Director, Design - Conversational Design

USAA•San Antonio, NC

11d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Director, Design - Conversational Design leads a team in creating human-centered conversational experiences across USAA’s digital experiences. The role sets strategic direction for conversational design and shapes intuitive, engaging, seamless interactions that reflect USAA’s brand and elevate the member experience. The Director partners with business and technical stakeholders, leads cross-functional design efforts, directs creative reviews, and helps set the vision and strategic direction for the design organization. The role also builds and manages a high-performing design team and ensures business risks are identified, monitored, and controlled in accordance with policies and procedures. This position requires working in the office four days per week and may be based in San Antonio, Charlotte, Plano, Phoenix, Colorado Springs, or Tampa. Relocation assistance may be available. USAA does not provide visa sponsorship for this role.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree, or four years of relevant education and/or experience.
Eight years of relevant on-the-job experience in Product Design, UX Design, Service Design, Design Research, or a related design discipline delivering complex solutions for web and native applications.
Three years of relevant on-the-job experience in Conversational Design.
Three years of direct team lead or management experience.
Expertise in human-centered design and ability to lead high-performing cross-functional teams through all phases of the design lifecycle.
Expertise in conversational design, product design, storytelling, and prototyping.
Knowledge of data analysis and research techniques to inform design decisions.
Strong people leadership and management abilities, including success creating an environment where teams can develop and succeed.
Proven leadership and ability to influence stakeholders at all levels of management.
Experience working in a distributed, agile work environment.
Expertise in facilitation, collaboration, and communication, including presenting to and influencing cross-functional teams and senior or executive leaders.

Nice To Haves

Deep understanding of conversational and AI technologies, including Natural Language Processing (NLP), Natural Language Understanding (NLU), and Large Language Models (LLMs).
Exceptional writing and editing skills to craft clear, concise, engaging, natural-sounding dialogue.
Strong understanding of linguistic principles and their application to conversational experiences and interfaces.
Experience using user research, usability testing, and data analysis to evaluate and improve conversational experiences.
A strong portfolio demonstrating impactful conversational design work, strategic thinking, and design leadership.

Responsibilities

Understand business and technical models, processes, challenges, and performance metrics to ensure conversational design strategies balance member needs with business and stakeholder objectives.
Set strategic direction for conversational design and guide the creation of human-centered experiences aligned with USAA’s brand.
Champion conversational and human-centered design and foster empathy through trust-based relationships with executive leaders and enterprise partner groups.
Lead cross-organizational and cross-functional efforts to understand complex business and member problems and translate them into conversational design solutions.
Direct creative reviews of conversational experiences to ensure quality, consistency, and alignment with design principles and the design language system.
Provide thought leadership by turning complex problems into clear, achievable design solutions that improve member, employee, and business outcomes.
Participate in design leadership efforts, helping set the design organization’s vision and strategic direction and advance its capabilities and development goals.
Build and lead a high-performing design team through recruiting, developing, retaining, coaching, guiding, and performance management.
Ensure risks associated with business activities are identified, measured, monitored, and controlled in accordance with risk and compliance policies and procedures.