As a Staff Product Designer, lead high-impact design processes, create user-centered solutions, collaborate with teams, and mentor others while leveraging AI tools.
Who We Are
At Apartment List, we’re transforming how people rent—making it smarter, easier, and a lot less frustrating. Our platform has already matched over a 1.4 million renters with their next home, while helping properties fill units with the right residents. Backed by strong growth and a big vision, we’re building the future of renting—and inviting bold thinkers to help us shape it!
Design the Future of Renting: With Systems Thinking, Craft, and CuriosityAt Apartment List, we’re not just designing better products; we’re rethinking the experience of renting from the ground up. As a Staff Product Designer, you’ll lead high-impact work across complex problem spaces, shaping elegant solutions that scale and make real life easier for millions of renters.
We’re looking for a Staff Product Designer with deep product intuition, systems-level thinking, and refined craft, who is excited about the role AI can play in shaping thoughtful, human-centered experiences. You’ll be part of a small, collaborative design team, working closely with product, engineering, research, and data. In this role, you won’t just make things look good. You’ll help decide what “good” actually means, and reinforce it through patterns, principles, and a high quality bar.
This is a hands-on, high-leverage IC role reporting to our Head of Design.
Here’s what you’ll do as part of the team:
- Lead product design from problem framing through polished execution, with clear hypotheses and measurable outcomes
- Design scalable, user-centered solutions across surfaces, thinking in systems, not screens
- Collaborate closely with engineers to ensure design-to-code alignment and build feasible, modular components
- Leverage AI tools to rethink how we design and ship, using them to speed up exploration, critique, content creation, and synthesis across the product lifecycle.
- Advance our design system in partnership with engineers, balancing consistency with flexibility
- Prototype ideas quickly and at various levels of fidelity to unlock thinking and drive alignment
- Facilitate workshops, critiques, and collaborative sessions that energize and unblock
- Mentor other designers through thoughtful feedback and modeling high craft standards
Here are the skills and experience you’ll need to be successful:
- Staff-level experience: 8+ years designing and shipping consumer or platform products across mobile, desktop, and web, ideally with experience working on a two-sided marketplace.
- AI-native mindset: You think of AI as part of the product development system, not just a design aid, and use our AI tooling to strengthen design-to-code workflows and cross-functional execution.
- Hybrid craft skills: Strong interaction, visual, and motion design skills, with a love for rapid prototyping and iterative execution.
- Comfort with ambiguity: You excel in loosely defined problem spaces, especially emerging AI surfaces, and can simplify complex systems into intuitive experiences.
- Systems thinking: Proven experience contributing to and evolving design systems that scale across teams and products.
- Strong product thinking: Ability to frame problems, define success, and drive outcomes through clear communication and cross-functional collaboration.
- Implementation-minded: Familiarity with front-end technologies (HTML/CSS/JS or frameworks) and a strong partnership mindset with engineering.
- Highly collaborative: Proactive, inclusive partner who brings others in early and leads through influence.
- Low ego, high bar: Generous with feedback, open to critique, and committed to raising the quality of the team’s work.
What Signals You’re the Right Fit
- You have a curious mind, and genuinely want to learn about the problems you solve
- You talk about how you think, not just what you shipped
- You bring engineers and PMs into your success stories
- You’ve explored AI tools and understand where they help (and where they don’t)
- You’re excited by the idea of teaching and learning with peers
- You care deeply about quality, clarity, and thoughtful decision-making
Why You’ll Love It Here
At Apartment List, we:
- Make magic in the move by designing experiences that feel smart, personal, and radically easier
- Have unapologetically high standards for craft, clarity, and impact
- Use speed to our advantage by reinventing how we design and ship with AI, delivering quality quickly and iterating fast.
- Dare to diverge, welcoming new ideas, tools, and perspectives
- Are proudly remote-first and deeply invested in DEI, learning, and long-term growth
Here's the Pay Range:
At Apartment List, we carefully consider a variety of factors to determine compensation for each position, including the role, level, and work. The US base salary range for this position is:
- Zone 1: $163,000 - $197,000 TTC (including $146,700 - $173,360 base salary) + equity
- Zone 2: $150,000 - $182,000 TTC (including $135,000 - $160,160 base salary) + equity
- Zone 3: $138,000 - $168,000 TTC (including $124,200 - $147,840 base salary) + equity
This reflects the compensation target for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations. Please note, the compensation details provided do not include benefits and perks that we offer.
We also rely on market indicators along with considering your work location, job related skills, experience and relevant education and training, to determine compensation that is fair and competitive for you. Apartment List will consider paying compensation near the higher of the range in exceptional circumstances, where candidates have the experience, credentials or expertise that would warrant such consideration. It is always our goal to hire exceptional talent and we would be happy to share more about compensation during the hiring process.
Here's what's in it for you (full-time US based employees only; does not apply to contract roles):
- Competitive Compensation: Including annual salary, pre-IPO stock options, and other financial compensation (if applicable)
- Medical, Dental, and Vision Coverage: 100% of premiums covered for you AND all of your dependents
- Unlimited Flexible Time Off: Unlimited FTO in addition to 12 company holidays per year, quarterly “recharge” days, and a week-long holiday break
- Home Office Reimbursement: To cover home office furniture and supplies, monthly home internet, and monthly cell phone (if applicable)
- Health & Wellness Reimbursement: To cover monthly gym membership or other qualifying expenses
- Parental Support: Generous parental and family leave, fertility benefits, and employer-sponsored stipends towards family forming services
- 401k Plan: To support you in your individual retirement goals
- Team Events: Frequent team-building events, fun team off-sites, and bi-annual company meetups
- Commitment to DEI: To prioritize Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion within our workplace and to stay true to our values and mission
- Mentorship and Training: To get you onboard quickly, learn new professional skills, and invest in your career development
- Impact and Visibility: To expose you to and provide the opportunity to work on highly strategic initiatives that will transform the business
- Encouragement and Empowerment: To explore and adopt new technologies and drive meaningful decisions and outcomes
- At Apartment List we believe that everyone deserves a home they love AND a career they love. We strive to build a diverse team that is a reflection of the people we serve; this is made possible through our commitment to fostering a culture of diversity, inclusion, equity, and connectedness.
As a proud equal opportunity employer, we celebrate the collection of individual differences, life experiences, ideas, perspectives, knowledge, and talent. We hire candidates of any race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, marital or family status, disability, Veteran status, and any other status.
Top Skills
Html,Css,Javascript,Ai Tools
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