Director of UX

Routeware is the industry leader in providing software and data analysis that enables public and private enterprises to improve the effectiveness of their waste and recycling programs. Our solutions help organizations save time and money, increase efficiency, improve safety and help make our world a greener place.

Based in Portland, Oregon, the company employs a distributed team across North America and the UK. Our brands, products, and services provide an all-in-one platform to municipal and private waste haulers and other fleet services. As part of an essential and growing industry, we seek solution-oriented team players who want to positively impact the environment. Our work environment is collaborative, dynamic, fast-paced, and fun with a strong appreciation for innovation and initiative.

• Transform waste collection to drive a better future for generations to come

• Adaptability
  - The waste industry and technology are ever-changing, and the Routeware team never stops adapting to be at the forefront of technology innovation, supporting our customers to stay ahead.
• Mission-driven
  - At Routeware, it matters to us that our work has a lasting positive impact on our customers' outcomes, our fellow team members' well-being, and the long-term sustainability of our environment.
• Human-first
  - While technology drives our products; the real, live, caring people at Routeware are the true drivers of meaningful outcomes for our customers.

Routeware has grown through both product development and acquisition, and our portfolio—ReCollect, Recyclist, Compliance Publishing, Route Optix, and the Routeware Platform—reflects that history. Each product has its own UX heritage, conventions, and visual language. Our customers (municipalities, haulers, and the residents they serve) increasingly touch more than one of these products, and the seams show.

We’re hiring a Director of UX to lead the unification of that experience. This is a player-coach role: equal parts strategic leader and hands-on practitioner. You’ll inherit one designer and own the maturity of UX as a function — design system, research practice, accessibility standards, and how UX integrates into our agile SDLC across five product lines.

You’ll partner closely with Product, Engineering, and Customer Success, and you’ll have a real seat at the table shaping roadmap and prioritization through a UX lens. If you’re energized by building the function — not just running one that already exists — this is the right scope.

• UX Strategy & Portfolio Unification:
  Define and lead Routeware’s multi-year UX strategy across the product portfolio, with an explicit prioritization framework for where to invest first. Drive convergence of visual language, interaction patterns, and information architecture across acquired and native products.
• Design System & Standards:
  Build and own a scalable design system (components, tokens, patterns, accessibility primitives) usable by all product squads. Establish UX, UI, and accessibility standards (WCAG 2.2 AA minimum) and the governance to keep them enforced as products evolve.
• UX in the SDLC:
  Operationalize UX inside our agile process: discovery, research, prototyping, validation, and release readiness — without becoming a bottleneck. Define how PMs, engineers, and designers collaborate at each phase, including lightweight rituals like design reviews, critique, and handoff.
• Team Leadership:
  Directly manage and grow our existing UX designer. Mentor, develop, and unblock. Build the hiring plan and org design for the function as the team scales.
• User Research & Customer Insight:
  Establish scalable, lightweight research practices the team can run with: usability testing, journey mapping, and customer feedback synthesis. Partner with PMs to ensure product decisions are grounded in real customer behavior, not assumption.
• Data-Driven UX:
  Define and own UX-specific success metrics (task completion, time-to-value, usability scores, onboarding friction). Co-own product adoption and retention metrics with Product, and drive continuous UX improvement through experimentation.
• AI-Enabled Design Practice:
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