USAC Design Principal

Job Description

USAC Design Principal

Choosing where to start and grow your career has a major impact on your professional and personal life, so it’s equally important you know that the company that you choose to work at, and its leaders, will support and guide you. With a wide variety of people, global locations, technologies and products, 3M is a place where you can collaborate with other curious, creative 3

Mers.

The USAC Design Principal is a design leader over one of our iconic 3M brands. This role sets mid-term to long-term brand design strategy, governs visual identity and brand standards, and ensures creative excellence across the full customer journey. This role integrates consumer insight, business strategy, and craft to build brand value, drive growth, and deliver differentiated, culturally relevant experiences worldwide.

It combines strategic leadership with hands‑on contribution when needed. The Brand Design Principal will integrate brand design development into business strategies, identify and lead programs of strategic relevance to create brands that engage consumers and deliver a high‑quality experience.

As a Design Principal, you will have the opportunity to tap into your curiosity and collaborate with some of the most innovative people around the world. Here, you will make an impact by:

• Lead the development and stewardship of brand design systems that create emotional connection and meet functional needs.
• Translate consumer insights into differentiated brand experiences across packaging, product, digital, retail, and communications.
• Govern brand standards globally to ensure consistency, relevance, and effectiveness across markets and categories.
• Partner with business leaders to align design strategy to growth objectives, new product innovation, and commercialization.

• Define and lead long-term brand design strategy, including visual brand identity, brand architecture, design principles, and multi‑touchpoint experience frameworks.
• Establish and oversee brand governance, standards, and toolkits; ensure adherence across internal teams and external partners.
• Serve as brand steward—owning and evolving the brand system to support new product innovations, portfolio extensions, and entry into new categories.
• Drive design strategy integration into business planning, category roadmaps, and go‑to‑market activities.
• Provide global support and partnership with regional/country teams; adapt brand programs to local market needs and cultural nuances. Build scalable design systems and toolkits that enable effective localization while maintaining brand integrity.
• Explore future trends in industry, technology, socio‑economic and demographic shifts to inform strategy for growth.

• Own the design budget for assigned brand(s) or portfolios; forecast annually and manage monthly tracking to the Design Operating Plan (OP).
• Open and manage purchase orders (POs), calibrate spend vs. OP, and ensure fiscal discipline and transparency.
• Balance internal and external resourcing; scope and negotiate agency SOWs; manage vendor performance.
• Cultivates trusted, long‑term partnerships with external agencies—translating business objectives and consumer insight into inspiring, tightly framed briefs; setting clear creative guardrails; and leading incisive reviews that elevate the work while honoring brand intent.

• Champion consumer centricity; translate ethnographic research, segmentation, and behavioral insights into actionable design strategies.
• Partner with Insights teams to frame hypotheses, define learning plans, and validate concepts through qualitative/quantitative methods.
• Establish metrics/KPIs for brand experience performance and tie design outcomes to business results.

• Elevate creative craft and design intent across all…