Senior Product Designer - Mercari / Crossborder

Location: Minato City, Tokyo, Japan
Type: Full-time (Hybrid, Full Flextime; no core time)
Office: Roppongi

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Description

The Senior Product Designer (Crossborder) role at Mercari is responsible for leading end-to-end design for buyer-facing experiences on global marketplace products, including a new global app already in use in Hong Kong and Taiwan, with plans to scale globally. The position requires working closely with product, engineering, and operations teams to deliver high-quality, intuitive experiences that balance localized needs with unified global standards.

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Work Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end design for buyer-facing experiences, from discovery and problem framing through execution and launch.
• Act as Lead Designer for assigned product areas, setting experience direction and design quality standards.
• Translate ambiguous business and user problems into clear experience strategies, flows, and high-quality UI.
• Drive design decisions through strong craft, systems thinking, and user-centered rationale.
• Collaborate deeply with PM, Eng, and UXR to shape product direction and influence roadmaps.
• Identify gaps and opportunities beyond the immediate scope and proactively propose new ideas, concepts, or improvements.
• Contribute to and evolve shared design systems, patterns, and best practices.
• Provide thoughtful feedback and mentorship to other designers, raising the overall quality of work.

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Unique Challenges

• Designing for large-scale, real-world marketplace complexity with diverse buyer needs and behaviors.
• Leading design in unexplored or undisclosed product areas with high ambiguity and few precedents.
• Balancing speed, experimentation, and innovation with a high bar for craft, trust, and usability.
• Navigating cross-team and cross-function alignment while maintaining clear experience ownership.
• Designing for the Japanese market with strong attention to cultural nuance, trust, and clarity.

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Qualifications

Required Experience/Skills

• 6+ years of experience in product, UX, or interaction design with ownership of end-to-end experiences.
• Strong craft skills across UX, interaction design, and visual design, with a sharp eye for detail and quality.
• Proven ability to lead design for complex or ambiguous problem spaces.
• Experience influencing product direction through design thinking, concepts, and storytelling.
• Solid understanding of design systems, scalable patterns, and consistency at scale.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills with cross-functional partners.
• A portfolio demonstrating high-quality shipped work, problem-solving depth, and design leadership.

Preferred Experience/Skills

• Experience designing marketplace, e-commerce, or transaction-based products.
• Experience acting as a lead designer across multiple teams or initiatives.
• Familiarity with user research methods and applying insights to design decisions.
• Experience working in or designing for the Japanese market.
• Comfort experimenting, prototyping, and iterating quickly in uncertain environments.
• Conversational Japanese proficiency

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Language

• English: Proficient (CEFR – C1)
• Japanese: Basic (CEFR – A2)

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