Principal UX Designer
About Upshop
Upshop is the market leader in Total Store Operations solutions for the Grocery and C-Store markets. We offer an AI-powered, SaaS platform connecting Fresh, Center, eCommerce, and DSD department operations to deliver a simplified, smarter, more connected store experience. Customers running Upshop realize significant improvements in sales, shrink, food safety and sustainability across the entire store. 450+ retail chain accounts trust our software in over 55k+ stores, 35 countries, and 3 continents.
Role Summary
As a Principal UX Designer at Upshop, you will own the evolution of our Design Platform and Design System while acting as both a senior craft practitioner and mentor to the design organization. In this role, you will have the opportunity to be a platform-minded design leader, partnering with other PMs to shape and operationalize Upshop 360 platform across all product suites. You will shape direction through hands-on contribution and thoughtful influence, helping the team make decisions confidently in ambiguity and complexity.
You are a player-coach: a strategic thinker who leads by doing, builds with your hands, and elevates others’ work through mentorship and example. You will help define the future of Upshop’s design ecosystem — from foundational components to interaction patterns and scalable UX paradigms — ensuring consistency, coherence, and quality across products.
This role requires a strong blend of senior UX craft, systems thinking, advanced prototyping, cross-functional influence, and coaching experience.
What You’ll Do
Design Platform & System Leadership
- Own and evolve the Upshop Design Platform and System: components, guidelines, interaction language, motion principles, and shared patterns.
- Partner with engineering to ensure consistency, scalability, performance, and technical feasibility at platform scale.
- Define and document standards for how design is expressed across products — from tokens to complex state behaviors.
- Advocate for accessibility, performance, and inclusive design across the system.
Hands-On UX & Interaction Craft
- Create and iterate high-fidelity prototypes, interaction models, and design artifacts that clarify intent and drive alignment.
- Use prototypes as a primary language for exploration, communication, and decision-making.
- Translate research insights, user data, and business goals into elegant, scalable solutions.
Player-Coach Leadership
- Serve as a mentor and coach: provide regular design critique, career guidance, and hands-on support for more junior designers.
- Lead and facilitate cross-disciplinary workshops to solve complex UX challenges collaboratively
- Elevate team craft through shared best practices, tooling improvements, and patterns for reuse.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Partner deeply with Product, Engineering, and Brand teams to shape outcomes that balance user needs with business strategy.
- Influence product direction through strategic reasoning and exceptional design judgment
- Represent design decisions to senior leadership and stakeholders with clarity and confidence.
Working in Ambiguity & Evolving Practice
- Thrive in exploratory environments where problems are undefined and outcomes are emerging.
- Define and refine processes that help teams navigate ambiguity while maintaining velocity and quality.
Qualifications
Experience
- 7+ years of UX / product design experience with a strong portfolio of work that demonstrates both strategic depth and craft excellence.
- Experience creating and scaling design systems or shared UX platforms in complex multi-product portfolios across different medium (web, tablet, mobile)
- Proven track record of mentoring designers and elevating team quality.
Skills & Expertise
- Hands-on design fluency: end-to-end interaction design, advanced prototyping (Figma), motion where applicable.
- Deep systems thinking: ability to decompose and organize design patterns that scale across products and teams.
- Excellent communication: ability to articulate decisions to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Comfort working with engineering on implementation patterns, constraints, and performance realities.
- Strong understanding of user-centered design, accessibility, and usability best practices.
- Experience contributing code to UI component libraries: React, Tailwind, Design Tokens, shadcn, CSS-in-JS; able to meaningfully engage on component structure and implementation quality.
- Familiarity with analytics data used to inform design decisions
- Experience in high-growth SaaS or platform organizations
What Makes You Successful Here
- You set direction through clarity of thought and strength of craft, not hierarchy.
- You enjoy making complexity feel simple for others - both in product and in how design works.
- You are motivated by empowering others, sharing craft expertise, and defining scalable design strategies.
- You embrace ambiguity and drive forward with both curiosity and discipline.
Portfolio Requirement
An online portfolio is required and should highlight:
- Design system thinking and platform-level impact
- High-fidelity prototypes and interaction work
- Examples of coaching, mentoring, or elevating team outcomes
The estimated pay ranges for this role are as follows:
- $120,000 - 170,000 CAD
The successful candidate’s starting salary will be determined based on permissible, non-discriminatory factors such as skills, experience, and geographic location.
