Nextdoor Lead Designer at Nextdoor responsible for raising design craft, coaching designers, and shipping hands-on work on the Consumer Product team. Leads design critiques and manages design capacity across multiple product areas.
Responsibilities
Running weekly design critiques and rebuilding a healthy manager-level review process so projects of every size get rigorous feedback at the right altitude
Establishing regular 1:1s and growth plans for a team of consumer designers, and advocating for their growth and promotion during performance review cycles
Owning the design capacity model across seven product areas, managing a team of 5 to 6 consumer designers. Owning the capacity model and the recommendation on where design headcount goes
Representing design's point of view in product discussions where speed and craft are in tension, starting with a key decision about how neighbors filter and navigate content in the app
Arbitrating design-system exceptions, deciding when to say no to a one-off component that doesn't belong in our shared design system
Shipping hands-on design work yourself on at least one high-impact area of the consumer product
Participating in in-person Nextdoor events such as trainings, off-sites, volunteer days, and team building exercises
Building in-person relationships with team members and contributing to Nextdoor's company culture
Qualification
8+ years of experience in UX designA track record as a player-coachCalibrated craft judgment
Required
This role reports directly to the EVP of Product and is the senior-most design voice in the Consumer org
8+ years of experience in UX design, product design, or a related field, with a strong track record of designing and shipping user-centered products. Including experience directly managing designers through performance and promotion cycles
A track record as a player-coach, practicing designer and people manager at once, with the discipline to protect your own IC time
Calibrated craft judgment: you can run a crit, make a leveling call, and defend it in calibration
Proficiency in Figma and other design tools for creating wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity designs
Experience working with and contributing to design systems, ensuring consistency and scalability across surfaces
Strong understanding of qualitative and quantitative research methods, with the ability to synthesize insights into actionable design decisions
Comfort holding a design position in rooms with executives, backed by evidence rather than taste
Fluency with AI-assisted design tooling and a clear sense of where it helps and where it can't substitute for human judgment
