Senior Product Designer

📍 Job Overview

Job Title: Senior Product Designer - Supplier Integrations & Booking

Company: Tern Travel

Location: United States

Job Type: FULL_TIME

Category: Product Design / GTM Operations Enablement

Date Posted: 2026-06-01

Experience Level: Senior (5-10 years)

Remote Status: Fully Remote

🚀 Role Summary

• Lead the end-to-end product design for critical supplier integrations and booking workflows, focusing on empowering travel advisors.

• Drive innovation in AI-enabled workflows by designing how agentic AI will support browsing and quoting experiences.

• Navigate and overcome technical constraints of partner APIs to deliver seamless and efficient user experiences.

• Collaborate closely with Product Management and Engineering to define and execute on product strategy, ensuring rapid iteration and user feedback integration.

• Contribute to the evolution of Tern's design practices and team scaling within a fast-paced startup environment.

📝 Enhancement Note: While the primary function is Product Design, this role has significant implications for GTM Operations and Sales Operations by directly impacting the efficiency and profitability of travel advisors, who are Tern's customers. The focus on supplier integrations and booking directly supports the core GTM motion by enabling advisors to operate more effectively.

📈 Primary Responsibilities

• Own the complete design lifecycle for supplier integrations, including browse, quote, and book functionalities, with an expansion into new categories like lodging and cruises.

• Diagnose and resolve UX issues hindering advisor adoption of current integrations, aiming to increase booking volume through the Tern platform.

• Design innovative AI-powered browsing and quoting patterns within Tern's agentic AI framework, enhancing advisor workflows.

• Conduct regular user research with travel advisors to deeply understand their real-world workflows and integrate their needs into product design.

• Partner with Integrations PM and engineering teams to define technical feasibility with partner APIs and prioritize iterative development for shippable product versions.

• Contribute to shaping Tern's design culture and processes as the design team scales, including critiques, system development, and hiring.

• Identify and advocate for rebuilding or iterating on existing UX debt within supplier integrations to improve advisor efficiency and platform adoption.

• Establish design patterns for AI-driven interactions within the booking and quoting process, ensuring a user-friendly and efficient experience.

📝 Enhancement Note: The responsibilities clearly indicate a role that bridges product design with operational efficiency for their end-users (travel advisors). This involves understanding complex B2B workflows and integrating new technologies like AI to streamline business processes, a core function within GTM and Sales Operations.

🎓 Skills & Qualifications

Education: Bachelor's degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Experience: 5-10 years of experience in product design, with a strong emphasis on end-to-end product development in startup or fast-paced environments.

Required Skills:

• Proven experience in 0→1 product design, shipping meaningful products from scratch, not just iterating on existing flows.

• Demonstrated ability to design effective user experiences within significant technical and API constraints, balancing idealism with pragmatism.

• Strong product instincts and velocity, with the ability to manage multiple projects at different stages and deliver value efficiently.

• Comfort with ambiguity, taking initiative, and actively seeking clarity to drive product outcomes.

• Experience in user research and translating user needs into actionable design solutions.

• Proficiency in AI-enabled workflow design and a curiosity for adopting new tooling in the design process.

• Expertise in prototyping, interaction design, and visual design principles.

• Excellent cross-functional collaboration skills, working effectively with Product Managers and Engineers.

Preferred Skills:

• Prior experience designing integrations, marketplace platforms, or booking/quoting tools.

• Experience within the travel tech industry or domains with complex third-party data and supplier APIs.

• Hands-on curiosity and experience with LLMs and agentic AI applications in product design.

• Familiarity with SaaS platforms and B2B user workflows.

📝 Enhancement Note: The emphasis on "0→1 product design" and designing around "real constraints" like "legacy UX and third-party APIs" is critical for operations roles. It signifies the ability to build foundational processes and systems from the ground up, a hallmark of effective operations professionals, even though this is a design role. The mention of "AI-enabled workflows" is also highly relevant to modern Operations.

📊 Process & Systems Portfolio Requirements

Portfolio Essentials:

• Showcase at least one significant 0→1 product design initiative from conception to launch, detailing the problem, your process, constraints, and outcomes.

