Mews
Principal Designer
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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.
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:
Build and maintain the design foundation that lets multiple product tribes move fast without drifting apart.
This role owns the division's design substrate: the design system, cross-tribe agents and skills, research and discovery engines, and the architectural standards that make coherent design possible at scale. The Principal Designer works directly with the VP and partners with Staff Designers across tribes — not to coordinate, but to encode judgment into systems that outlast any single project.
The hospitality industry is at an inflection point. Hotels need software that moves as fast as they do, and the design choices made at the system level right now will shape what's possible for every product tribe at Mews for years.
What you'll be doing
- Build and maintain the division's design foundation — the design system, cross-tribe agents and skills, research and discovery engines, design architecture, guidelines, 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 conviction to see it through
- Work with Staff Designers so that tribe-level design substrates compose into a coherent whole rather than a collection of parallel efforts
- Partner with the VP on the most complex cross-tribe design problems — the ones that don't fit inside any single tribe's scope
- Encode design judgment into reusable systems — components, tokens, patterns, agents, skills — rather than one-off artifacts that live and die with a single project
- Contribute craft feedback and calibration input into Director and Staff Designer performance reviews
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What we're looking for
- 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 and the ability to encode it into systems and agents that outlast any single initiative
- Genuine satisfaction in cross-tribe substrate work — the unglamorous problems that don't carry a team's name on them
- You've gone beyond personal productivity with AI: you've redesigned how you or your team works using AI, built approaches other people can follow, and you attend carefully to what the AI gives you rather than accepting it without scrutiny
- Ability to operate as a multiplier for a VP without needing the title or formal authority that typically comes with that level of influence
Nice to have
- Experience maintaining a design system used across multiple product teams at significant scale
- Familiarity with agentic design tooling or building AI skills and research engines
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, available after one year of service)
- An annual Learning budget of €300 (and more for high performers) to support your development
- Monthly "EDGE" time to Explore, Develop, Grow, and Elevate yourself
- A work from anywhere policy with flexibility to work abroad for a few weeks each year
- Relocation options, available after one year
- Flexible, hybrid working options
- A home office setup budget to make your workspace your own and a monthly work-from-home allowance
- Claude tokens, so you can automate workflows and build smarter, more efficient ways of working
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Local benefits
You'll receive additional benefits that vary by location, from healthcare and retirement plans to team events, socials and other perks. Ask us about it during your interview process.
Life at Mews
We're an equal opportunities employer. We value teams that reflect the diversity of the customers and communities we serve. Different perspectives make better ideas, stronger products and a more welcoming company.
We also believe transparency is important when deciding if you're the right fit. Mews is an ambitious, high-pressure environment of continuous learning and high standards. Success here requires resilience, adaptability and a willingness to solve difficult problems.
A few things that define how we work:
- High autonomy means high responsibility. People are expected to take ownership and drive outcomes. There isn't a detailed playbook for everything, and that's part of what makes the work challenging – and rewarding.
- Change is constant. We're growing quickly and adapting as we scale. Teams, processes and priorities continue to evolve, and only people who stay curious and agile will thrive.
- We're remote-first, not relationship-free. Flexibility is core to how we work, but strong relationships still matter. Our teams are global, so we need expert collaborators and communicators to help us move forward together.
- AI is an integral part of our processes. It's not here to steal people's jobs, but to amplify efficiency and productivity. We're motivated to proactively use the technology to seek out better ways of working and share our findings with the rest of the company.
If there's anything we can do to support you during the application process, let us know.
We don't discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability or any other protected characteristic.
One final thing: don't hold back. If you don't meet 100% of the criteria in this job description but you're certain you could make a big impact, apply. Everyone should have equal access to opportunities, and we're committed to providing an inclusive experience.
If Mews sounds like the kind of environment where you'd thrive, we'd love to hear from you.
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