Director of Product Design, Avail

Austin, Texas, United States

Recognized as the No. 1 site trusted by real estate professionals, Realtor.com® has been at the forefront of online real estate for over 25 years, connecting buyers, sellers, and renters with trusted insights and expert guidance to find their perfect home. Through its robust suite of tools, Realtor.com® not only makes a significant impact on the real estate industry at large, but for consumers, navigating the biggest purchase they will make in their life, by providing a user experience that is easy to use, easy to understand, and most of all, easy to make decisions.

Join us on our mission to empower more people to find their way home by breaking barriers to entry, making the right connections, and building confidence through expert guidance.

Are you a design systems expert with a strategic, consumer-first mindset? Are you looking to be the driving force in creating world-class experiences that help people find and enjoy a home of their own — not just executing a roadmap, but helping shape it? If you want to expand your professional goals at Avail by Realtor.com®, this is the role for you! 

This role will immerse themselves in the market and our industry, partnering closely with senior leaders in Product and Engineering to define, create, and execute our bold vision for transforming the real estate industry — not simply implement a strategy set by others. You will be responsible for design decisions and patterns for multiple products and ensuring the adoption thereof by product designers who work in those areas. You’ll also build on the design system foundation by enhancing toolchain connections between design files and code, promoting education and advocacy, and collaborating closely with cross-functional teams across all platforms. A team of designers will report to this role, and you will closely partner with a sibling engineering team. You will also collaborate with cross functional leaders on team capacity and skills. And work with other design leaders to drive the strategy and execution of Design Ops tools and processes to create a more scalable and efficient design practice. This role reports to the Head of Avail.

What you'll do

  • Own the Avail design system. Define and evolve the components, patterns, and tokens powering Avail's Renter, Landlord, and Public surfaces, and drive their adoption across the design team.
  • Bring a consumer funnel mindset. Apply design thought leadership across full B2C workflows (or B2B workflows operating at consumer scale/complexity) — acquisition through conversion through retention — so the design system serves real user journeys and business outcomes, not just visual and component consistency.
  • Drive product discovery, then raise the bar on execution. Identify consumer pain points and market opportunities yourself — through research, data, and direct engagement with renters and landlords — rather than working solely from a roadmap handed to you. Set the quality standard for end-to-end product design across Avail, reviewing and guiding feature work so the experience stays cohesive as the product grows.
  • Make accessibility the default. Build accessible patterns and tokens into the system itself, and grow the team's fluency so a11y is designed in from the start rather than retrofitted.
  • Champion usability. Bring rigor to usability best practices across the system and key workflows, and scope and run usability testing where it's warranted — recognizing not every product or workflow justifies a formal study.
  • Keep design and code in lockstep. Partner with your engineering counterpart to align components across design and code, and advance a connected toolchain between Figma and the codebase.
  • Document so the system scales. Maintain clear, accessible documentation and contribution processes for every component, so designers and engineers can move without you in the room.
  • Make the case for the system. Translate the value of design systems and accessibility into language Product, Engineering, and executive partners care about, grounded in business and quality metrics.
  • Shape strategy, then plan a roadmap that ships. Immerse yourself in the market and our industry, and partner with cross-functional peers to define and navigate Avail's long-term product strategy and vision. Translate that strategy — and the systems/accessibility work it requires — into a prioritized roadmap that maps to engineering's release pipeline and Avail's product timelines.
  • Extend the system to the brand. Partner with Brand and Marketing on consistency across external-facing assets, and maintain the icon and illustration libraries.
  • Grow the team. Mentor and manage a team of product designers, supporting their craft and career development and ensuring healthy coverage across projects.
  • Run a lean design practice. Partner with wider RDC design leadership on capacity, tooling, and process. You’ll be keeping workflows healthy in Jira and Confluence without letting ops become overhead.

How we work

We balance creativity and innovation on a foundation of in-person collaboration. For most roles, our employees work three or more days in our offices, where they have the opportunity to collaborate in-person, adding richness to our culture and knitting us closer together.

What you’ll bring:

  • 10+ years of experience working in the design industry
  • 3+ years of working in a product-led organization
  • 5+ years of providing design direction and mentoring to junior colleagues in a leadership role
  • 3+ years leading a design systems and product design team
  • 3+ years shaping product strategy and vision — partnering with Product, Engineering, and executive leaders to define where a consumer product should go next, informed by market and industry immersion
  • A strong visual aesthetic and design point of view, exampled in a rich portfolio
  • Demonstrated thought leadership in B2C product workflows (or B2B workflows operating at consumer scale), with a consumer funnel/conversion mindset that goes beyond design systems craft
  • Experience delivering multiple projects simultaneously with cross-disciplined teams
  • Experience with capacity planning and workload management
  • Knowledge of Figma, JIRA, and project management tools
  • Working knowledge of usability best practices, including experience scoping and running usability testing where warranted
  • Informed and strong opinions, loosely held
  • A practitioner of user-centric processes and design thinking, with hands-on experience identifying consumer pain points and market opportunities through product discovery — not solely executing a roadmap defined by others
  • Exemplifies a We, Not Me attitude

Nice to have:

  • Experience designing for a two-sided marketplace (e.g., buyer/seller, renter/landlord, host/guest)

How we Reward you:

Realtor.com is committed to investing in the health and wellbeing of our employees and their families. Our benefits programs include, but are not limited to:

  • Inclusive and Competitive medical, Rx, dental, and vision coverage
  • Family forming benefits
  • 13 Paid Holidays
  • Flexible Time Off
  • 8 hours of paid Volunteer Time off
  • Immediate eligibility into Company 401(k) plan with 3.5% company match
  • Tuition Reimbursement program for degreed and non-degreed programs
  • 1:1 personalized Financial Planning Sessions
  • Student Debt Retirement Savings Match program
  • Free snacks and refreshments in each office location

Do the best work of your life at Realtor.com®

Here, you’ll partner with a diverse team of experts as you use leading-edge tech to empower everyone to meet a crucial goal: finding their way home. And you’ll find your way home too. At Realtor.com®, you’ll bring your full self to work as you innovate with speed, serve our consumers, and champion your teammates. In return, we’ll provide you with a warm, welcoming, and inclusive culture; intellectual challenges; and the development opportunities you need to grow.

Diversity is important to us, therefore, Realtor.com® is an Equal Opportunity Employer regardless of age, color, national origin, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, marital status, status as a disabled veteran and/or veteran of the Vietnam Era or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law. In addition, Realtor.com® will provide reasonable accommodations for otherwise qualified disabled individuals.

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