UX/UI Designer

We are seeking a Senior UX/UI Designer / Experience Strategist to lead competitive experience intelligence initiatives across a large consumer digital platform.

This role goes beyond traditional UI design. The ideal candidate will analyze competitor experiences, emerging digital trends, customer expectations, and market signals, then translate those findings into strategic insights, experience principles, and actionable recommendations for Product and Design leadership.

You will work closely with Product, Design, Strategy, Marketing, Analytics, and other cross-functional teams and will have significant influence on product and experience direction.

Job Title: UX/UI Designer – Competitive Experience Strategy

Duration: 6 Months Contract

Work Model: Hybrid – 3 Days Onsite / 2 Days Remote

Location: San Diego, CA

Key Responsibilities

• Lead competitive experience research and analysis across digital consumer products and platforms.
• Conduct detailed, end-to-end assessments of competitor customer journeys, including onboarding, interaction patterns, personalization, AI-enabled experiences, conversion, engagement, and retention.
• Analyze competitor products and experiences at a screen-by-screen and journey level.
• Translate research findings into strategic insights, opportunity areas, hypotheses, and recommendations.
• Develop clear points of view on competitive trends and their implications for product and experience strategy.
• Create executive-level presentations and compelling visual narratives that simplify complex information.
• Present competitive findings and recommendations to senior Product, Design, Marketing, and Strategy leaders.
• Develop frameworks and methodologies for consistently evaluating competitive experiences.
• Identify cross-product and cross-business patterns and opportunities.
• Partner with Analytics and Business Intelligence teams to connect experience observations with customer and business metrics.
• Create journey maps, experience comparisons, frameworks, opportunity maps, and other visual artifacts.
• Facilitate workshops and competitive experience reviews with senior stakeholders.
• Influence product and design priorities through research, evidence, strategic framing, and storytelling.
• Help establish best practices for competitive experience analysis and strategic design thinking.
• Work independently to define processes and operating models for an emerging strategic capability.

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in Product Design, UX/Experience Design, Design Strategy, Service Design, or a related discipline.
• Experience working on complex consumer-facing digital products or platforms .
• Strong experience with competitive, comparative, or adjacent-market experience analysis.
• Proven ability to turn qualitative and quantitative research into clear strategic insights and recommendations.
• Experience operating at a Senior Staff, Principal, or equivalent strategic level .
• Strong systems thinking, strategic thinking, and customer experience expertise.
• Excellent executive communication, presentation, and storytelling skills.
• Experience influencing product and design direction across multiple teams without direct authority.
• Strong understanding of UX methods, human-centered design, journey analysis, problem framing, and design principles.
• Experience collaborating with Product Management, Strategy, Marketing, Analytics/BI, Research, Engineering, and Design leadership.
• Strong visual communication and storytelling skills.
• Expert-level proficiency with Figma and modern design/presentation tools.
• Strong portfolio demonstrating strategic product/experience design, storytelling, cross-functional influence, and identification of customer or business opportunities.
• Bachelor's degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Interaction Design, Graphic Design, Product Design, or a related field preferred. Graduate degree is a plus.