Sr. Director, Product Design & User Experience

Job Description

Job Description

Who we are:  

Illumia is an industry leader in bringing the best integrated technology solutions to education, healthcare, and business campuses worldwide. Illumia was built on the collective expertise of two legacy cultures and brings together people, technology, and insight to pioneer the art of the experience across the communities we serve. Be a part of this exciting organization and improve the lives of people doing mission-critical work. 

This position is hybrid if local to our office in Alpharetta, GA or Scottsdale, AZ.

Alpharetta, GA - 1125 Sanctuary Parkway, Ste 220, Alpharetta, GA 30009

Scottsdale, AZ - 18700 N. Hayden Rd, Ste 230, Scottsdale, AZ 85255

Why join our team?  

We strive to provide the best customer experience in the industry and have succeeded with a single, strong motivating principle: We serve our user community. 

Our success and growth are directly attributed to our people. Our newly named company is dedicated to fostering a culture of integrity, respect, and continuous personal development. We maintain an entrepreneurial spirit, where creativity, innovative problem-solving, and learning agility drive our day-to-day actions. 

  What you will be doing:  

Job Summary / Purpose  

Sr. Director, Product Design & UX 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. 

  Who you will work with:  

• Manages a team of Product Designers, UX Researchers, and related design professionals supporting multiple product lines 

• Partners regularly with Product Management and Engineering as part of Illumia's SVPG-inspired product operating model 

• Works with product trios during discovery to shape customer problems, test solutions, and improve confidence before delivery 

• Partners closely with Customer Success, Support, Sales, Implementation, Marketing, and executive leadership to ensure product experiences reflect real customer workflows 

• Represents the user experience perspective in executive-level product planning, roadmap discussions, discovery reviews, and portfolio strategy 

Key Responsibilities and Duties  

• 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. 

What You'll Bring:  

• Bachelor's degree required or equivalent relevant experience. 

• 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. 

Preferred Qualifications  

• 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. 

Essential Functions of the job:  

The duties and responsibilities described in this job description are intended to represent the essential function