Director, UX Design & Research

Vuori•Carlsbad, CA

About The Position

The Director, UX Design & Research leads UX strategy, design, and research across Vuori's ecommerce, omnichannel, and retail store experiences — setting the vision for how customers discover, shop, and engage with the brand across every channel. You'll be the internal voice of the customer, helping the broader organization understand, prioritize, and design around real customer problems. You'll grow both UX design and UX research as disciplines at Vuori — raising the craft and rigor of your team's work and developing their skills as the function scales. You'll partner closely with Product, Engineering, Brand & Creative, and Site Experience to unify the customer experience across channels, and you'll evolve and govern Vuori's design system as it matures, keeping it consistent as more teams, tools, and AI-assisted workflows touch it. This role reports to the Senior Director of Digital Product and Experience and leads a small but growing team of UX/UI designers and UX researchers. This is a hands-on Director role — you'll set the vision and stay close to the work, with real latitude to build the practices, standards, and structure this function needs as Vuori scales.

Requirements

8+ years of experience in UX/UI design and/or UX research, including 3+ years managing or mentoring designers and/or researchers
Bachelor's degree in UX Design, Human-Computer Interaction, or a related field, or equivalent years of experience preferred
Experience leading both design and research functions, with fluency across generative and evaluative research methods
Experience maintaining or governing a design system in a production environment, with strong documentation, adoption, and consistency practices
Proficiency in Figma; familiarity with AI-assisted design tools (e.g., Claude Design) is a plus
Comfort operating at the intersection of design and code; you understand, or are eager to learn, how components, tokens, and documentation translate into a dev environment
Interest and some fluency in how AI tools are changing design and design-to-code workflows
Ecommerce, omnichannel, or retail experience strongly preferred
Experience managing outside vendors or agency partners, including scoping, budgeting, and quality control
A track record of coaching and developing design and research talent, and building team capability over time
Strong portfolio or body of work demonstrating both hands-on UX/UI and research craft and systems thinking
Demonstrated ability to present and defend design and research decisions to senior stakeholders
Comfortable in a fast-paced, resource-lean, high-autonomy environment; you build process rather than wait for it
Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Responsibilities

Serve as Vuori's internal voice of the customer, championing customer insight and helping the organization understand and prioritize customer problems
Set and unify UX strategy across Vuori's ecommerce, omnichannel, and retail store experiences, ensuring a consistent, connected journey across channels
Lead and grow both generative and evaluative research practices — partnering with Consumer Insights, mentoring and developing Vuori's researcher(s), and raising the rigor of insights that inform design and product decisions
Build, manage, coach, and develop a growing team of UX/UI designers and UX researchers, including regular 1:1s, feedback, and career-growth planning
Lead UX for major cross-channel initiatives, ensuring connectivity across the broader ecommerce and omnichannel experience
Evolve and govern Vuori's design system, ensuring consistency and adoption as it matures across channels and teams
Define and evangelize Vuori's evolving ways of working with AI — from design-to-code workflows to how the team incorporates AI tools into everyday practice
Present design rationale, research findings, and strategic recommendations to senior stakeholders, defending decisions with clear logic and evidence
Flex team capacity with outside agency and contractor support — sourcing, scoping, and managing vendor partners, budgets, and timelines as needed
Establish and evangelize UX design and research best practices across the organization