Staff Product Designer

Tailscale is building the new Internet by delivering software that makes it easy to securely interconnect people and their devices. They are seeking a Staff Product Designer to partner with the Network Features team, focusing on translating complex technical systems into clear design solutions and driving alignment across stakeholders.

Responsibilities:

• Define where design attention is needed across the network features product space and lead discovery on complex, ambiguous problems that often span multiple features or product areas
• Translate abstract technical systems into clear problem frames, using diagramming, system mapping, and design artifacts to build shared understanding and drive alignment across engineering, product, and other stakeholders
• Deliver design solutions end-to-end as needed, whether that means changes to a GUI, a CLI experience, or both, working closely with engineers through implementation and QA
• Explore forward-looking design questions in spaces that do not yet have clear owners or established answers
• Partner closely with engineering and PM counterparts to move from ambiguous problem statements to clear, well-reasoned solutions
• Raise the bar for craft and quality across your team and contribute to how the broader design organization approaches process and product thinking
• Translate insights from user research, behavioral data, and your own product knowledge into design direction
• Bring AI tools into your workflow in practical ways, whether for research synthesis, rapid prototyping, or solution exploration, and develop a point of view on where AI-assisted experiences belong in technically complex products

Requirements:

• 10+ years of product design experience, with meaningful time operating at the staff level or equivalent scope
• Strong portfolio demonstrating experience with technically sophisticated B2B or infrastructure products, and a track record of leading discovery on problems without waiting for scope to be defined
• A developed point of view on users and product direction, with evidence of using that perspective to influence roadmap and strategy across engineering and product teams
• Genuine interest in the networking and security space and comfort engaging with technically complex subject matter
• Strong written communication and an ability to articulate design decisions clearly to both technical and non-technical partners
• Ease working in a distributed, asynchronous environment with highly technical teammates
• Hands-on experience with Tailscale, or working familiarity with networking concepts such as DNS, VPNs, proxies, or traffic routing
• Hands-on experience with cloud native deployment infrastructure (AWS, GCP, DigitalOcean, etc)
• Experience designing for developer or IT administrator audiences
• Data-informed design practice including behavioral analytics or experimentation
• Fluency with AI tools as part of your design workflow and curiosity about where AI-assisted experiences fit in technical products