Sr. Director, Product Design & User Experience

Illumia, LLC • Alpharetta, GA

5d

About The Position

Product Design at Illumia is responsible for helping product teams discover solutions that customers love. The Sr. Director of Product Design & User Experience will build a team that contributes directly to product strategy, customer understanding, and business outcomes rather than functioning as a downstream design service. This leader owns product design, user research, design systems, accessibility, and AI experience strategy across the product portfolio. Our Product Design practice works inside empowered product teams and helps teams discover solutions that are valuable, usable, feasible, viable, and ethical.
This role reports to the Chief Product Officer and serves as a strategic partner to Product Management and Software Engineering leadership. The Sr. Director ensures Illumia product teams are grounded in customer insight, validate solutions before major investment, and deliver coherent, accessible, high-quality product experiences across the communities Illumia serves.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree required or equivalent relevant experience.
• 10+ years in Product Design, UX Design, Experience Design, or related product design leadership roles.
• 5+ years leading and developing design teams within B2B SaaS, enterprise software, or complex digital product environments.
• Demonstrated experience working in empowered product team environments where Product Management, Design, and Engineering share responsibility for outcomes.
• Strong command of product discovery, user research, workflow analysis, prototyping, usability testing, and solution validation.
• Experience building or scaling design systems across multiple products, platforms, or product surfaces.
• Ability to influence executive stakeholders, product leaders, engineers, and customer-facing teams through evidence, storytelling, and product judgment.
• A portfolio or body of work demonstrating systems thinking, customer insight, measurable product impact, and experience strategy, not just screen design.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including experience presenting to and influencing executive-level stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to build and lead a team, set expectations, coach talent, and create growth paths for designers and researchers.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with SVPG-inspired product operating models, continuous discovery habits, or similar modern product practices.
• Experience leading UX research as a durable capability, including mixed-method research, insight repositories, and research operations.
• Experience designing AI-assisted workflows, copilots, conversational interfaces, automation, voice, or chat-based product experiences.
• Experience designing for accessibility and inclusive use, including WCAG-informed standards and accessible design systems.
• Experience in higher education, healthcare, payments, dining, campus technology, or another trust- and compliance-heavy vertical.
• Experience designing for two distinct audiences: an institutional buyer and a separate day-to-day end user.

Responsibilities

• Develops and owns the Product Design and User Experience operating model across Illumia's product organization.
• Builds, hires, coaches, and develops a team of Product Designers and UX Researchers embedded with product squads.
• Establishes design craft standards, research practices, design review mechanisms, and product discovery rituals.
• Ensures Product Designers participate in discovery from the earliest stages as members of the product trio, not as downstream recipients of requirements.
• Leads customer research practices, including interviews, workflow observation, usability testing, prototype validation, and synthesis of customer insight.
• Partners with Product Managers to translate customer evidence into opportunity framing, roadmap input, and measurable product outcomes.
• Owns Illumia's design system, interaction standards, and reusable patterns to improve consistency, accessibility, and delivery speed across the portfolio.
• Defines experience principles for AI-assisted workflows, copilots, conversational interfaces, intelligent recommendations, automation, and human escalation.
• Establishes accessibility and inclusive design as product quality expectations, informed by WCAG and the needs of Illumia's user communities.
• Uses qualitative and quantitative signals to identify experience gaps that affect adoption, task completion, customer effort, satisfaction, support volume, and retention.
• Represents Product Design and User Experience in executive-level planning and cross-functional strategy discussions.
• Reports on UX priorities, customer insight themes, design system adoption, research coverage, and experience quality to product and executive leadership.

Benefits

• Flexible time off to include paid holidays and volunteer time.
• Robust health, dental, and vision insurance plans on your first day of employment.
• Comprehensive employee assistance program (EAP).
• Employer-paid life insurance/AD&D/short-term and long-term disability insurance.
• Flexible spending account (FSA) or health savings account (HSA).
• Matched 401(k).
• Employee stock purchase plan.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director