Lead Product Designer, Mobile (Native & Mobile)
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Nov 14, 2026. First seen by Alion on Nov 12, 2026. Perplexity AI scores B on the Alion truth index.
In 2026, we launched Computer, the defining product for the new era of agentic AI. We've scaled beyond the millions of people using Perplexity every day for research, shopping, investing and curiosity into a new paradigm of using AI to transform knowledge into action.
About the role
Perplexity is looking for an experienced Lead Product Designer to own iPhone and Android design on our Native & Mobile team. You'll design how Perplexity lives on the device people carry everywhere, and how that device works with everything else they use: their Mac, their Windows PC, their Linux machine, and the agents doing work on their behalf.
Native & Mobile is one team covering every platform we build for. Our agents increasingly run for minutes or hours, on your computer or in the cloud, and the phone becomes the place you start that work, follow its progress, step in when it needs you, and pick up the result. You'll design that relationship between devices so it feels like one product, not a set of separate apps.
The best mobile work here goes deep on the platform. You'll design experiences that take full advantage of what each device can do: notifications, Live Activities and the Dynamic Island, widgets, voice, Shortcuts and App Intents, share and system extensions, and their Android counterparts. You'll prototype in the real material, on device, using coding agents to turn ideas into working SwiftUI and shipping changes in the codebase alongside engineers.
The role is deeply cross-functional. You'll partner closely with iOS, Android, and desktop engineers, product, and fellow designers across the org, and you care about everything that makes a product great: product thinking, interaction, visual craft, copywriting, and engineering.
What you'll do
Lead product design for our iPhone and Android apps, from early concept through polished, shipped detail
Design how the phone works alongside our desktop apps on macOS, Windows, and Linux, so people can start, monitor, steer, and hand off work across devices without friction
Design for agents that work in the background: progress you can glance at, interruptions that respect attention, and clear moments when a person needs to approve, answer, or take over
Make deep use of native platform capabilities, including notifications, Live Activities, widgets, voice, system intents, and extensions, so Perplexity feels built for each device rather than ported to it
Design trust into the product: permissions, approvals, and privacy flows that are clear and honest, and that keep people in control when an agent acts on their behalf
Prototype on device early and often, using real code to answer questions static mocks can't
Use coding agents to build in the production codebase and put up your own PRs, working alongside engineers to close the gap between the design and what ships
Keep patterns consistent across iOS, Android, and desktop while respecting each platform's conventions
Explore what new platform capabilities, input methods, and form factors make possible
Think about how to go from 0→1, and about how your decisions scale as the product grows
Contribute to process so we're always shipping changes you're proud of, as often as possible
What we're looking for
A strong track record of shipping native mobile apps for consumer or prosumer products
Deep fluency in iOS: platform conventions, navigation patterns, gestures, system components, and what's new each year
Working knowledge of Android and Material conventions, and the judgment to know when a design should adapt across platforms and when it should stay the same
Experience designing products that span multiple devices, or that integrate deeply with operating system features
Excellent interaction, visual, and motion skills, with a sharp eye for detail at small sizes and in glanceable moments
Comfort building with coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or similar) to prototype on device and land changes in a production codebase. You don't need to be an engineer, but you know enough about SwiftUI and Xcode to direct the work, review what it produces, and know when it's right
Systems thinking: you can turn complex, technical, or asynchronous behavior into something simple and understandable
An excellent communicator who can tell a clear story about design rationale to team members and leadership
You care about shipping great software more than anything else
Comfort with a high level of autonomy and ambiguity, and the craft to be seen as a peer lead by the rest of the design team
5+ years of industry experience
Nice to have
Experience designing for Android or working in Jetpack Compose
Experience designing for macOS, Windows, or other desktop platforms
Experience designing for AI agents, automation, developer tools, or products where software acts on a person's behalf
Shipped work with Live Activities, widgets, App Intents, watchOS, or other system-level surfaces
You've already been exploring or prototyping interactions for new form factors, like foldables
Notes for candidates
Please submit your portfolio with your application.