Principal Designer

About the role

Let's get into the specifics. It's impossible to capture every nuance of a role - especially at a rapidly growing company like Mews - but if we had to distil it into a job description (which we do because this is a job description), it would be this: Design at scale is only as good as the substrate underneath it. The Principal Designer is the person who builds and maintains that substrate across the division - the design system, shared agents and skills, research engines, and the architectural standards that let tribes move fast without drifting apart. This is a senior individual contributor role. You won't manage a team. Your leverage is craft, not headcount. You'll work directly with the VP and partner with Staff Designers across tribes - connecting their context into something coherent at the division level, and building the systems that raise the ceiling for everyone doing design work at Mews.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain the division's shared design foundation - the design system, cross-tribe agents and skills, research and discovery engines, design architecture, principles and standards.
• Hold the multi-year view. Write clearly about what design across the division will need that it doesn't yet have, and drive towards it with enough patience and conviction to see it through.
• Partner with Staff Designers so that tribe-level design substrates compose into a coherent whole rather than a collection of parallel efforts.
• Act as the VP's right hand on the most complex cross-tribe design problems - the ones that don't fit neatly inside any single tribe's scope.
• Contribute craft feedback and calibration input into Director and Staff Designer performance reviews.
• Encode judgment into systems. Turn design thinking into reusable leverage - components, tokens, patterns, agents, shared skills - rather than one-off artifacts that live and die with a single project.

Requirements

• A body of shipped, high-quality design work and demonstrable taste. Senior enough to be credible across multiple tribes without needing to prove it.
• Multi-year thinking. The ability to operate beyond the current quarter and to encode that thinking into systems and agents that outlast any single initiative.
• A genuine taste for the unglamorous. Cross-tribe seams, shared substrate, and connective-tissue work don't carry a team's name on them. You need to find that kind of work genuinely satisfying.
• High AI fluency. You build leverage at scale - design agents, shared skills, systematized research - because you understand that the highest-value contribution at this level is rarely the artifact you made yourself.
• Comfort working as a force-multiplier for an executive without needing the title or formal authority that typically goes with that kind of influence.
• 💰 Salary range:
• Pay range location A - UK
• Pay range location B - Czech Republic
• Pay range location C - Ireland
• Pay range location D - Spain
• Pay range location E - USA
• Pay Transparency at Mews
• Salary ranges are provided in good faith and reflect current market conditions and internal pay structures. Final compensation may be adjusted based on funding, budget constraints, or exceptional candidate qualifications, but will remain within reasonable proximity to the stated range.
• This salary disclosure is provided in compliance with applicable pay transparency legislation. We are committed to equal pay practices and prohibit salary history inquiries during our recruitment process.
• If the location you're applying from wasn't originally advertised for this role, salary range information is available upon request at any point during the application/interview process - your recruiter will be able to help.
• Pay range location A
• £81,000 - £106,000 GBP
• Pay range location B
• 1 491 000 Kč - 2 005 000 Kč CZK
• Pay range location C
• €91.000 - €117.000 EUR
• Pay range location D
• €79.500 - €100.500 EUR
• Pay range location E
• $157,000 - $202,000 USD
• What's in it for you?
• Our success is powered by our incredible people, supported by benefits that help them thrive.
• Global benefits
• No matter where you're based, you'll enjoy:
• Unlimited paid holiday (yes, really)
• Participation in our company share program
• Paid parental leave (6 months fully paid for primary caregivers, 2 months for secondary, a

Benefits

Additional Information

Help make the world more hospitable The hospitality industry is uniquely human, and it deserves technology that's just as inspiring as the people behind it. At Mews, we're transforming the industry with a platform that helps hotels run smarter, move faster and create better guest experiences. You'll work with smart, curious people who care deeply about what they do. You'll have autonomy and the trust to make good decisions and move quickly. And you'll enjoy a real sense of purpose as you see the impact of what we're building. If you're motivated by ownership, curiosity and meaningful impact, and are driven to deliver consistent high performance, you'll feel at home here.

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