• Include case studies demonstrating your ability to design user experiences within technical limitations, such as API constraints or existing UX debt, highlighting your problem-solving approach.

• Present examples of workflow optimization through design, illustrating how you simplified complex processes for users.

• Demonstrate experience with AI-driven features or workflows, explaining your design decisions and their impact.

Process Documentation:

• Be prepared to discuss your approach to design system development and maintenance, especially in a fast-paced, scaling environment.

• Articulate your methodology for balancing speed and quality in design delivery, aligning with weekly shipping cycles.

• Explain how you would collaborate with engineering and product management to scope technical possibilities and sequence development efforts for integrations.

• Demonstrate your ability to diagnose UX issues and propose data-informed design solutions to improve adoption and efficiency.

📝 Enhancement Note: For a role like this, the portfolio isn't just about visual design. It's about demonstrating a structured approach to problem-solving, understanding complex systems (like APIs), and driving tangible improvements for users. This aligns directly with the expectations for operations professionals who must document and optimize processes.

💵 Compensation & Benefits

Salary Range: $175,000 - $225,000 USD per year.

Benefits:

• Competitive Salary

• Equity package

• Comprehensive Benefits Package (details to be provided by Tern Travel)

• Opportunity to work remotely within the United States.

• Be part of a mission-driven company transforming the travel industry.

• Collaborative and creative team environment.

• Influence and shape user success strategy from the ground up.

Working Hours: Standard full-time hours, approximately 40 hours per week. Remote flexibility is provided.

📝 Enhancement Note: The salary range is competitive for a Senior Product Designer role in the US, especially considering the remote flexibility. The benefits listed are standard but the mention of equity is significant for a startup environment. The "influence and shape our user success strategy" point indirectly ties into operational excellence and customer enablement.

🎯 Team & Company Context

🏢 Company Culture

Industry: Travel Technology (SaaS for Travel Agencies)

Company Size: Tern Travel is a venture-backed startup, likely in the early to growth stages. This implies a dynamic, fast-paced environment where individual impact is significant.

Founded: Tern Travel was founded to modernize the travel agency industry, focusing on empowering small businesses within this sector.

Team Structure:

• The role is within the Product Design team, which collaborates closely with Product Management and Engineering.

• As a Senior Designer, you will likely have a significant influence on design practices and potentially mentor junior designers as the team scales.

Methodology:

• Data-Driven Iteration: Tern emphasizes a rapid feedback loop, shipping new features weekly and learning from user engagement. This implies a data-informed approach to design and product development.

• User-Centricity: A core value is deeply understanding users, particularly travel advisors, to build solutions that address their real-world pain points and workflows.

• Agile Development: The mention of weekly shipping cycles and partnership with engineering suggests an agile or lean development methodology.

• Operational Excellence: A stated value emphasizes "operational excellence," aiming for consistent productivity, reliability, and trust through compounding habits.

Company Website: https://www.tern.travel/

📝 Enhancement Note: Tern's culture values rapid iteration, user obsession, and operational excellence. For an operations-minded candidate, understanding how design directly impacts the operational efficiency and success of their target customers (travel advisors) is key. The company's mission to empower small businesses is a strong cultural driver.

📈 Career & Growth Analysis

Operations Career Level: This role is positioned as a Senior Product Designer, indicating a mid-to-senior level of experience. The responsibilities suggest a significant degree of autonomy and ownership, with influence over core product areas that directly impact customer operational efficiency.

Reporting Structure: The designer will likely report to a Head of Design or a Director of Product, working in close partnership with Product Managers and Engineering leads for the supplier integrations and booking domain.

Operations Impact: The role's impact is inherently tied to operational efficiency. By designing seamless booking and quoting tools, this position directly reduces the manual, tedious work for travel advisors, allowing them to focus on higher-value activities. This translates to increased advisor productivity, potentially higher revenue for advisors, and greater platform adoption for Tern. The success of supplier integrations is a critical component of Tern's GTM strategy, directly impacting customer success and retention.

