Sr. Director of Product Design & UX Research

Core Digital Media (“CDM”) is on a mission to help people make smarter financial decisions for every stage of life. We are looking for a Sr. Director of Product Design & UX Research for our portfolio of FinTech products and destinations including Quicken Loans. Reporting to the SVP of Product, you’ll help define our product vision, strategy, and design, while leading and mentoring a design team to deliver impactful outcomes through intuitive, innovative, engaging, and elegant consumer experiences. The ideal candidate is passionate about people and a tireless advocate for the end user, with deep empathy for their everyday struggles and challenges, and unwavering in providing the best possible experiences for consumers. You'll provide direction and guidance for your team’s overall growth and output as well as be a trusted collaborative partner to our Product, Technology, and Marketing teams. You'll build a strong design practice and influence product and business strategy while driving quality of the experience.

Responsibilities

• Establish a center of excellence for our user-centered design vision and standards across CDM’s portfolio of FinTech products and destinations, including Quicken Loans
• Champion the vision, strategy, and execution of product design and UX research across the organization to ensure an intuitive, innovative, engaging, and elegant consumer experience
• Promote overall awareness and competence in design thinking and UX research, mentoring your own team and across the business for all who contribute to the user experience of our products
• Foster a collaborative and innovative design culture within the organization, leading and facilitating design thinking workshops to identify the right problems and pain points to solve, while helping to solve those problems and pain points the right way
• Hire and retain top product design and UX research talent by driving career development and performance, delivering regular feedback, mentorship and coaching
• Utilize UX research findings to inform design decisions and product enhancements, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to drive data-inspired design improvements
• Oversee the creation of low-fidelity and high-fidelity assets used in software development, including user journeys, wireframes, prototypes, and design specs
• Conceive experiences with inclusivity and accessibility in mind from the ground up
• Investigate, evaluate and recommend new product design and UX research tools, techniques, technologies and methodologies to improve team productivity and quality of the consumer experience
• Establish and maintain design systems, principles, and best practices

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience overall with 5+ years of proven experience as a Product Design & UX Research leader, responsible for Product Design & UX Research teams and advocating for consumer experiences
• Bachelor’s degree in user experience, interaction design, communication design, information architecture, psychology, human-computer interaction, human factors, other related field or equivalent work experience
• Strong portfolio showcasing a range of successful user-centered design products, with ability to articulate their overall impact
• Proficiency in design and prototyping tools (e.g., Figma and Adobe Creative Suite), and site analytics and behavioral analytics tools used to measure user outcomes quantitatively
• Strong understanding of usability principles, journey mapping techniques, information architecture, and interaction design
• Excellent leadership and team management skills with experience building and leading diverse and high-performing Product Design & UX Research teams
• Strong collaboration skills with demonstrated ability to partner effectively with Product, Engineering, Marketing and other cross-functional teams and leaders
• Exceptional communication, storytelling, presentation, and interpersonal skills with proven ability to influence internal and external stakeholders
• Experience working with agile development methodologies

Nice-to-Have

• Master’s degree in interaction design, human-computer interaction, psychology, sociology, UX, human factors or related field
• Experience creating digital experiences for large consumer brands, ideally including 5+ years of experience in the consumer FinTech space
• Entrepreneurial or Intrapreneurial experience leading teams through self-disruption, reimagination, transformation, growth and/or scaling phases