Staff/Principal Product Designer

⚡About Amber Amber is an entirely new way to buy and sell power, designed for a world powered by renewable energy. We give customers direct access to the real-time wholesale electricity price as it varies every 5 mins and the technology to shift more of their energy usage to the times when cheaper renewables are available in the grid. It’s a cheaper way to buy power, a smarter way to sell power, and the fastest way for Australia to reach 100% renewable energy. We are a clear category leader in Australia for home battery automation and are growing rapidly (over 80k customers). We have also recently expanded into licensing our core technology to utilities overseas, including a partnership with E.ON Next in the UK. Amber is backed by top Australian and international investors including Square Peg, Main Sequence, Breakthrough Victoria, Commonwealth Bank, NRMA, Gentrack, ETF Partners (UK/Europe based), and E.ON Next. We are scaling rapidly and you’d be joining a team of over 200 committed to building a diverse, inclusive, and purpose-driven culture as we transform a major industry. Our products are reshaping home energy: Amber for Batteries cuts bills by exporting stored energy at wholesale prices of up to $20/kWh, and Amber for EVs enables the cheapest, cleanest charging. In 2026, we will push this even further with our new vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology. 💻 About the role Amber is transforming how people access and use energy — helping customers shift usage to times when renewable energy is abundant and affordable, and export to the grid when it has the highest impact. It’s one of the fastest ways Australia can get to 100% renewable energy, and we’re building the products that make that shift easy and rewarding. We're hiring a Staff or Principal Product Designer — the most senior IC designer on the team. This isn't a role for someone stepping into Staff for the first time. We're looking for someone who's already there: a designer with deep craft, sharp product judgment, and a track record of shaping direction on complex, high-stakes work. You'll operate as the right-hand to the Head of Design. Where the team needs clarity in ambiguous spaces, you bring it. Where quality needs lifting, you model it. Where execution needs to be world-class, you own it. You'll be deployed on Amber's most strategically important problems — the ones that are too big, too cross-functional, or too consequential to be absorbed into a single stream. We are looking for:

Well over 10 years of experience in product design, with at least 3 years already operating at a Staff or Principal level. Not working towards it.

A track record of designing mobile and web experiences at scale, across multiple platforms and ideally multiple markets. You know what it takes to ship for hundreds of thousands of users.

Someone who can walk into an ambiguous, messy problem space and bring order to it, without losing the quality of the outcome or the humanity of the experience.

A designer who leads through craft and example. You raise the bar by showing what good looks like, not by managing people.

Someone who's energised by cross-functional complexity. You're comfortable in the room with PMs, engineers, and execs, and you know how to move decisions forward without needing authority to do it.

Strong visual and interaction craft. We care about the quality of what gets shipped: the polish, the flow, the details that make an experience feel considered.

Someone who's genuinely excited by the problem Amber is solving. Energy is complex, SmartShift is technically sophisticated, and the best candidate will want to get into that complexity rather than work around it.

In this role, you’ll:

Take on our highest priority, product challenges that have broad customer and business impact.

Actively shape the design direction on our new horizon projects, building things that will be used by 100,000s of people worldwide to use more green energy.

Work across product streams, shaping problem framing, product direction, and experience principles.

Lead discovery and research to deeply understand user motivations, behaviours, and energy literacy needs.

Design thoughtful, scalable solutions across mobile and web that influence how customers interact with energy.

Partner closely with Product and Engineering leaders to align on strategic decisions and ensure quality of execution.

Raise the bar for design craft and user experience across the organisation through example, critique, and shared standards.

Mentor and support designers of all levels, without formal people management responsibilities.

Key Responsibilities & Expectations

High-Value Problem Framing & Strategy
Bring structure and clarity to complex, ambiguous product spaces. Define the problem before defining the solution. Shape direction and guide teams toward the most impactful opportunities.

Exceptional Craft & Execution Quality
Deliver industry-leading UX and UI experiences. Model strong flow design, interaction clarity, visual polish, and cohesion. Establish patterns and approaches others follow.

Deep Customer Insight & Product Judgment
Synthesize research, market signals, data, and qualitative insights into product direction. Connect customer needs to commercial, regulatory, and energy-market realities.

Cross-Functional Leadership
Facilitate alignment across Product, Engineering, Data, and Operations. Communicate design reasoning with clarity and confidence. Support teams through trade-offs and complexity.

Org-Level Influence
Improve how design works at Amber — processes, rituals, critique, systems of quality. Uplift others through coaching, partnering, and hands-on examples. Operate as a multiplier.

Autonomy & Accountability
Act with high independence. Own outcomes, not just outputs. Hold a clear sense of responsibility for raising the overall bar of product experience quality.

🎉 Benefits

We’re committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace and a great culture of people who love coming to work to build a better world.

You’d be a part of a rapidly growing team of over 200 with expertise across energy, technology, marketing, and operations.

Be part of a growing technology start-up that will shape the future of household and grid energy use.

Enjoy a lively, collaborative workspace at our buzzing Melbourne CBD headquarters in the heart of the city

Flexible working hours with provision for regular work from home arrangements.

Equitable gender-neutral parental leave policies.

An external Employee Assistance Plan (EAP) for mental health support.

Competitive salary and share options in Amber.

Annual Learning & Development budget to support your personal growth.

Additional PTO between Xmas & New Year

Please note: To make sure your application gets the attention it deserves, please note that we are only able to consider candidates who are currently or have very recently worked at a Staff or Principal Product Designer level. If that is not where you are right now, we would encourage you to keep an eye on future opportunities at Amber as we continue to grow.

This is a full-time role to be based ideally from Melbourne, but we are also open to considering the right candidate anywhere within Australia.

We are open to discussing 4 days a week or 9 days a fortnight once you're ramped up, if that's what you are looking for. 

Amber is a remote first team; we have an office in the Melbourne CBD, where we work flexibly between the office and home. The vast majority of our team are located in Melbourne. For those based in Sydney, they catch up in a co-working space in the city every now and then, and rest of the locations in Australia work from home. While we don't expect people to attend the office, we do expect that people mostly work in the Melbourne time zone to maximise collaboration. 

🌈 If this kind of work gets you excited, we'd love to hear from you!

Even if you don’t meet 100% of the requirements listed above, we still encourage you to apply. We're open to all backgrounds and encourage people from underrepresented groups to apply. We never discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, or disability status.

Our hiring process will generally be as follows:

• A screening interview with our talent team
• An interview with the Hiring Manager
• A small case study + follow up whiteboard session
• A culture + final interview with two of our Executive Leadership Team Members

We promise to be respectful of your time as an applicant while trying to be as thorough as possible in finding the right fit for our team.

Applications will be accepted only from candidates already based in Australia, preferably Melbourne with full working rights.

Shortlisted candidates will be contacted promptly. All other applicants will also be notified of the outcome as soon as possible.

No recruitment agencies please. We've got this! Thank you.