversations, open‒source tooling, and innovation. What You Bring to the Table Bachelor’s degree in Design, Computer Science, Interaction Design, or a related field (Master’s preferred). 10+ years of experience in design technology, design engineering, or a closely related discipline. 5+ years in a leadership or management role overseeing design technology or design systems teams. Deep expertise in Figma—including variables, advanced components, Dev Mode, and Figma AI features. Strong proficiency in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—able to read, write, and critique front‒end code with confidence. Proven track record building and scaling design systems across large, complex enterprise or platform‒based products. Demonstrated hands‒on experience with AI tools in a design context— including generative UI, LLM‒assisted workflows, and AI‒powered prototyping. Strong executive presence with experience presenting to VP‒level and senior leadership. Exceptional communication and storytelling skills—with the ability to translate technical concepts for design audiences and design thinking for engineering teams. Experience leading multi‒disciplinary teams across design technology, prototyping, and front‒end design. Deep understanding of systems thinking and scalable design infrastructure. Ability to navigate ambiguity and drive clarity in complex, fast‒moving environments. Working knowledge of machine learning concepts as they apply to UX—including intelligent defaults, predictive UI, and model‒assisted design decisions (preferred). Experience in adtech, martech, or enterprise SaaS with complex data‒dense interfaces (preferred). Contributions to open‒source design tooling or published design system documentation (preferred). Portfolio demonstrating design system leadership, AI tooling strategy, and measurable impact on team productivity and product quality. Why This Role Matters At The Trade Desk, each opportunity to engage a consumer is unique. Our platform provides advertisers and agencies with extraordinary power to describe and reach their target audiences. As that power grows, so does the responsibility to make it usable, intuitive, and elegant. Design technology is not just infrastructure—it is the foundation on which great design is built, scaled, and delivered. And AI is rapidly changing what that foundation can do. As Director of Design Technology, you will shape the future of how our UX team works, influence the direction of our platform, and build a design technology practice that sets the standard for the industry. If you are energized by the intersection of design craft, engineering excellence, and the transformative potential of AI—this is your role. Equal Opportunity & Legal Information The Trade Desk does not accept unsolicited resumes from search firm recruiters. Fees will not be paid in the event a candidate submitted by a recruiter without an agreement in place is hired; such resumes will be deemed the sole property of The Trade Desk. The Trade Desk is an equal opportunity employer. All aspects of employment will be based on merit, competence, performance, and business needs. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, marital status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic information, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other status protected under federal, state, or local law. [LA JOBS ONLY] The Trade Desk will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment in a manner consistent with the requirements of the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring, Ordinance No. 184652. [SF JOBS ONLY] Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. In accordance with various U.S. state laws, the range provided is the Trade Desk’s reasonable estimate of the base compensation for this role. The actual amount may differ based on non‒discriminatory factors such as experience, knowledge, skills, and location. All employees may be eligible to become The Trade Desk shareholders through eligibility for stock‒based compensation grants, which are awarded to employees based on company and individual performance. The Trade Desk also offers other compensation depending on the role such as variable compensation‒based incentives and commissions. Plus, expected benefits for this role include comprehensive healthcare (medical, dental, and vision) with premiums paid in full for employees and dependents, retirement benefits such as a 401k plan and company match, short and long‒term disability coverage, basic life insurance, well‒being benefits, reimbursement for certain tuition expenses, parental leave, sick time of 1 hour per 30 hours worked, vacation time for full‒time employees up to 120 hours through the first year and 160 hours thereafter, and around 13 paid holidays per year. Employees can also purchase The Trade Desk stock at a discount through The Trade Desk’s Employee Stock Purchase Plan. The Trade Desk also offers a competitive benefits package. Click here to learn more. Note: Interns are not eligible for variable incentive awards such as stock‒based compensation, retirement plan, vacation, tuition reimbursement or parental leave. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, The Trade Desk is committed to creating an inclusive hiring experience where everyone has the opportunity to thrive. Please reach out to us at View email address on click.appcast.io to request an accommodation or discuss any accessibility needs you may require to access our company website or navigate any part of the hiring process. When you contact us, please include your preferred contact details and specify the nature of your accommodation request or questions. Any information you share will be handled confidentially and will not impact our hiring decisions. #J-18808-Ljbffr