UX Designer, Retail Ads

📍 Job Overview

Job Title: UX Designer, Retail Ads

Company: Google

Location: Mountain View, California, United States

Job Type: Full-time

Category: UX Design

Date Posted: 2025-06-12

Experience Level: Mid-Senior Level

Remote Status: On-site

🎨 Role Summary

• Lead the creation of intuitive and effective user experiences for Google's Retail Ads products, focusing on the shopping journey for billions of global users.
• Apply user-centered design methodologies to translate complex tasks into simple and engaging interfaces, ensuring high usability and positive user interactions.
• Collaborate extensively with cross-functional teams, including Product Management, Engineering, and UX Research, to integrate design thinking into product strategy and development cycles.
• Develop reusable design patterns, templates, and product experiences to establish and maintain consistent design standards and procedures across projects within the Retail Ads domain.

🖼️ Primary Responsibilities

• Define and create innovative user experiences for Retail Ads products, utilizing reusable design patterns and templates to ensure consistency and scalability.
• Work closely with designers, UX researchers, program managers, product managers, and software engineers to align design solutions with business goals and technical feasibility.
• Contribute to the overall product strategy by balancing user needs with product development objectives, advocating for user-centered approaches throughout the lifecycle.
• Produce detailed storyboards, high-fidelity mockups, and interactive prototypes to effectively communicate design concepts and interaction flows to stakeholders.
• Conduct usability heuristic evaluations and provide constructive feedback on existing products to identify areas for improvement and optimize user satisfaction.
• Iterate on designs based on user feedback, research findings, and performance data to continuously enhance the usability and effectiveness of Retail Ads interfaces.

🎓 Skills & Qualifications

Education: A Bachelor's degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent practical experience is required. A Master's degree in a related field is preferred.

Experience: A minimum of 4 years of dedicated interaction design experience in product design or UX design is required. 5 years of design work experience, specifically with designing usable web-based and mobile interfaces, is preferred. A strong portfolio demonstrating this experience is essential.

Required Skills:

• Proven expertise in Interaction Design principles and patterns for web and mobile platforms.
• Deep understanding and practical application of User-Centered Design methodologies throughout the product development lifecycle.
• Solid knowledge of Usability principles and techniques for evaluating and improving user interfaces.
• Ability to effectively collaborate and communicate design decisions and rationale to diverse stakeholders.

Preferred Skills:

• Advanced Visual Design skills to create aesthetically pleasing and functional interfaces.
• Proficiency in industry-standard interaction design and prototyping tools.
• Demonstrated ability to solve complex design problems with a strong user focus.
• Experience in launching successful digital products from concept to market.

🎨 Portfolio & Creative Requirements

Portfolio Essentials:

• Your portfolio should clearly showcase your interaction design process, demonstrating how you approach problem-solving and user-centered design from initial research to final implementation.
• Include detailed case studies for key projects, outlining the challenge, your role, the design process, decisions made, iterations, and the impact of your design solutions.
• Present high-fidelity mockups, wireframes, user flows, and interactive prototypes that effectively communicate your design thinking and execution.
• If applicable, include examples of reusable design patterns or contributions to design systems you have created or utilized.

Process Documentation:

• Document your research and discovery phase, including user research methods, competitive analysis, and synthesis of findings that informed your design direction.
• Illustrate your ideation and iteration methods, showing how you explored different design solutions and refined them based on feedback or constraints.
• Detail your validation and testing approaches, explaining how you tested your designs with users and incorporated feedback into subsequent iterations.

💵 Compensation & Benefits

Salary Range: The US base salary range for this full-time position is $129,000 - $185,000 per year. This range is determined by factors including role, level, location, job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

Benefits:

• Competitive bonus program tied to performance and company success.
• Equity grants, providing an ownership stake in the company.
• Comprehensive benefits package, details of which can be found on the Google careers website. This typically includes health, dental, and vision insurance, retirement plans, generous paid time off, and various wellness programs.

Working Hours: As a full-time position, standard working hours are expected, typically around 40 hours per week. Google is known for offering some flexibility to accommodate creative workflows, but core collaboration hours are likely required given the on-site nature and cross-functional teamwork.

🎯Team & Company Context

🏢 Company & Design Culture

Industry: Software Development, with a significant focus on Advertising Technology and Retail Solutions within that sector. Google Ads powers a vast ecosystem connecting users, publishers, and advertisers, making the design of these interfaces critical to the company's core business.

Company Size: 10,001+ employees globally (specifically 310,084 LinkedIn employees). This large size indicates a structured organization with potentially large design teams, established processes, and opportunities for specialization.

