Director of User Experience; UX

Position: Director of User Experience (UX)
San Francisco Bay Area Product & User Experience – User Experience & Design /Full-Time Employee /Hybrid

Your role in our mission

The Director of User Experience (UX) serves as the primary visionary and operational leader for the UX organization. This role is responsible for shaping the overarching design strategy, optimizing Design Ops, integrating emerging technologies like AI, and ensuring seamless cross-functional alignment. Blending high-level organizational leadership with hands-on management, the UX Director ensures that teams deliver desirable, viable, and feasible user experiences that deeply connect with the company’s brand identity and drive Product initiatives forward.

How you’ll make an impact

Team Leadership & Cross-Team Oversight Empower and Lead:
Directly manage, mentor, and foster the professional growth of UX Managers. Ensure managers clearly understand quarterly objectives, maintain aligned project workflows, and possess the necessary resources to empower their respective teams.

Organizational Growth:
Lead hiring decisions and organizational design for management-level UX roles.

Culture & Communication:
Conduct regular 1:1s with direct reports, facilitate quarterly skip-level meetings with individual contributors, and cultivate a healthy, inclusive, and high-performing design culture.

UX Strategy & Vision Strategic Planning:
Own, develop, and execute the long-term strategic plans for the entire UX organization.

AI Vision & Product Integration:
Establish and champion a clear vision for AI utilization within the product experience. Identify opportunities to leverage AI to enhance user journeys, ensuring these features remain deeply user-centric, ethical, and aligned with product priorities.

Quality & Brand Alignment:
Ensure all product experiences are highly usable, business-viable, and technically feasible while seamlessly connecting to the company’s core brand identity.

Opportunity Identification:
Partner with cross-functional stakeholders to translate user needs and business objectives into impactful, prioritized UX projects. Champion initiatives that balance business goals with maximum user benefit.

Design Ops & Process Optimization Operational Excellence:
Maintain accountability for all systems, tools, and processes utilized across the UX organization. Continually optimize workflows to amplify the team's impact
-Enhanced Workflows:
Spearhead the evaluation, adoption, and integration of AI tools into daily UX processes. Empower teams to use AI to streamline workflows, automate routine tasks, and accelerate research and design output.

Collaboration Rituals:
Establish and facilitate regular cross-team collaboration exercises, including UX critiques, design reviews, and team retrospectives.

Workflow Efficiency:
Ensure disparate UX teams are effectively collaborating, maintaining alignment, and working toward unified objectives without operating in silos.

Cross-Functional Alignment & Leadership Strategic Partnership:
Act as the primary UX liaison with leaders across Product, Engineering, Customer Experience (CX), and other key departments.

Roadblock Resolution:
Regularly sync with cross-functional leaders to identify project dependencies, clear developmental roadblocks, and establish highly collaborative working processes.

Alignment Workshops:
Design and lead cross-departmental alignment workshops to ensure shared understanding of product vision and UX priorities.

Budgeting & Resource Planning Resource Allocation:
Collaborate with UX Managers and the VP to strategically allocate staffing and tools across various UX teams to meet objectives.

Financial Stewardship:
Establish and manage the cross-team UX budget, ensuring appropriate funding for team-building, professional development,…