Head of Product Design, API Platform New San Francisco, United States

With 35M+ users, 500K+ companies, and 98% of the Fortune 500, Postman is the world’s foremost API management and collaboration platform. Postman is helping developers and professionals across the globe build the API-first world by simplifying each step of the API lifecycle and streamlining collaboration—enabling users to create better APIs, faster.

The company is headquartered in San Francisco and has an office in Bangalore, where it was founded. Postman is privately held, with funding from Battery Ventures, BOND, Coatue, CRV, Insight Partners, and Nexus Venture Partners. Learn more at Postman API Platform or connect with Postman on Twitter via @getpostman.

The Opportunity

We’re looking for a Head of Product Design, API Platform to lead Postman’s design vision and strategy, ensuring a best-in-class user experience for developers and organizations at all scales. This role is critical to Postman’s mission to simplify and enhance the API lifecycle while delivering innovative, scalable, and delightful design solutions for our users.

As a key member of the executive leadership team, the Head of Design will lead the Product Design organization, set the strategic design direction, and work cross-functionally to align design with product, engineering, and business goals. The ideal candidate is a proven leader with deep expertise in user-centered design, a track record of creating elegant and scalable enterprise solutions, and the ability to inspire and grow a high-performing design organization.

Your success in this role will be measured by customer satisfaction, team performance, product adoption, and your ability to elevate Postman’s design culture across the company.

Key Responsibilities

1. Strategic Vision: Develop and communicate a clear design strategy aligned with Postman’s mission and product roadmap. Champion a vision that sets the standard for exceptional developer experiences, ensuring Postman remains a leader in the API-first space.
2. Design Leadership: Lead, inspire, and mentor a world-class design organization. Build a strong team culture that encourages innovation, collaboration, and continuous growth, enabling designers to thrive and deliver high-quality work.
3. End-to-End Design: Drive the end-to-end design process across all Postman products, including API test automation, performance testing, and developer collaboration tools. Oversee the execution of research, prototyping, user testing, and implementation to ensure seamless and scalable design outcomes.
4. Customer Empathy: Deeply understand developer workflows across startups, SMBs, mid-market, and enterprise customers. Regularly engage with users to identify pain points, validate ideas, and iterate on design solutions.
5. Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner closely with Product Management, Engineering, Marketing, and Go-to-Market teams to align design initiatives with business goals. Serve as a bridge between teams, ensuring design is integrated into every step of the product lifecycle.
6. Innovation: Drive innovation in API test automation, performance benchmarking, and developer tooling. Push the boundaries of what is possible in enterprise-grade developer solutions while maintaining simplicity and usability.
7. Enterprise Focus: Collaborate with enterprise customers to design scalable, secure, and compliant solutions. Ensure Postman’s design systems meet the demands of complex organizations, seamlessly integrating with CI/CD pipelines and diverse tech stacks.
8. Metrics-Driven: Define and measure success metrics for design, including adoption, engagement, and user satisfaction. Use data-driven insights to inform design decisions and continuously optimize for improved outcomes.
9. Champion Design Culture: Elevate the role of design across Postman, advocating for user-centered principles and embedding design as a core element of the company’s DNA. Represent design in executive discussions and serve as a thought leader both internally and externally.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in design leadership roles, with a proven track record of scaling and managing large, high-performing design teams in fast-paced environments.
• Deep expertise in user-centered design principles, with hands-on experience delivering end-to-end design solutions for enterprise and developer tools.
• Strong business acumen and the ability to align design strategy with business objectives to drive measurable outcomes.
• Proven ability to navigate the challenges of designing for complex technical workflows, ensuring simplicity and usability.
• Exceptional communication and storytelling skills, with the ability to influence stakeholders at all levels, including executive leadership and customers.
• Strong collaboration skills with cross-functional teams, particularly Product, Engineering, and GTM teams.
• Familiarity with developer workflows, APIs, and CI/CD pipelines. Hands-on development experience is a strong plus.
• Data-driven mindset with a passion for measuring the impact of design on key business and user metrics.

What Can Give You an Edge?

• Deep familiarity with Postman’s product and a strong understanding of developer tools and workflows.
• Experience shipping enterprise-grade products to a global audience, solving large-scale technical challenges.
• Ability to simplify complex technical concepts into approachable and intuitive user experiences.
• Demonstrated thought leadership in the design community, with a history of advocating for user-centered design principles.
• Hands-on coding experience or a deep technical understanding of software development practices.

Our Values

At Postman, we create with the same curiosity that we see in our users. We value transparency & honest communication about not only successes, but also failures. In our work, we focus on specific goals that add up to a larger vision. Our inclusive work culture ensures that everyone is valued equally as important pieces of our final product. We are dedicated to delivering the best products we can.

What Else?

This role is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, and we are offering a base salary range of $240,958 to $305,240 plus a competitive equity package. Actual compensation is based on the candidate's skills, qualifications, and experience. In addition to our pay-on-performance philosophy, we offer comprehensive benefits, including full medical coverage, flexible PTO, wellness reimbursement, and a monthly lunch stipend. Salaries will vary outside of the listed metropolitan areas & the U.S.