Founded: Google was founded in 1998. This long history suggests a mature company with established practices and a strong brand presence, but also a continuous need for innovation, particularly in rapidly evolving areas like retail advertising.

Team Structure:

• The UX team at Google is described as multi-disciplinary, including Designers, Researchers, Writers, Content Strategists, Program Managers, and Engineers.
• Designers collaborate closely within the UX team and cross-functionally with Engineering and Product Management.
• Reporting structures likely involve leads or managers overseeing specific product areas or teams within the larger UX organization.

Methodology:

• The core premise is "Focus on the user," indicating a strong emphasis on user-centered design and research-driven decision-making.
• The team uses user-centered design methods from concept to execution.
• Collaboration across disciplines is integral to their process.

Company Website: https://www.google.com

📈 Career & Growth Analysis

Design Career Level: This role is positioned as a Mid-Senior level Interaction Designer within Google's UX organization. This implies responsibility for leading design efforts on significant features or parts of the product, mentoring junior designers (though not explicitly stated as a requirement), and contributing strategically to product direction.

Reporting Structure: You will likely report to a UX Design Manager within the Retail Ads team or a related product area. Collaboration will be extensive with peers across UX disciplines, Product Management, and Engineering.

Design Impact: Design plays a "vital" and "integral part" at Google, focused on making complex tasks intuitive for billions of users. In the Retail Ads domain, design directly impacts the user shopping journey and contributes significantly to Google's core business value by creating effective ad experiences.

Growth Opportunities:

• Potential for advancement to Senior UX Designer, leading larger initiatives and potentially mentoring others, typically within 2-4 years based on performance and contribution.
• Opportunities to specialize further within specific areas of advertising technology, e-commerce UX, or interaction design complexities.
• Access to Google's extensive learning and development resources, including internal training programs, conferences, and potential for exploring adjacent UX disciplines like research or content strategy.

🌐 Work Environment

Studio Type: This is an on-site role based in Mountain View, CA. Google's headquarters are known for providing a comprehensive campus environment designed to foster collaboration and innovation.

Office Location(s): The primary location is Mountain View, CA. While Google has numerous offices globally, this specific role is tied to the Mountain View campus.

Design Workspace Context:

• Google's offices are generally designed with collaborative workspaces, meeting rooms equipped for presentations and brainstorming, and potentially dedicated studio spaces for design teams.
• Being on-site facilitates direct, in-person collaboration with cross-functional team members (Product Managers, Engineers, Researchers) which is emphasized in the job description.
• Access to physical resources, testing labs, and informal interaction opportunities are benefits of an on-site work environment.

Work Schedule: Standard full-time schedule, likely requiring presence during core business hours for team meetings and collaboration. Some flexibility may be available, but the on-site nature implies a regular physical presence is expected.

📄 Application & Portfolio Review Process

Design Interview Process:

• Initial screening call with a Recruiter to discuss your background and interest.
• Potential portfolio review or introductory call with a Hiring Manager or Design Lead to assess fit and experience.
• Several rounds of interviews, likely including portfolio presentations, design challenges (whiteboarding or take-home), and behavioral interviews.
• Interviews will assess your interaction design skills, user-centered process, collaboration abilities, problem-solving approach, and cultural fit with the Google UX team.

Portfolio Review Tips:

• Focus on 2-3 of your strongest case studies that demonstrate your experience designing complex interactions for web and mobile, ideally related to e-commerce, advertising, or consumer products.
• Clearly articulate your role, the problem you were solving, your design process (research, ideation, testing), key decisions and rationale, and the impact of your work (using metrics if possible).
• Be prepared to walk through your designs in detail, explaining your choices and how they address user needs and business goals.
• Highlight your collaborative process and how you worked with researchers, product managers, and engineers.

Challenge Preparation:

• Practice whiteboarding exercises where you are given a design problem and asked to brainstorm solutions, considering user flows, key screens, and potential edge cases.
• If a take-home challenge is assigned, manage your time effectively and focus on clearly demonstrating your process and rationale, not just the final visual design.
• Be ready to present and articulate your solution, explaining your thinking and receiving feedback.

ATS Keywords: Interaction Design, UX Design, Product Design, User-Centered Design, Usability, Prototyping, Wireframing, User Flows, Mockups, Visual Design, Collaboration, Cross-functional Teams, Stakeholder Management, Problem-Solving, User Research, Usability Testing, Design Systems, Retail, Advertising, E-commerce, Mobile Design, Web Design, Storyboarding, Design Thinking, Figma, Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite, InVision, Principle, After Effects, Communication, Teamwork, Product Strategy.

