Etsy

Staff Content Designer, UX Platform

Etsy • $160K — $216K *
Consumer Technology
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 10+ years of content design experience with a strong portfolio
  • Proven systems thinking and problem-solving skills
  • Exceptional writing sensibility with attention to detail
  • Hands-on experience in building AI tooling and frameworks
  • Ability to translate guidelines into structured formats
  • Experience operating in ambiguous environments
  • Strong communication and storytelling skills

Responsibilities

  • Define and implement Etsy's brand voice across all platforms
  • Create and maintain the content layer of the Collage design system
  • Collaborate on high-priority content frameworks with Studio
  • Architect AI content tooling and guidelines for designers
  • Enhance organizational content thinking through critiques and documentation
  • Innovate content workflows to improve governance
  • Lead the content community of practice and craft calibration

Benefits

  • Equity package and annual performance bonus
  • Comprehensive health benefits for you and your family
  • Flexible work arrangements with occasional office visits
  • Support for professional development and growth
  • Inclusive workplace culture that values individuality
Full Job Description

What’s the role?


As a Staff Content Designer within UX Platform, you'll hold a unique mandate: rather than embedding in a single product area, you'll work horizontally across the UX Platform squads setting the strategy and craft bar for how language functions at a platform level.


  • With Studio, you'll anticipate where Etsy's design language needs to evolve next and get ahead of it—building the content frameworks, voice guidelines, and cross-cutting patterns that raise the quality ceiling across buyer and seller surfaces.
  • With Systems, you'll architect the content layer of Collage, Etsy's design system. Defining how microcopy, error states, empty states, and conversation patterns are structured, composed, and documented so they hold up consistently across the experience.
  • With UX AI Enablement, you'll make Collage and Etsy's broader design foundations AI-ready. You will build the content guidelines, documentation, and quality evaluations that let AI-assisted design tools generate on-brand, on-system content reliably.

You'll work alongside content designers embedded in product verticals as both a peer and a force multiplier: building the systems, tooling, and frameworks they draw from; and teaming up on the highest-leverage cross-cutting problems.


This is a full-time position reporting to the Director of Content Design.


What’s this team like at Etsy?


The UX Platform team helps Etsy build usable, distinctive, and polished experiences across our marketplace. The team develops the systems, patterns, guidance, and shared standards that enable product teams to deliver high-quality experiences at scale.



What does the day-to-day look like?


  • Bring Etsy's brand voice to life. Define voice, tone, and conversational patterns that scale across the end to end experience, and ensure patterns and glossaries are implementable and token-backed.
  • Create the content layer of Collage. Embed content guidelines at the component and pattern level so our experiences feel consistent, cohesive, and distinctly Etsy.  
  • Build cross-cutting frameworks with Studio. Partner on high-priority Studio engagements—from framing the content problem through discovery to shipping frameworks, guidelines, and production-ready copy—anticipating how patterns need to flex across surfaces and team contexts.
  • Own AI content tooling. Architect and maintain the guidelines and prompt infrastructure that power AI-generated copy, define how it shows up in designers’ workflows, and set the eval framework that determines if the output meets the quality bar.
  • Raise the org's content thinking. Through critiques, documentation, tooling, and office hours, help designers across Etsy reason about content systemically rather than one screen or touchpoint at a time.
  • Evolve how content work gets done. Carve out a new way of working for the org to move us from reviewing strings to governing behavior. 
  • Anchor the content community of practice. Contribute to craft calibration alongside the Director of Content Design, and build the shared language and frameworks that let all content designers hold each other to the same bar.
  • Of course, this is just a sample of the kinds of work this role will require! You should assume that your role will encompass other tasks, too, and that your job duties and responsibilities may change from time to time at Etsy's discretion, or otherwise applicable with local law.

Qualities that will help you thrive in this role are:


  • 10+ years of content design experience, with a portfolio showing both systems thinking and content craft.
  • Systems thinking as a default. You diagnose root causes, not symptoms, and build solutions designed to outlast your involvement.
  • Strong writing sensibility. You see the details where others do not, with a keen eye for tone, rhythm, and word choice as expressive tools, not just polish.
  • Hands-on experience building AI tooling—skills, prompt libraries, plugins, and eval frameworks. 
  • Experience translating guidelines into structured, retrievable formats—style guides, rubrics, or documentation that both humans and AI tools can apply consistently.
  • Proven ability to operate in ambiguity: you can frame a poorly-defined problem, align stakeholders on a direction, and execute without being handed a clear brief.
  • Excellent communication and storytelling; you can walk a VP through a system's logic or a designer through an evaluation rubric with equal passion and clarity.

Compensation & Benefits

In addition to salary, you'll be eligible for an equity package, an annual performance bonus, and our that support you and your family. Base salary is determined by your location, skills, and experience.


Etsy uses two geographic pay zones to reflect the labor markets where we compete for talent: one called Geo-1, covering the New York City metropolitan area, San Francisco Bay Area, and Seattle metropolitan area, and one called Geo-2, covering all other U.S. locations. Salary ranges for this role vary by zone and are listed below.


Location

We prioritize candidates based within commutable distance of Etsy’s Brooklyn Office. Depending on proximity, we ask team members to come in once or twice per week. Remote candidates outside commutable distance may be considered on a case-by-case basis, with the expectation of occasional travel to the office. Learn more details about our work modes and workplace safety policies .


Salary Range:

• Geo-1: 160,000.00 - 216,000.00 USD Annual • Geo-2: 144,000.00 - 194,000.00 USD Annual

What's Next

If you're interested in joining the team at Etsy, please share your resume with us and feel free to include a cover letter if you'd like. As we hope you've seen already, Etsy is a place that values individuality and variety. We don't want you to be like everyone else -- we want you to be like you! So tell us what you're all about.

About Etsy

Etsy is an American e-commerce company that provides a global online marketplace for handmade goods, vintage items, and craft supplies. Etsy's community of sellers includes artists, craftspeople, and collectors who sell a wide range of items, including jewelry, clothing, home décor, art, toys, and craft supplies. Etsy was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York. The company has a strong commitment to sustainability and social responsibility, and has been recognized for its efforts to reduce its environmental impact and support small businesses around the world.
Learn more about Etsy
Size
2,576 employees
Market Cap
$15.2 billion
Industry
Net Income
$349.2 million
Founded
2005
5 Year Trend
+44.9%
Revenue
$1.7 billion
NASDAQ

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