Designer I (Contract)
The Athletic
Design
United States
USD 67k-70k / year
Posted on Aug 29, 2025
About Us
Powered by one of the largest global newsrooms in sports media, The Athletic brings sports fans the most comprehensive stories about the teams, sports and athletes they love. The Athletic’s newsroom of 500+ full-time staff delivers in-depth coverage of hundreds of professional and college teams across more than 47 North American markets and all 20 football clubs in the English Premier League, as well as many Championship clubs.
About the Role
Our product mission is to be the best place on earth for sports fans. We already provide an unrivaled breadth and depth of sports coverage. As part of the new Commercialization Team, we are now looking for a designer to support the interactive art director who can help conceive and deliver novel content experiences that celebrate The Athletic’s growing portfolio of strategic partnerships.
As a Designer, you will play a central role partnering with world class consumer brands to deliver branded content and innovative interactive experiences on our site and app. You will also help execute those experiences and see them through to final delivery.
There’s ample opportunity here for a multifaceted designer that thrives in a blue-sky environment, and can balance thinking and making, and wishes to help define our company’s principles around sponsor-centric initiatives.
This role is 100% remote for candidates currently residing in the United States or Canada.
This is a contract to cover for a team member on leave and will end on 2/7/2026.
Responsibilities
- Pitch and present ideas to internal and external stakeholders.
- Work across multiple cross-functional teams, support the Interactive Art Director as well as partnering with Commercial, Product Managers and Engineers to take concepts from ideation to execution.
- Understand the competitive environment and stay on top of great user experiences, especially within sports media and journalism.
- Collaborate with the entire Design Studio to both conceptualize and identify opportunities to bolster sponsorship strategy.
- Create user flows, storyboards, wireframes, prototypes, and production-ready design deliverables.
- Work with engineers to ensure design quality and consistency across the user experience.
- Support high-level product strategy, ensuring we're asking the right questions and solving for the most important internal and external user needs.
Requirements
- 2-3 years of relevant design experience.
- Experience with collaboration and working on cross-functional teams.
- An outstanding portfolio which showcases a variety of bold, intuitive designs.
- Experience developing great user experiences.
- An eagerness to try new things, innovate and learn - and a willingness to learn from mistakes.
- Experience supporting the design process by creating user flows, wireframes, UI designs, motion, prototypes, and establishing/maintaining design systems.
- Experience seeing work through with engineers with a high standard of quality.
- Ability to manage your time across multiple workstreams.
- Excellent Figma, Sketch and prototyping skills.
- Expertise in designing for both web and native applications.
The annual base salary range for this role is $67,000.00 - $70,000.00 USD. The total compensation offered for this position may vary based on factors such as education, experience, skills, and location. It may also include non-cash rewards and benefits. The base salary range is subject to change and may be modified in the future.
The Athletic offers unique perks and benefits to all full-time employees based on their country of residence. Our comprehensive US benefits package includes:
- Highly competitive, employer-contributed medical, dental, vision, basic life and disability insurance plans.
- Savings accounts for medical, wellness, and childcare expenses.
- 401k retirement savings plan and employer match.
- Paid time off including paid sick leave, 12 paid holidays, 15 days of accrued vacation to start, and up to 20 weeks of Paid Parental Leave.
For international candidates: Our global benefits packages offer similar benefits and perks, competitive to the local market.
The Athletic Media Company is an equal opportunity employer and enthusiastically encourages people from all backgrounds and experiences to apply. The Athletic will consider all applicants without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical and/or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.
Click here to review our Applicant Privacy Notice, which describes how and when The Athletic Media Company collects, uses, and shares certain personal information of job applicants and prospective employees.
Beware of fraudulent job recruiting schemes! Our recruiters use careers@theathletic.com exclusively. We do not conduct interviews via text or instant message and we do not ask candidates to download software, to purchase equipment through us, or to provide sensitive personally identifiable information, such as bank accounts or social security numbers. If you have been contacted by someone claiming to be a recruiter with The Athletic but operating from a different email address about a job offer, please report it as potential job fraud to the law enforcement and to people@theathletic.com.