Head of Design, Yahoo Mail

Yahoo Mail is the ultimate consumer inbox with hundreds of millions of users. It’s the best way to access your email and stay organized from a computer, phone or tablet. With its beautiful design and lightning fast speed, Yahoo Mail makes reading, organizing, and sending emails easier than ever.

About the Role

We are seeking a Head of Design (Senior Director) to lead Yahoo Mail's global design organization. In this role, you will own the end-to-end design vision, architectural strategy, and system optimization across Mail's entire product surface. You will lead an integrated team of approximately 20 designers—including design managers—embedded across cross-functional squads spanning Revenue & Growth, Core Experience, and Utilities (Calendar, Planner, and more).

You will operate as a strategic peer and equal partner alongside Product, Engineering, and Analytics leadership. You will champion an environment that treats AI as a fundamental layer for product innovation and operational efficiency, orchestrating how AI-native experiences and intelligent agentic workflows materialize safely and beautifully at scale.

What You'll Do

• Leadership & Organization Development: Provide leadership and strategic direction for the ~20-member design organization through subordinate managers and senior leads; establish clear objective-setting frameworks and maintain a culture that balances aggressive output accountability with professional bench strength development.

• Design Vision & Corporate Strategy: Formulate and drive an enterprise-wide design vision that explicitly transforms user needs into business drivers; mandate, govern, and scale cross-platform design systems across mobile (iOS/Android) and web surfaces.

• Strategic Executive Partnership: Collaborate as a peer with the GM, VP of Product, VP of Revenue, Head of Analytics, and SVP of Engineering to translate corporate business strategy into definitive product roadmaps and platform-wide optimization cycles.

• AI-Augmented Experience Architecture: Architect the UX paradigms for AI-native consumer journeys within Yahoo Mail, specifying structural patterns for conversational interfaces, proactive agentic workflows, and real-time intelligent data visualizations.

• Design Operations Automation: Drive structural efficiency across the design organization by identifying, implementing, and scaling generative AI-driven design workflows; replace traditional manual design tasks with automated UI generation, accelerated component prototyping, and rapid asset iteration pipelines.

• Systemic Output Validation & Governance: Establish strict design review governance frameworks to evaluate, refine, and validate AI-generated product behaviors; implement rigorous safeguards to ensure automated elements eliminate layout hallucinations, protect user data trust, and maintain brand compliance.

• Experimentation, Metrics, & Monetization: Direct the design framework for high-volume multivariate monetization tests across subscriptions, affiliate marketing, and digital advertising surfaces; leverage data fluency to connect UX structures directly to engagement, conversion, retention, and revenue outcomes.

• Central Leverage Integration: Align Yahoo Mail's local design strategies with central Yahoo Design systems to maximize engineering and branding leverage, while fiercely protecting Yahoo Mail's business unit priorities.

Basic Qualifications

• 15+ years of professional product design experience, with documented success guiding high-volume consumer products operating at a scale of millions of daily active users.

• 5+ years of formal management experience leading multi-tiered design teams of 15+ total personnel, including direct experience managing, coaching, and scaling professional design managers.

• Proven track record designing, launching, and governing AI-powered product features, recommendation models, or conversational interfaces in a production environment.

• Demonstrated experience deploying and managing AI-augmented design systems or generative workflow tools at an organizational tier to increase asset generation speed and prototype velocity.

• Extensive portfolio demonstrating advanced cross-platform design architecture across web, iOS, and Android ecosystems, with an emphasis on seamless data synchronization.

• Advanced business acumen and data proficiency, including experience designing user interfaces tailored explicitly to consumer business monetization funnels (advertising, subscriptions, or transactional commerce).

• Exceptional communication, corporate diplomacy, and negotiation skills, with verified experience advocating for design capital and strategy before executive leadership and C-suite stakeholders.

• Bachelor’s degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), or a closely related field, or equivalent practical experience verified through a robust history of professional enterprise leadership.

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct experience with advanced prompt engineering frameworks, structured LLM fine-tuning interactions, or designing feedback loops that train consumer-facing AI systems.

• Experience managing UX design within highly complex, high-traffic messaging, communication, productivity, or high-volume utility application spaces.

• Deep technical familiarity with automated front-end engineering systems, advanced analytics setups, and algorithmic content recommendation engines.

• An active focus on emerging design technologies, with a history of driving structural experimentation and change management in shifting, high-growth technology environments.

The material job duties and responsibilities of this role include those listed above as well as adhering to Yahoo policies; exercising sound judgment; working effectively, safely and inclusively with others; exhibiting trustworthiness and meeting expectations; and safeguarding business operations and brand integrity.

At Yahoo, we offer flexible hybrid work options that our employees love! While most roles don’t require regular office attendance, you may occasionally be asked to attend in-person events or team sessions. You’ll always get notice to make arrangements. Your recruiter will let you know if a specific job requires regular attendance at a Yahoo office or facility. If you have any questions about how this applies to the role, just ask the recruiter!

Yahoo is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to, and will not be discriminated against based on age, race, gender, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability or any other protected category. Yahoo will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law. Yahoo is dedicated to providing an accessible environment for all candidates during the application process and for employees during their employment. If you need accessibility assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability, please submit a request via the Accommodation Request Form (www.yahooinc.com/careers/contact-us.html) or call +1.866.772.3182. Requests and calls received for non-disability related issues, such as following up on an application, will not receive a response.

We believe that a diverse and inclusive workplace strengthens Yahoo and deepens our relationships. When you support everyone to be their best selves, they spark discovery, innovation and creativity. Among other efforts, our 11 employee resource groups (ERGs) enhance a culture of belonging with programs, events and fellowship that help educate, support and create a workplace where all feel welcome.

The compensation for this position ranges from $180,310.00 - $392,430.00/yr and will vary depending on factors such as your location, skills and experience.The compensation package may also include incentive compensation opportunities in the form of discretionary annual bonus or commissions, in addition to equity incentives. Our comprehensive benefits include healthcare, a great 401k, backup childcare, education stipends and much (much) more.

Currently work for Yahoo? Please apply on our internal career site.