Lead Product Designer

Job Description

Wre seeking a Lead Product Designer who is proactive and unafraid to own and advocate for an iterative, design process, always driving towards finding simple, easy-to-use, intuitive and elegant solutions for complex design problems. You ll help to define and lead the overall user experience end-to-end from conducting discovery user research into the problem space through to designing the micro interactions that bring our product UIs to life. As a Leader on the team, youll be at the forefront of shaping our product experiences, owning and driving strategic design decisions for a significant area (or areas) of our product. In addition to your hands-on design and research contributions, youll also have the opportunity to manage designers, fostering their growth, ensuring clarity of direction, and elevating our overall design quality and impact. This role will report into the Manager of UX Design with a secondary reporting line into the Sr. Director of UX Design, Research and Content Strategy. Key Responsibilities: Human Centered Design: Create design assets including, but not limited to, customer user journeys, wireframes, visual designs, service blueprints, prototypes and hi-fidelity detailed designs that capture and convey behaviors and design implementation details. Demonstrate a proven approach to discovering and mapping user needs, experiences and customer user journeys. Advocate for user-centered design by prioritizing user research and data-driven insights over subjective feedback, ensuring that design decisions are rooted in user needs and behaviors. Act as a champion and advocate for good user experience, sharing best practices and demonstrating curiosity about customer needs and behaviors. Wear many hats - whether it s undertaking Design Research activities with customers, reviewing designs, defining micro interactions or crafting UI components for our design system. User Research: Ability to undertake thoughtful, iterative user research to validate product concepts and hypotheses early and frequently with or without the support of a dedicated researcher. Expert in planning, conducting, and synthesizing qualitative and quantitative user research (interviews, surveys, usability testing, analytics etc.) with or at times without, the support of a dedicated researcher. Skilled at transforming research insights into practical design solutions, determining ideal timing and maximizing the impact of research efforts. Effectively utilizes user research findings and usage metrics to guide and improve design decisions. People Management: Provide clear guidance, inspiration, mentorship, coaching, feedback, and advocating for both craft and career development of the Designers you manage directly. Proactively participate in lead feedback sessions to align on product and customer objectives, leveraging user research insights to facilitate and promote constructive critique of design work. Collaborate closely with product managers, engineers, content strategists, designers and researchers to refine, iterate on and validate design solutions. Positively shape design team culture through collaboration and continuous process improvement. Mindset and Attention to Detail: Maintain a high bar for usability, accessibility (WCAG), beauty, quality, and consistency through applying best practice design UCD principles and adhering to our design system. Help to accelerate team efficiency by improving processes and workflows within the design team and broader cross-functional teams. Sweat the small stuff - understand that the little details are what make people love a product. Be a big picture thinker - connect the dots as part of a larger system and broader product ecosystem considering consistency and usability. Qualifications: 5-8+ years of experience designing delightful user experiences and a portfolio showing your processes and deliverables. We are interested in learning how you approach problems and think through them. 2+ years experience specifically in mentorship, coaching, and direct people management roles. Demonstrated experience creating responsive design patterns and design systems aligned with UX best practices. Proven ability to clearly present, justify, and defend design decisions to stakeholders. Experience with contributing to and consuming component-based design systems. Expertise in Figma/FigJam and related UX design, research, and rapid prototyping tools. Strong attention to detail, problem-solving skills, and excellent verbal and written communication. Significant experience designing complex B2B applications or SaaS products using agile and iterative methods. Strong focus on usability, efficiency, and simplifying complex problems. Solid background in information design, UX heuristics, and user-centered software design. Natural ability to build strong relationships within your team and across functions. Be a team player - collaborative, humble, hardworking, egoless and willing to roll up your sleeves and do whatever it takes to help others be successful. Confident design leader and communicator capable of navigating dynamic, ambiguous situations. Relentless driven to deliver smart, delightful solutions aligned with customer needs and company goals. Actively seeks and offers candid, constructive feedback with curiosity, humility, and openness. Takes ownership, cultivating a sense of responsibility within both the design team as well as the wider product org. Preferred Qualifications Bachelors/University degree, Masters degree in HCI or design related field, with an emphasis on user experience, interaction design, or visual design a plus. Experience with motion design, HTML, CSS, JS and other front-end technologies, is a plus. Strong understanding of how artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can inform design decisions, improve interactions as well as enhance and personalize experiences.