Principal Mobile Designer - 6 Month FTC

About Skyscanner

Everyone loves travelling, but planning is not without its challenges ✈️. That's why we've spent 20 years building tools that turn travel-planning chaos into a breeze. Today, around 100 million travellers count on us every month to skip the whole “47 browser tabs open” phase and find flights, cars, and hotels quickly and easily 💻.

Joining Skyscanner means becoming part of a global brand that's striving to become the planet's go-to travel hack accessible for all 🌍.

Our vision? To be the world's number one travel ally. (Ambitious? 💪 Yes, but, hey, that's what got us here)

About the role
(Hybrid)

We’re looking for a Principal Mobile Designer on a 6-month fixed-term contract: a hands-on, highly collaborative product designer with a track record of crafting and shipping world-class native app experiences across iOS and Android. You’ll join our App team as we power up the next phase of Skyscanner’s mobile journey. 

The App team is focused on improving the experience for both new and returning users, boosting engagement and retention by making our app feel smarter, more helpful, and more “how-did-I-travel-without-this?” than ever. 

You will play a hands-on role in shaping and delivering several high-impact initiatives across the App experience. This includes evolving the app home screen into a more personalised, context-aware experience that adapts to users’ needs and interests; improving onboarding journeys for both new users and existing users as new features are introduced; and helping to unify and elevate the interaction design for search across our travel verticals. The work will span core surfaces such as the app homepage, deals feed, onboarding flows, and search, from early concepting and interaction design through to detailed, production-ready native designs for iOS and Android. 

What you'll be doing

• Designing high-impact app experiences: You’ll lead hands-on design work across key app surfaces — homepage, deals feed, onboarding flows and search — from early concepts and interaction models through to polished, production-ready native designs for iOS and Android. 
• Partnering across squads: You’ll work across multiple squads in the App tribe to keep design aligned, coherent and consistent, ensuring travellers enjoy a joined-up experience rather than a set of disconnected features. 
• Driving the app design vision: You’ll support the App Design Lead in evolving and communicating the app design vision, helping to shape roadmaps and influencing priorities in close partnership with product, engineering and other designers. 
• Elevating craft and interaction quality: You’ll raise the bar on UX, interaction design and UI quality, smoothing out end-to-end journeys, tightening interaction patterns, and making sure the experience feels seamless and intuitive. 
• Leaning into native magic: You’ll make the most of native OS capabilities — from motion and micro-interactions to haptics and sound — to create experiences that feel fast, delightful and truly “of the platform”. 
• Advancing our design system: You’ll collaborate with the Design System team to refine, extend and apply our design system on iOS and Android, championing platform best practices (Apple HIG, Material Design) while keeping things distinctly Skyscanner. 
• Collaborating for impact: You’ll work closely with Product, Engineering, Content Design and User Research to explore, test and iterate solutions that move the needle on key business KPIs and user outcomes. 

About you

• Native app specialist: You have a strong background and portfolio in designing best-in-class native mobile apps (iOS and/or Android), with interaction design examples that show both depth and craft. 
• End-to-end product thinker: You’re experienced in mobile-led environments, comfortable tackling complex product challenges across platforms and use cases, and you understand how great design drives KPIs, conversion and wider business OKRs. 
• Hybrid Craft: You bring a strong hybrid skillset across UX, interaction design and UI — from structure and flows to visual finesse — and can point to shipped work that shows a consistently high craft bar. 
• Fluent in platforms & systems: You know your way around Apple HIG, Material Design and native OS constraints, have worked with design systems, and collaborate effectively with researchers, content designers and localisation experts. 
• Data-informed and experiment-minded: You’re highly analytical and metrics-driven, with solid experience of A/B testing, user testing and user research — including when to test, how to set experiments up, and how to interpret and act on results. 
• Tool-savvy collaborator: You’re a master of tools like Figma, Miro and prototyping software, and you’re a clear, confident communicator who enjoys working in cross-functional teams. 
• User-obsessed problem solver: You have a track record of delivering products users love, and you’re passionate and empathetic — you fall in love with problems, not solutions, and always advocate for user-centric design.

Portfolio Criteria

A portfolio with evidence of best-in-class native mobile app (iOS and/or Android) interaction design craft that demonstrates your ability to shape broad conceptual ideas into desirable and elegant user solutions.

We would also like to see your thought process from the hypothesis stage through to the final result, together with the methodologies and frameworks you used.

#LI-SM2
#LI-Hybrid

What it's like here

We are the real deal — no corporate gloss, no empty promises. Just a team of genuinely curious, caring humans ❤️, building things that help travellers explore the world a little easier 🧭.

Skyscanner is made up of brilliant humans from every corner of the world. We believe travel makes the world better — and that the same is true of our diverse teams. We're proud to be an equal opportunities employer and are committed to building an inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive and products that are accessible to all ✨.

Sound like your kind of adventure? 🚀 Apply now and help us shape the future of travel.

We're committed to ensuring our application and recruitment processes are inclusive and accessible to everyone. If you require any reasonable adjustments or accommodations for interviews, and/or wish to apply under the Disability Confident scheme, please let your recruiter know. If you’d like more information on any of our policies, such as hybrid working or Parental Leave policies (typically we pay a minimum of 24 weeks birth parent/maternity leave globally), our recruitment team can provide more information on these.