Principal Experience Designer

athenahealth • Boston, MA

1d • $153,000 - $259,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

athenahealth is seeking a Principal Experience Designer for the Medication Management team within its Clinicals product. The role combines hands-on experience design with strategic leadership: shaping the product’s long-term direction while translating that vision into thoughtful, effective solutions. Working with a multidisciplinary agile R&D team, the designer will build a deep understanding of providers’ and clinical staff’s needs and workflows, identify opportunities to improve their experiences, and help reduce the burden on people working in healthcare.

The Medication Management team develops experiences across a system that sends more than 17 million prescriptions per month. Its products help clinicians understand patients’ medications and support medication management and vaccine administration. The team aims to make medication management effortless, intelligent, and connected, including improving ordering and reconciliation, medication list management, and medication adherence.

The successful candidate will elevate design within an enterprise product team, champion users, form and advocate for a clear point of view on UX decisions, and influence outcomes independently and collaboratively. The role is hybrid and based in Boston, Massachusetts, with domestic travel a few times per year for onsite customer research and clinician shadowing.

Requirements

• 8 or more years of professional UX experience.
• Demonstrated ability to influence across functions and product areas, incorporate diverse perspectives, and develop and advocate for a clear point of view.
• Deep knowledge of UX practices within agile software development, including ideation, interaction design, user research, and evaluative testing.
• Extensive experience conducting and synthesizing user research, immersing yourself in complex problem spaces, and translating insights into actionable product decisions.
• Strong analytical thinking, problem-framing, and communication skills, including the ability to navigate ambiguity, consider risks and constraints, and make timely decisions.
• Hands-on experience with or exposure to emerging AI tools, with the ability to explore tools independently and apply them thoughtfully to accelerate work and create meaningful value.
• A portfolio demonstrating the ability to tell a compelling story about discovering problems, defining solutions, influencing strategy, and collaborating on successful execution.

Responsibilities

• Conduct generative research to inform product strategy, identify opportunities, and define project scope.
• Translate complex clinical workflows and user needs into intuitive product experiences, from early concepts through detailed interaction design and implementation.
• Collaborate with cross-functional colleagues to establish a long-term vision for complex problem spaces and break that vision into manageable phases of work.
• Guide teams through decisions and tradeoffs involving project scope, design strategy, and implementation, balancing user needs, risks, dependencies, and business constraints.
• Create workflows, journey maps, vision documents, and other artifacts to influence product backlog prioritization and planning.
• Plan and facilitate workshops to interpret research, frame problems, identify opportunities, explore solutions, and align teams on next steps.
• Foster empathy for users through storytelling and compelling, shareable research and design artifacts.
• Help define success criteria and metrics to evaluate design outcomes.
• Build relationships across product teams and organizational boundaries to promote collaboration, cohesion, and consistency across the user experience.
• Mentor junior designers and guide cross-functional colleagues through design reviews and collaborative problem-solving.
• Contribute to team-wide initiatives that strengthen design processes and practices.
• Adapt to evolving business and team needs with flexibility, initiative, and a willingness to contribute wherever needed.

Benefits

• Health and financial benefits.
• Commuter support.
• Employee assistance programs.
• Tuition assistance.
• Employee resource groups.
• Collaborative workspaces; some offices welcome dogs.
• Flexible work arrangements intended to support work-life balance.
• Company-sponsored events, including book clubs, external speakers, and hackathons.
• A learning-oriented culture, engaged team support, and an inclusive environment.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed