Associate Director, CX/UX Design (TAA) – Hybrid R0058692

Wolters Kluwer•Austin, TX

3d•$133,400 - $238,400•Hybrid

About The Position

The CX/UX Design Associate Director for Tax & Accounting North America (TAA NA) leads product design strategy, UX practice maturity, and experience quality across multiple teams and product areas. This role is accountable for both the outcomes UX teams deliver and the way UX is practiced, scaled, measured, and represented across the organization. The Associate Director translates business strategy into clear UX direction, raises the quality and rigor of design work, and ensures UX is represented effectively in cross-functional leadership forums, executive conversations, and the DXG UX Center of Excellence. This role leads through influence, coaching, operational discipline, and strategic decision-making across Product, Engineering, Research, Analytics, Business, Global Brand, and other enterprise partners. The Associate Director also guides the UX strategy for AI-enabled product experiences, ensuring AI is integrated into tax and accounting workflows in ways that are usable, trustworthy, accessible, measurable, and aligned to customer and business outcomes.

Requirements

Experience leading UX, product design, or experience design in complex and ambiguous product environments.
Experience managing managers, senior individual contributors, and/or multiple UX teams.
Demonstrated ability to define UX strategy and translate business priorities into actionable design direction.
Strong product thinking, business awareness, and ability to connect customer needs to measurable product outcomes.
Experience leading cross-functional alignment across Product, Engineering, Research, Analytics, Business, and senior stakeholders.
Strong facilitation skills with a track record of driving alignment, decision-making, and momentum across senior stakeholders.
Ability to influence cross-functional partners and executive audiences without relying solely on formal authority.
History of delivering impactful, user-centered product experiences at scale.
Experience improving design quality, UX standards, design system adoption, governance, or UX practice maturity across teams.
Experience or working knowledge in AI-enabled product experiences, including implications for usability, trust, transparency, workflow integration, and responsible adoption.

Nice To Haves

Experience in tax, accounting, financial services, healthcare, education, legal, compliance, or another complex regulated industry.
Experience leading UX strategy for AI, automation, decision-support, data-rich, workflow-heavy, or emerging technology experiences.
Familiarity with responsible AI principles, including transparency, explainability, user control, bias awareness, human oversight, and appropriate escalation paths.
Experience with accessibility and inclusive design practices.
Background in systems thinking, service design, journey management, or complex workflow design.
Experience developing UX metrics, experience health indicators, or outcome-based design measurement practices.
Experience leading distributed, hybrid, or globally matrixed UX teams.
Experience partnering with design systems, brand, content design, research operations, or product operations functions.

Responsibilities

Lead and align multiple UX and product design teams around a shared experience vision, ensuring consistent quality while supporting diverse product, customer, and business needs. This position has direct line supervisory responsibilities, including leadership of managers, senior practitioners, and/or multi-disciplinary UX team members.
Define and drive TAA NA UX strategy in alignment with enterprise priorities, balancing near-term delivery needs with long-term experience goals.
Set product design direction across complex initiatives, ensuring teams focus on the right customer problems and deliver experiences that are usable, scalable, accessible, and measurable.
Own UX outcomes across TAA NA in partnership with Product, Engineering, Research, Analytics, Business, and executive stakeholders.
Lead the UX strategy for AI-enabled experiences, ensuring teams design interactions that support trust, transparency, explainability, workflow integration, human oversight, and responsible adoption.
Partner with UX Research leaders and embedded research teams to ensure customer insights shape product strategy, prioritization, design direction, and decision-making.
Guide the evolution, adoption, and governance of design systems, UX standards, reusable patterns, and scalable design practices across teams.
Represent UX in cross-functional and executive settings by clearly articulating UX value, priorities, risks, tradeoffs, recommendations, and business impact.
Represent the TAA NA UX practice within the DXG UX Center of Excellence by synthesizing work across initiatives and contributing to enterprise-wide UX direction, standards, and maturity.
Provide structured executive reporting that translates research insights, design outcomes, delivery progress, experience risks, and customer impact into clear leadership narratives.
Partner with Product, Engineering, Business, Global Brand, Research, Analytics, and other leaders to create alignment, shared ownership, and effective decision-making.
Collaborate with Global Brand as a strategic stakeholder, ensuring brand standards are incorporated in ways that support usability, accessibility, product clarity, and customer outcomes.
Manage budgets, staffing plans, vendor partnerships, capacity planning, and resource allocation in support of strategic priorities and sustainable delivery.
Create and maintain a respectful, inclusive, and high-performing team environment that encourages learning, open dialogue, constructive challenge, accountability, and sustainable performance.
Develop managers, senior practitioners, and emerging leaders through coaching, feedback, talent planning, performance management, and growth-focused development.
Strengthen leadership capability across UX teams by clarifying expectations, creating accountability, and supporting continued growth for all team members.
Identify and address unproductive behaviors, delivery risks, talent gaps, or team dynamics while upholding high standards and supporting sustainable performance.