VP, User Experience and Design Innovation (Remote Eligible)

VP, User Experience and Design Innovation (Remote Eligible)

Bellevue, WA, USA

For over 20 years, Smartsheet has empowered teams to manage work seamlessly and scale solutions smarter. Now, in our most ambitious chapter yet, we are uniting human teams with AI agents. By orchestrating the work agents do best, automating manual tasks and uncovering insights at scale, we create the space for people to focus on what truly matters: judgment, creativity, and big thinking. That is magic at work, and it’s what we show up for every day.

As VP of User Experience and Design Innovation, you will lead a multi-disciplinary organization spanning product design, research, design systems, content and globalization, and AI-driven software delivery, alongside a team of UX leaders driving impactful product experiences across the platform. You have a track record of making the people around you better — you drive quality and efficiency by establishing process, developing talent, and coaching your team to accomplish more than they could without you. You lead with curiosity, operate at the level of vision, influence, and alignment, and trust your senior leaders to own execution.

You are an AI-forward leader. You don't just support AI adoption — you own it. You will define and drive the strategy for bringing AI into every function you lead: accelerating research synthesis, scaling design systems, automating content and localization, and modernizing the software development lifecycle through AI-assisted workflows. You pair adoption with judgment, setting standards so the work stays rigorous as it accelerates.

You report to our Chief Product and Technology Officer, and may work remotely from anywhere in the US where Smartsheet is a registered employer.

Your Organization includes Product Design, User Experience Research, Globalization & Content and Design Systems.

You Will:

• Lead, evolve, and articulate a bold, user-centered vision for the future of design and user experience across Smartsheet's product portfolio and external systems.
• Own and scale research, design, design systems, content, localization, and AI-first design strategy across all product lines and geographies.
• Build, mentor, and grow a team of senior functional and design leaders; scale and evolve the org in alignment with company growth, with a focus on developing and retaining the team you inherit.Develop career paths and programs tailored to individual team member professional development.
• Own experience quality standards, including accessibility compliance, and hold the line when work is below bar, even under delivery pressure.
• Set organizational strategy around design maturity, AI adoption, design systems adoption, and cross-functional design-led decision-making across product, engineering, and business teams.
• Build, evolve, and scale UX processes, standards, and tools, owning the AI agenda for the org by identifying and driving high-impact opportunities to embed AI into research, design systems, content/localization, and the software development lifecycle, while setting standards that protect research rigor and design quality in AI-assisted work.
• Work closely with executive leadership, product, engineering, and go-to-market teams to define strategy and ensure UX and AI-forward thinking are embedded in critical business decisions.
• Elevate UX’s strategic voice alongside product and engineering, and ensure design, research, content, accessibility, and globalization have equal standing within the org.
• Establish and own key metrics tying design and AI initiatives to user satisfaction, adoption, retention, revenue outcomes, delivery velocity, and experience quality; regularly review and communicate progress.
• Translate business goals into innovative, creative, and engaging product experiences.
• Own content strategy and localization approaches across all product lines.

You Have:

• 15+ years of experience in a highly cross-functional role running strategic projects from idea through implementation.
• 15+ years leading and building UX, design, research, or content organizations, including experience as a manager of managers with P&L responsibility, and sustained leadership tenure through organizational transformation.
• A track record of building and scaling high-performing, multi-disciplinary teams (research, design, design systems, content, localization, engineering-adjacent functions).
• Experience building team culture and psychological safety across a remote, globally distributed organization.
• Demonstrated experience driving AI adoption within a design, research, content, or software delivery organization not just using AI tools individually, but setting org-wide AI strategy.
• Deep expertise in research methodologies, design strategy, content strategy, and localization best practices for global B2B SaaS platforms.
• A track record of ensuring customer insights directly inform product strategy, not just validate it.
• Working knowledge of accessibility standards (WCAG) and experience shipping compliant enterprise software.
• Experience leading enterprise SaaS products with complex user workflows, multi-stakeholder environments, and mission-critical use cases.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted software development practices and how they change the design-to-engineering handoff.
• Experience finding simple, innovative solutions for complex problems, and facilitating research to uncover user needs.
• Strong visual design sense; design fluency sufficient to critique and direct design work at the strategic level.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills; ability to influence across Product, Engineering, and executive leadership.
• Ability to articulate design decisions and advocate for the user, while balancing speed and innovation enabled by AI.
• Employer subsidized medical/vision and dental coverage for full-time employees
• 401k Match to help you save for your future (50% of your contribution up to the first 6% of your eligible pay)
• Monthly stipend to support