Lead Product Designer

As a Lead Product Designer, you will define and champion the UX vision and strategy, lead a team of designers, and collaborate cross-functionally to drive transformative business growth and user engagement.

Responsibilities

• Define, articulate, and champion the overarching UX vision and strategy that directly drives transformative product-led growth across an entire product portfolio or strategic business unit.
• Set the strategic direction for leveraging AI and automation across our products, identifying opportunities for competitive differentiation, new market creation, and exponential user value, ultimately ensuring sustainable business growth.
• Own the holistic user journey and ensure design contributes meaningfully to core business objectives.
• Build and nurture executive-level partnerships with Product, Engineering, Research, Content, and Business Leadership to influence product roadmaps, organizational priorities, and overall company strategy.
• Guide and empower design teams to collaborate effectively with engineering leadership, defining technical architecture implications of design decisions, especially for complex AI/ML systems and highly automated workflows.
• Instill a deep culture of user empathy across the organization, advocating for the user at the highest strategic levels and ensuring design decisions are rooted in profound customer understanding.
• Establish and evolve design principles, standards, and best practices across the design organization, ensuring a cohesive, intuitive, and highly refined user experience that considers the unique challenges and opportunities of AI/automation in user interfaces.
• Set the bar for design excellence and innovation, leveraging a masterful command of user-centered design methodologies and tools, including cutting-edge applications of AI, generative design, and design automation, to solve the most ambiguous and impactful problems.
• Own the vision, strategy, and evolution of the design system, ensuring it is a scalable, robust, and indispensable asset for design efficiency, consistency, and innovation across the entire product ecosystem, guiding its adaptation for future AI/ML applications.
• Provide critical feedback and guidance to maintain the highest quality deliverables across the team.
• Serve as a key strategic partner and influencer for Product, Engineering, User Research, and Data/Product Science leadership, shaping company-wide initiatives and ensuring design has a voice at every table.
• Articulate complex, often undefined strategic problems and design solutions with unparalleled clarity and persuasive influence to executive stakeholders, fostering a truly innovative and AI-first design culture.
• Mentor, coach, and inspire a team of designers, fostering their professional growth, advocating for their needs, and shaping the next generation of design leaders.
• Define and implement design processes, tools, and strategies that optimize the entire product development lifecycle for scalability, maintainability, and maximum organizational impact, actively leading initiatives for design automation and AI-driven efficiencies.
• Champion product-led strategies that enable exponential self-service adoption and minimize reliance on human intervention.
• Anticipate future trends and technological shifts, particularly in AI, human-computer interaction, and product-led growth strategies, to define and champion innovative design solutions that position the company as a market leader.
• Orchestrate advanced user research initiatives and collaborate strategically with research leadership to uncover foundational insights, address complex challenges like AI explainability, bias mitigation, and user trust, and drive breakthrough innovation.
• Direct the development of visionary prototypes and strategic proofs-of-concept that push the boundaries of user experience, validate new market opportunities, and demonstrate the transformative power of AI/automation in creating novel user interactions and product capabilities.

Requirements

• A bachelor's degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Graphic Design, or a related field, and/or the equivalent of 9+ years of experience in UX/Product Design, with 2+ years in a lead-level capacity.
• An exemplary portfolio demonstrating a track record of defining and executing design strategies for entire product areas or platforms, significant organizational impact, and contributions to design culture and excellence.
• Mastery of industry-standard design tools, capable of setting best practices and evaluating new tools/technologies for team adoption.
• Expert knowledge of research methodologies and tools, with the ability to define research strategy for a product line or team.
• Proven ability to define and drive strategic user research initiatives that inform product vision and strategy across multiple product lines or the entire product.
• Experience collaborating at a strategic level with Research leaders.
• Exceptional communication, presentation, and negotiation skills, capable of influencing executive leadership and building strong cross-functional partnerships at the highest levels (e.g., with VP-level stakeholders).
• Ability to inspire and empower design teams and cross-functional partners.
• Visionary understanding and application of user-centered design principles, usability, accessibility, and ethical design to establish new standards and drive innovation across an organization.
• Ability to articulate and champion complex design strategies, their rationale, and their transformative impact on the business to executive stakeholders, while addressing organizational challenges.
• Ownership of the vision, strategy, and governance for enterprise-level design systems, ensuring their scalability, adoption, and ongoing evolution to support the entire product ecosystem.
• Experience leading and mentoring designers in design system contribution.
• Demonstrated experience leveraging AI tools and technologies to improve workflows, enhance decision-making, or drive innovation.

Key Skills

• Mastery of industry-standard design tools
• Expert knowledge of research methodologies and tools
• Exceptional communication, presentation, and negotiation skills
• Ability to inspire and empower design teams and cross-functional partners
• Visionary understanding and application of user-centered design principles
• Ability to articulate and champion complex design strategies
• Ownership of the vision, strategy, and governance for enterprise-level design systems
• Experience leading and mentoring designers in design system contribution
• Demonstrated experience leveraging AI tools and technologies

Benefits

• Health Insurance Coverage: We offer our 8Team a variety of medical, dental, and vision plans, designed to fit your needs, including a 100% company-paid HDHP plan for employees.
• Financial perks: We offer a competitive compensation and benefits package including annual bonuses, equity options and 401(k) or RRSP if in Canada, with a company match for all team members.
• Time for what matters: Flexible Time Off, paid holidays, and a parental leave program for our new parents.
• Wellness: Wellness stipends, mental health support, and one-on-one nutrition coaching.
• Learning and Development: Continuous learning through 8am.edu, leadership programs, professional development funds, and individually focused talent development.
• Giving back to the communities around us: Participate in our charitable matching gift program, paid time off for volunteer service, and company-sponsored volunteer events (both local and virtually).
• Engagement: Virtual and in-person team-building events, quarterly award recognition through our Rise & Shine Award of Excellence Program, and our peer-to-peer appreciation platform.