Growth Opportunities:

• Deepening Craft: Opportunity to hone skills in complex B2B SaaS design, API-constrained environments, and AI-enabled workflows.

• Leadership Potential: As the team scales, there will be opportunities to mentor junior designers, influence design strategy, and potentially lead specific product areas.

• Industry Expertise: Gain specialized knowledge in travel tech and the operational challenges faced by travel agencies.

• Impactful Product Development: Directly contribute to a product that aims to revolutionize an industry, with a clear feedback loop from users.

• Startup Growth: Experience the rapid growth trajectory of a venture-backed startup, offering exposure to various facets of business development and product strategy.

📝 Enhancement Note: The growth analysis highlights how a design role can be deeply intertwined with operational impact and career progression within a business context. The ability to influence customer operations is a key differentiator for candidates looking beyond pure design.

🌐 Work Environment

Office Type: Fully Remote. This offers significant flexibility for operations professionals to structure their workday around core tasks and deep work.

Office Location(s): United States. This ensures alignment with US time zones and regulatory considerations.

Workspace Context:

• Collaborative Environment: Despite being remote, the emphasis on cross-functional collaboration, design critiques, and weekly shipping cycles suggests a highly interactive and communicative virtual workspace.

• Tooling: Expect access to modern design and collaboration tools necessary for remote work and efficient product development. The role encourages experimentation with new AI tooling.

• Team Interaction: Regular touchpoints with product, engineering, and potentially user research teams will be integral to the daily workflow, fostering a sense of shared purpose.

Work Schedule: Approximately 40 hours per week, with flexibility inherent in a remote role. This allows for efficient management of design processes, user research, and collaboration with distributed teams across US time zones.

📝 Enhancement Note: The remote nature of this role is a significant advantage for operations professionals who often require focused time for analysis and process development. The emphasis on communication and collaboration within a remote setting is crucial for maintaining team alignment and project momentum.

📄 Application & Portfolio Review Process

Interview Process:

• Initial Screening: A conversation with a recruiter to assess basic qualifications, cultural fit, and understanding of the role's scope.

• Portfolio Review & Design Challenge: Presentation of your portfolio, focusing on case studies relevant to 0→1 product development, complex constraints, and AI-enabled workflows. You may be given a take-home design challenge or asked to walk through a previous project in detail, simulating how you would approach a specific problem.

• Cross-Functional Interviews: Meetings with Product Managers and Engineering leads to assess collaboration style, technical understanding, and strategic thinking. Expect discussions about API limitations, trade-offs, and iterative development.

• Hiring Manager/Leadership Interview: A final discussion to evaluate overall fit, vision for the role, and alignment with Tern's values and mission.

Portfolio Review Tips:

• Highlight 0→1 Success: Emphasize projects where you built something new from scratch, detailing the problem space, your iterative process, and the impact achieved.

• Showcase Constraint Navigation: Clearly articulate how you designed within technical limitations (e.g., partner APIs, legacy systems) and what trade-offs you made, explaining the rationale.

• Demonstrate AI Integration: If applicable, showcase any experience with AI tools or workflows, explaining your design choices and their potential impact on user efficiency.

• Focus on Workflow Optimization: Use case studies to illustrate how your designs simplified complex processes for users, leading to measurable improvements in efficiency or adoption.

• Quantify Impact: Whenever possible, use metrics to demonstrate the success of your designs, such as increased booking volume, reduced task completion time, or improved user satisfaction.

• Tell a Story: Structure your portfolio presentations as narratives that clearly communicate the problem, your process, your role, and the outcome.

Challenge Preparation:

• Understand the Problem: If given a challenge, thoroughly research Tern, its mission, its users (travel advisors), and the specific problem area (supplier integrations, booking).

• Think Systemically: Consider the end-to-end workflow, not just isolated screens. How do integrations impact the advisor's daily operations?

• Address Constraints: Assume there will be technical limitations and be prepared to discuss how you would design around them pragmatically.

• Focus on User Value: Always tie design decisions back to how they benefit the travel advisor and support Tern's business objectives.

