Director OF Product Design

Job ID: 200047049Posted: 2026-08-05Location: United States, California, Mountain ViewSalary: USD $165,600 - $296,400 per yearEmployment type: Full-TimeWork site: 4 days / week in-officeRole type: People ManagerTravel: Less than 25%Profession: Design & CreativeDiscipline: Product DesignCompany: MicrosoftOverviewMicrosoft AI Monetizationis a customer-first organization building the next generation of AI-powered products that help customers achieve their business goals. Our Design, Research & Content team is a creative community on a mission to create holistic experiences for advertisers, publishers, sellers, and consumers. We bring deep user understanding together with business acumen, product craft, and responsible AI to shape the future of advertising and monetization.We are a small, friendly, diverse, and fast-moving creative team that supports one another to do the best work of our lives. We prioritize quality, simplicity, meaningful innovation, polish, and evidence-based decision making. We ship regularly, so your work will have real and immediate impact for customers and for the business.Why this role exists:Advertising is entering a new era. Advertisers increasingly expect products that move beyond manual setup, dashboard interpretation, and fragmented workflow management. They need experiences where they can express business goals, understand options, guide AI systems, supervise automation, approve meaningful actions, and see clear evidence of impact.We are seeking a Product Design Director to lead the Advertiser design team through this transition. This leader will shape the future of advertiser experiences across campaign creation, onboarding, optimization, reporting, recommendations, planning, and growth workflows. The role requires a leader who can make complex advertising products feel simple, trustworthy, and powerful while helping the organization adopt a more AI-native way of designing and shipping.This is not only a product design leadership role. It is also an operating-model leadership role. You willshepherd work underway ona new way of working where designers use AI-assisted exploration, code-forward prototyping, evaluation, and design agents to increase the breadth, speed, and quality of design work while keeping human judgment, craft, ethics, and accountability at the center.The roleAs Product Design Director for Advertiser Experiences, you will lead a team of designers responsible for the experiences that help advertisers grow with Microsoft Advertising. You will set experience vision, build product narratives, create clarity across ambiguous problem spaces, and guide the team from early concepts through shipped, polished, inclusive, and accessible products.You should be a strong design leader and an active maker. You bring excellent product judgment, visual and interaction craft, people leadership, and the ability to translate strategy into coherent customer experiences. You are comfortable operating in v1 spaces, working across organizational boundaries, and building confidence through prototypes, experiments, customer insight, and business understanding.This leader will partner closely with product management, engineering, research, data science, marketing, business planning, sales, and customer-facing teams. Success requires customer empathy, advertising fluency, strategic clarity, AI literacy, systems thinking, and the ability to create momentum across teams that may not report to you.ResponsibilitiesLead, coach, and grow Advertiser design team, creating clarity, generating energy, and delivering high-quality results across complex product areas.Define the experience vision for advertiser products, translating customer needs, business goals, and product strategy into clear design principles, roadmaps, narratives, and measurable outcomes.Design the future of advertiser workflows for an agentic era: goal expression, guided setup, recommendations, automation, supervision, approvals, transparency, confidence, recovery, and ongoing optimization.Make complex advertising tasks feel simple and trustworthy across customer segments, including enterprise advertisers, agencies, small and medium businesses, brand marketers, and performance marketers.Pioneer an AI-native design operating model that uses AI-assisted exploration, natural-language-to-code prototyping, design agents, synthesis tools, and evaluation loops to accelerate learning and improve quality.Drive cross-functional collaboration with product management, engineering, research, data science, business planning, marketing, sales, and support from early strategy through implementation and launch.Build a prototype-first design culture where interactive artifacts are used to evaluate ideas, align stakeholders, test assumptions, and improve product decisions before teams commit to build.Use research, customer feedback, product data, experimentation, and business signal to identify opportunities, prioritize work, and adjust direction when evidence shows a better path.Create experience coherence across advertiser surfaces, connecting campaign creation, account health, optimization, reporting, recommendations, planning, and support into a more unified customer journey.Champion responsible AI patterns that make automation legible, controllable, inspectable, reversible, and respectful of customer intent.Partner with design systems and engineering leaders to ensure advertiser experiences use reusable patterns, accessible components, clear content models, and scalable product architecture.Raise the bar for craft through critique, storytelling, design reviews, inclusive design practices, accessibility standards, and a high-quality portfolio of shipped work.QualificationsRequired Qualifications:Master's Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, User Experience, Interaction Design, or related field AND 7+ years experience working in product or service designOR Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, User Experience, Interaction Design, or related field AND 9+ years experience working in product or service designOR equivalent experience (e.g., demonstrated experience working in product or service design or using design thinking to solve problems).5+ years people management experience.Preferred Qualifications:A portfolio that demonstrates strong product thinking, interaction design, visual design, customer empathy, systems thinking, and impact through shipped products.Experience setting experience vision, leading design strategy, and influencing product direction across multiple teams or product areas.Strong visual and interaction design craft, with the ability to make complex systems feel clear, elegant, and coherent.Demonstrated ability to use research, experimentation, analytics, customer signal, and business context to guide design decisions.Experience collaborating deeply with product management, engineering, research, and data partners from early product strategy through implementation.Experience designing advertising, marketing, commerce, analytics, workflow, enterprise, or marketplace products.Experience with AI-powered, agentic, recommendation, automation, or decision-support experiences.Fluency in patterns for delegation, supervision, transparency, approvals, error recovery, rollback, auditability, and human-in-the-loop control.Experience using AI-assisted design, natural-language-to-code workflows, rapid prototyping, or code-forward exploration as part of product development.Experience designing for trust, safety, security, privacy, accessibility, and inclusive design in complex product ecosystems.Excellent communication, storytelling, and executive presentation skills, with the ability to energize teams and advocate for ideas with clarity and humility.Experience with Figma and modern design collaboration tools; familiarity with prototyping, front-end technologies, or design-system implementation is a plus.Experience building team culture, operating models, critique practices, and design-quality mechanisms that help people do their best work.Product Design M6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $165,600 - $296,400 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $220,800 - $331,200 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:Product Design M7 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $212,800 - $338,400 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $236,000 - $370,800 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.