UX Manager

Posted Wednesday, July 22, 2026 at 10:00 AM

Wenco International Mining Systems (  ), a subsidiary of Hitachi Construction Machinery (HCM), provides industry leading, innovative technologies to customers in the mining and material movement sectors, enabling sustainable and safe operations.

You will own the UX function: set direction, establish the design system, define how design works with product and engineering, and build the practice for the next phase of the company. The work is almost entirely greenfield — we are building new applications on a clean canvas, including a major new platform project starting this year, rather than retrofitting legacy products.

The role is explicitly a player-coach . In practice, that means roughly half your time on hands‑on design and design‑system work, and roughly half on leading the team, shaping the practice, and working with product and engineering leadership. You will not be a manager who stopped designing, and you will not be a senior IC with management bolted on as an afterthought.

Both sides of the role are real.

You will work directly with the CTO, product leadership, and senior engineering. The designers you inherit are capable and motivated; they need a leader who can raise the ceiling on the craft and build the system around them.

Why this role is unusual:
Mining software is complex, high‑stakes, and historically underserved by good design . You will be designing for dispatchers running 24/7 control rooms, heavy equipment operators on remote sites, and supervisors making decisions with real safety and production consequences. The problems are genuinely hard — real‑time data, safety‑critical workflows, harsh operating environments, multi‑user coordination across sites — and the opportunity to improve the lived experience of the people using this software is significant.

Good design here has operational consequences.

Months 1–3:
Get deep on the domain. Spend time with dispatchers, operators, and engineers. Audit the current state of design across products. Form a point of view on the design system architecture and the biggest UX risks in the platform project.

Months 3–6:
Ship the first version of the design system and component library. Establish the UX standards and working model with product and engineering teams. Hire your next designer.

Months 6–12:
Lead design on the new platform project through its first major release. Mature the design system through real product use. Grow the team. Make the case for further UX investment with evidence from shipped work.

• Own UX across Wenco's product portfolio, working as an embedded designer on new application development, including the new platform project
• Lead, build, and maintain Wenco's design system and component library as a core deliverable — architecture, governance, contribution process, and documentation
• Define and document Wenco's UX standards and ways of working with agile product teams
• Shape Wenco's approach to AI in the product and in the design process — both designing AI‑powered experiences for end users (operator copilots, anomaly detection, intelligent dispatch assistance) and bringing AI tooling into the design and research workflow
• Conduct and synthesise user research to inform product decisions and validate design direction
• Collaborate closely with product managers, engineers, and senior stakeholders to align UX with product strategy
• Produce high‑quality visual and interaction design across the portfolio
• Lead, mentor, and grow a small design team; provide guidance, feedback, and career development
• Champion accessibility, usability, and design quality across the organisation

• 10+ years of professional UX/product design experience, with a strong portfolio demonstrating both craft‑level visual and interaction design and systems thinking , especially in B2B applications and software product markets
• Proven experience developing designs for desktop, tablet, and mobile applications
• Demonstrated experience building a design system and component library from scratch or leading a significant evolution of one
• Experience leading…