• Be Prepared to Discuss AI: Think about how AI could genuinely enhance booking and quoting experiences, not just as a buzzword.

📝 Enhancement Note: The interview process and portfolio review emphasize a candidate's ability to translate design thinking into tangible operational improvements for users. This requires a structured, data-informed, and pragmatic approach, mirroring the core competencies of operations professionals.

🛠 Tools & Technology Stack

Primary Tools:

• Design & Prototyping Software: Figma (highly probable given industry standards), Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite.

• Collaboration Tools: Slack, Zoom, Google Workspace (Docs, Sheets, Slides).

• Project Management: Jira, Asana, Trello, or similar tools for tracking project progress and sprints.

Analytics & Reporting:

• While not a primary responsibility, a Senior Product Designer should be comfortable interpreting data from:
  • Product Analytics Platforms: Mixpanel, Amplitude, Pendo (for understanding user behavior, feature adoption, and conversion funnels).
  • BI Tools: Tableau, Looker (to understand broader business and user trends).

CRM & Automation:

• Familiarity with CRM concepts (e.g., Salesforce, HubSpot) is beneficial, as Tern's platform likely integrates with or influences how travel advisors manage client relationships and bookings.

• Understanding of workflow automation principles is key, especially given the focus on streamlining advisor tasks.

📝 Enhancement Note: Proficiency with design tools is standard, but understanding how to leverage analytics and the principles of CRM and automation is crucial for a role that directly impacts customer operational efficiency. This demonstrates an understanding of the broader business technology ecosystem.

👥 Team Culture & Values

Operations Values:

• Leveling Up (Growth Mindset): A commitment to continuous learning, skill development, and embracing new challenges. This is essential for staying ahead in rapidly evolving technology and design practices.

• Optimistic Agency (Initiative & Resilience): Taking initiative, seeking clarity, and driving forward with a positive attitude, even when faced with ambiguity or setbacks. This is critical for navigating the dynamic startup environment and solving complex operational problems.

• Operational Excellence (Consistency & Trust): A focus on shipping value consistently, building reliable systems, and fostering mutual trust through dependable performance. This directly aligns with the core tenets of operations management.

• Deep User Understanding (Empathy & Insight): Obsessively understanding the users (travel advisors) and the industry to build solutions that genuinely solve their problems and improve their business operations.

• Embrace the Power of "And" (Strategic Trade-offs): Challenging trade-offs by asking better questions to find optimal solutions, while also having the discipline to make tough "not right now" decisions.

• Speak Up and Move Forward (Healthy Dissent & Collaboration): Encouraging open communication, healthy debate, and constructive feedback to improve products and processes collectively.

• Move Fast and Sweat the Details (Velocity & Quality): Balancing speed of execution with a deep care for quality and detail in product delivery.

Collaboration Style:

• Cross-functional Integration: Expect close collaboration with Product Management and Engineering, with a shared responsibility for product outcomes.

• Process-Oriented: The emphasis on "operational excellence" suggests a culture that values well-defined processes and continuous improvement.

• Feedback Culture: The mention of "healthy tension" and "sharing dissenting views early" indicates an environment that encourages constructive feedback and open dialogue, which is vital for iterating on complex operational designs.

📝 Enhancement Note: Tern's values, particularly "Operational Excellence," "Deep User Understanding," and "Optimistic Agency," are highly relevant to operations professionals. The emphasis on how design contributes to user efficiency and business success is a strong cultural indicator.

⚡ Challenges & Growth Opportunities

Challenges:

• Navigating API Constraints: Designing effective user experiences within the often rigid and limited capabilities of third-party supplier APIs will be a constant challenge. This requires creative problem-solving and strategic compromise.

• Addressing UX Debt: Improving upon existing, potentially outdated or inefficient, integration experiences requires careful diagnosis and prioritization to avoid disrupting current users while delivering significant improvements.

• Integrating AI Seamlessly: Designing AI-enabled workflows that feel natural, intuitive, and genuinely helpful to advisors, rather than a gimmick, will be a key challenge.

