Sr. UX Design Manager, Books UX Design & Research Studio

Amazon•Seattle, WA

About The Position

The Books Design and Research Studio seeks a passionate and people obsessed leader to join our team. Our mission is to inspire readers by making it easy to read more and get more out of reading. In pursuit of this, our 50+ person global studio provides the user research, UX and brand design for Kindle E-readers, Kindle apps for phones and tablets, Author & Publisher tools, book shopping and subscription experiences used by millions of readers and thousands of authors around the world. The ideal candidate will have a proven record of setting and delivering against a vision, cultivating industry-leading design from their team, strong collaboration with product, engineering & other design managers, and growing the next generation of design leaders. To succeed in this role you must have high judgement, be an innovative self-starter in driving operational excellence, effective at balancing multiple priorities and a strategic big-picture thinker who leads through others. This position requires an experienced design leader capable of managing and leading teams of 9, across multiple product areas. The ideal candidate brings expertise in subscription and membership product experiences, which are core to the portfolio, along with proven experience designing B2B and enterprise tools, particularly author and publisher tools that are critical to the business. Knowledge of design systems and frameworks is essential for maintaining quality at scale across the organization. The role demands cross-functional leadership skills, with the ability to build effective partnerships across product, engineering, and research teams to drive strategic initiatives and deliver impactful user experiences. Experience in the content, media, or publishing industry provides a domain expertise advantage, as does experience creating global and localized experiences for worldwide customers in the books and reading space.

Requirements

At least 10 years as a user experience designer, interaction designer, information architect, or similar role
At least 7 years leading teams of designers in consumer facing or B2B experiences.
Experience working across teams to synthesize feedback and input from product management, engineering, and marketing.
Experience presenting to and influencing senior management.
Experience working in a collaborative team and working directly with other design managers, product managers and developers for implementation of designs
Bachelor's degree in design, human-computer interaction (HCI), or equivalent professional experience

Nice To Haves

Experience with both consumer and B2B products is a plus.
Excellent planning skills to stay one step ahead of the work, you can model needs against high level roadmaps to make fact-based recommendations to management about staffing levels.
Excellent relationship skills and the ability to influence people up, down and adjacent to obtain buy-in for your teams' work.
An informed set of core values regarding user experience, technology, and business communication, and the ability to present them with eloquence and concision.
Highly organized, strong attention to detail, excellent verbal and written communication skills.
Ability to work and have a bias for action in a fast-paced, sometimes ambiguous environment

Responsibilities

Lead a talented team of designers responsible for end-to-end subscription experiences across desktop and mobile reading and discovery surfaces, front- and back-end author & publisher tools and experiences.
Set direction and manage the user experience design of multiple mid-to-large sized programs
Cultivate and maintain frameworks & mechanisms that increase high-quality design output while balancing designer time on the most complex-impactful work.
Model behavior that exemplifies Amazon Leadership Principles and raise the design bar for the organization.
Contribute to a culture of cross-studio engagement, collaboration and co-design.
Collaborate closely with the other senior managers to set the culture and be responsible for team happiness, career progression, training & mentorship, hiring, and general team cohesion.
Grow senior design talent and leadership capabilities through regular coaching and feedback.
Drive operational excellence across the team, a positive environment and inclusive culture.
Partner with leaders across disciplines (product, tech, research and marketing) to define the strategic direction and design resourcing needs.