Lead Product Designer

At Caterpillar, this Lead Product Designer role supports the design of end-to-end user experiences spanning machine products, digital applications, and connected ecosystems. You will work closely with Product, Engineering, Research, and business leadership to define an experience vision, guide delivery, and evolve design standards and design systems that scale across teams.

• Define and communicate the experience vision across products, platforms, and customer journeys.
• Drive strategic design initiatives that influence product direction and support long-term business objectives.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Research, and business leaders to identify opportunities, define priorities, and align teams around customer outcomes.
• Guide discovery efforts and help teams translate customer insights, business goals, and technical constraints into experience strategies and product requirements.
• Apply systems-level thinking across machine, software, platforms, and customer journeys to keep experiences cohesive, scalable, and aligned.
• Identify experience dependencies, opportunities, and gaps across multiple products and workflows to create integrated solutions.
• Shape end-to-end customer experiences across machine, application, and connected ecosystems
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• Provide design leadership across multiple products, teams, or domains to support high-quality, consistent customer experiences.
• Facilitate strategic workshops and alignment sessions to help teams navigate ambiguity and make informed decisions.
• Establish and evolve design standards, frameworks, processes, and best practices to improve consistency and quality.
• Use customer research, usability findings, analytics, and business metrics to evaluate and improve experience effectiveness.
• Influence the evolution of design systems, accessibility standards, interaction patterns, and Design Ops practices.
• Mentor and coach Product Designers through critiques, knowledge sharing, and professional development activities.
• Champion Human Centered Design and Product Design excellence throughout the product development lifecycle.
• Collaborate with Engineering and Product teams to support implementation of design intent and achievement of customer outcomes.

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience.
• Professional experience in Product Design, User Experience Design, Human-Centered Design, or a related field.
• Significant experience owning and shaping experiences from discovery through delivery
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• Experience influencing product strategy and defining experience vision across multiple products, platforms, or domains.
• A strong portfolio demonstrating systems thinking
  , strategic problem solving, visual design excellence, and end-to-end product design leadership.
• Demonstrated ability to influence and design across complex ecosystems, platforms, customer journeys, or interconnected product experiences.
• Strong systems thinking mindset, including experience identifying dependencies and opportunities across multiple products or domains.
• Proven ability to partner with Product, Engineering, Research, and business leadership.
• Strong facilitation, storytelling, communication, and executive presentation skills.
• Experience mentoring designers and elevating design quality across teams.
• Experience creating alignment across cross-functional stakeholders with competing priorities.

• Experience designing products that combine hardware and software experiences.
• Familiarity with Human Machine Interface (HMI) design principles.
• Experience working with embedded systems or resource-constrained platforms.
  
  Experience designing enterprise, industrial, manufacturing, robotics, construction, mining, agriculture, or automotive products.
• Experience with connected products,…