• Balancing Speed and Quality: In a fast-paced startup environment with weekly shipping cycles, consistently delivering high-quality designs that meet user needs and business goals requires strong time management and prioritization skills.

• Scaling Design Practices: As the team grows, contributing to and adopting scalable design systems and processes will be crucial for maintaining consistency and efficiency.

Learning & Development Opportunities:

• Specialized Design Skills: Deepen expertise in B2B SaaS design, complex workflow optimization, and the application of AI in product experiences.

• Industry Knowledge: Gain in-depth understanding of the travel agency industry and its operational intricacies.

• Product Strategy Influence: Contribute significantly to product strategy and roadmap discussions, influencing the direction of core features.

• Mentorship: Opportunity to mentor junior designers and contribute to building a strong design team culture.

• Startup Experience: Gain invaluable experience in a high-growth startup environment, understanding the dynamics of rapid scaling and market disruption.

📝 Enhancement Note: The challenges presented are not just design challenges; they are operational challenges related to system integration, process efficiency, and user adoption. The growth opportunities highlight how this role can develop transferable skills valuable in operations and product management.

💡 Interview Preparation

Strategy Questions:

• "Describe a time you had to design a complex workflow with significant technical or API constraints. How did you approach it, what trade-offs did you make, and what was the outcome?" (Focus on process, problem-solving, and outcome quantification.)

• "How would you approach diagnosing why travel advisors aren't adopting current supplier integrations, and what design solutions would you propose to increase adoption?" (Focus on user research, problem diagnosis, and solution ideation.)

Company & Culture Questions:

• "Tern values 'Operational Excellence.' How do you see product design contributing to a company's operational excellence, especially in a B2B SaaS context?" (Connect design impact to efficiency, reliability, and user success.)

• "Our culture encourages 'speaking up and moving forward.' How do you handle disagreements with product or engineering on design decisions, and how do you ensure your voice is heard constructively?" (Focus on collaboration, communication, and healthy conflict resolution.)

Portfolio Presentation Strategy:

• Structure as a Narrative: For each case study, clearly define the problem, your role, the constraints, your process (research, ideation, prototyping, testing), your specific contributions, and the measurable results.

• Highlight Constraint Navigation: Dedicate specific slides or talking points to how you managed technical limitations, legacy systems, or API restrictions. Quantify the impact of your solutions.

• Showcase AI/Workflow Impact: If discussing AI or workflow optimization, explain why it was necessary, how your design addressed it, and what the expected or actual efficiency gains were.

• Be Ready for Deep Dives: Anticipate questions about your design decisions, alternative approaches you considered, and how you collaborated with stakeholders.

• Connect to Tern's Mission: Frame your past work in the context of Tern's mission to empower small businesses and transform an industry.

📝 Enhancement Note: The interview preparation advice focuses on demonstrating not just design skills, but also strategic thinking, operational awareness, and the ability to collaborate effectively within a business context – all critical for roles that interface with GTM and Sales Operations.

📌 Application Steps

To apply for this Senior Product Designer position:

• Submit your application through the provided Ashby link.

• Customise your Resume: Tailor your resume to highlight experience in 0→1 product development, designing within constraints (APIs, legacy systems), user research, and AI-enabled workflows. Quantify achievements wherever possible, focusing on efficiency improvements or adoption rates.

• Curate Your Portfolio: Select case studies that best demonstrate your ability to solve complex operational challenges through design. Prioritize projects that show end-to-end ownership, navigation of technical limitations, and a clear impact on user efficiency or business outcomes. Ensure it's easily accessible and well-organized.

• Prepare Your Narrative: Practice articulating your portfolio case studies, focusing on the "why," "how," and "what" of your design decisions. Be ready to discuss your process, challenges, and the measurable impact of your work.

• Research Tern Travel: Understand their mission, their target users (travel advisors), their industry, and their stated values. Prepare to discuss how your design philosophy aligns with their goals of empowering small businesses and driving operational excellence.

⚠️ Important Notice: This enhanced job description includes AI-generated insights and operations industry-standard assumptions. All details should be verified directly with the hiring organization before making application decisions.