🛠 Tools & Technology Stack

Primary Design Tools:

• Proficiency in industry-standard interaction design and prototyping tools is required. This likely includes tools such as Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD for UI/UX design and wireframing.
• Experience with advanced prototyping tools like Principle, After Effects (for motion design), or similar software may be preferred for creating dynamic user experiences.
• Familiarity with version control for design files (e.g., Abstract) and experience working within or contributing to a design system is highly probable given Google's scale.

Collaboration & Handoff:

• Experience with collaboration platforms like Figma, Miro, or Mural for brainstorming and co-designing with remote or co-located team members.
• Proficiency in handoff tools (e.g., Zeplin, InVision Inspect) for providing detailed design specifications to engineering teams.
• Knowledge of documentation tools used for maintaining design systems and style guides.

Research & Testing:

• Familiarity with tools used for user research (e.g., user interview platforms, survey tools).
• Experience with prototyping tools that facilitate user testing.
• Basic understanding of analytics platforms to inform design decisions based on user behavior data.

👥 Team Culture & Values

Design Values:

• A strong emphasis on being "user-centered," focusing on the needs and experiences of billions of people globally.
• Commitment to creating products that are "intuitive and easy-to-use," simplifying complex tasks.
• Valuing "inspired, refined, and even magical" user experiences, pushing for innovative and delightful interactions.
• A focus on "helping power the open internet" and creating "trusted experiences between people and businesses with useful ads" within the Retail Ads context.

Collaboration Style:

• Highly collaborative environment with close interaction among designers, researchers, writers, content strategists, program managers, and engineers.
• Emphasis on gathering insights from research to inform design decisions.
• Working closely with product management and engineering to build industry-leading products.
• Leveraging and evolving the Google design language, suggesting a culture of contributing to and utilizing shared design systems.

⚡ Challenges & Growth Opportunities

Design Challenges:

• Designing for a massive global user base with diverse needs, technical proficiencies, and cultural contexts within the retail advertising space.
• Balancing user experience goals with the business objectives of advertisers and publishers, ensuring ad interactions are both helpful to users and valuable to businesses.
• Working within a large, complex organization with established processes and design systems while still pushing for innovation and improvement.
• Staying ahead of rapidly evolving trends in e-commerce, advertising technology, and user behavior across multiple devices and platforms.

Learning & Development Opportunities:

• Opportunities to deepen expertise in designing for large-scale advertising platforms and the complexities of the retail journey.
• Participation in internal design reviews, critique sessions, and knowledge-sharing forums within the Google UX community.
• Access to resources for learning new design tools, methodologies, and emerging technologies relevant to UX and advertising.

💡 Interview Preparation

Design Process Questions:

• Be prepared to discuss your end-to-end design process for a project, from understanding the problem and user needs to delivering the final design and measuring its impact. Use specific examples from your portfolio.
• Expect questions about how you approach collaboration with product managers, engineers, and researchers throughout the design cycle. Provide examples of successful cross-functional teamwork.
• Practice articulating your design decisions and rationale clearly, explaining why you chose a particular solution over others and how it addresses user and business goals.

Company Culture Questions:

• Research Google's design principles and values, and be prepared to discuss how your own approach aligns with them, particularly the focus on the user and creating intuitive experiences.
• Think about how you handle feedback and critique in a collaborative environment. Google's culture likely involves rigorous design reviews.
• Consider how you would approach designing for a global audience and the challenges and opportunities that come with scale.

Portfolio Presentation Strategy:

• Structure your portfolio presentation as compelling case studies that tell a story about your process, highlighting the problem, your approach, key iterations, and the outcome.
• Allocate sufficient time to explain the "why" behind your design decisions, focusing on your rationale rather than just showing final visuals.
• Be ready to discuss the impact of your work, using metrics or qualitative feedback if available.

📌 Application Steps

To apply for this design position:

• Submit your application through this link. Ensure your resume is updated and highlights relevant interaction design experience, user-centered methodologies, and collaboration skills.
• Carefully curate your design portfolio, selecting case studies that best demonstrate your experience in interaction design, particularly for web and mobile interfaces, and ideally related to e-commerce or advertising. Ensure the portfolio link is easily accessible and functioning.
• Optimize your resume and portfolio descriptions with relevant design-specific ATS keywords found throughout this job description to increase visibility.
• Prepare for the interview process by practicing articulating your design process, rationale, and collaborative experiences. Review your portfolio case studies thoroughly and be ready for potential design challenges.
• Research Google's products, particularly in the Retail Ads space, and understand their design philosophy to demonstrate your interest and cultural fit during the interview.