Digital User Experience Director (Washington)

Job DescriptionAt K&L Gates, we are looking for smart, imaginative and hard-working people with diverse backgrounds, experiences and ideas to join us. Perhaps our search for talented visionaries and your search for important and impactful work lead to the same place.The global law firm of K&L Gates is seeking a Director, Digital User Experience. Reporting to the Director, Enterprise Technology Operations, the Director, Digital User Experience is a firmwide technology leader responsible for the strategy, service model, operating framework, and day-to-day delivery of the firm’s end-user technology support and digital workplace experience. This role provides unified leadership and operational accountability across four global functions: technical help desk support through the Global Service Desk (GSD); on-site deskside support through the US and Europe/Middle East Deskside Support teams; document design, creation, and processing through the Global Document Processing team; and the engineering, configuration, automation, and lifecycle management of core collaboration and productivity platforms through the Digital Workplace Engineering team. The Director ensures attorneys and allied professionals across all offices can work productively, securely, and with minimal friction, and partners closely with infrastructure, security, enterprise applications, and business leadership to establish measurable service standards, modernize support capabilities, drive automation and AI-enabled service delivery, and continuously improve the employee technology experience across all offices and service channels.KEY RELATIONSHIPSDirector, Enterprise Technology Operations; Chief Technology Officer; Department Directors; Directors of Administration; Enterprise Applications, Data and AI Platform Leadership; Enterprise Computing and Infrastructure Leadership; Security and Information Governance Leadership; Practice Innovation and Practice Support Leadership. Direct reports include but are not limited to: Global Service Desk Manager; US and Europe/Middle East Deskside Support Managers; Global Document Processing Manager; Digital Workplace Engineering Manager.ESSENTIAL DUTIES• Define and lead the firmwide Digital User Experience strategy, establishing a long-term vision for how attorneys and allied professionals interact with technology and ensuring workplace technologies support productivity, collaboration, mobility, and client service objectives.• Provide unified leadership and operational accountability across the Global Service Desk, US and Europe/Middle East deskside support, Global Document Processing, and Digital Workplace Engineering functions, ensuring consistent, high-quality, customer-focused service delivery across all offices and time zones.• Own end-to-end service delivery for the Global Service Desk, including incident, request, problem, and major-incident management, and establish and enforce service level targets, escalation paths, and continual service improvement aligned with ITIL and ITSM best practices.• Direct the US and Europe/Middle East deskside support teams, aligning staffing, coverage models, and on-site service standards to the needs of each office while maintaining firmwide consistency, and supporting VIP/executive, courtroom, and event technology needs.• Oversee the Global Document Processing team, ensuring timely, accurate, and secure document design, creation, formatting, and processing services that meet the exacting standards of the firm’s legal work product.• Lead the Digital Workplace Engineering function responsible for the configuration, integration, automation, and lifecycle management of Microsoft 365 (Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange, Entra ID) and other collaboration, productivity, and endpoint platforms that shape the daily user experience.• Establish an enterprise End User Experience Management (EUEM) and Digital Employee Experience (DEX) program that measures technology performance, user sentiment, adoption, and productivity outcomes through analytics, digital experience monitoring, and feedback channels to identify opportunities for continuous improvement.• Drive the development of self-service, knowledge management, and digital support capabilities that enable users to resolve common technology issues efficiently while reducing friction, ticket volume, and time to resolution.• Develop and execute a support and workplace modernization roadmap focused on automation, proactive and predictive support models, AI-assisted service delivery, and emerging workplace technologies that improve employee productivity and engagement.• Champion the firm’s workplace technology adoption and enablement strategy, ensuring employees successfully adopt new technologies, collaboration platforms, automation capabilities, and AI-enhanced services through targeted training, change management, and communication.• Serve as executive sponsor for Voice of the Customer programs, creating formal mechanisms to gather, analyze, and act upon feedback from attorneys, allied professionals, office leadership, and business services departments.• Establish experience-focused performance measures and executive dashboards, providing leadership with visibility into service performance, technology adoption, employee sentiment, service friction, and the business impact resulting from technology investments.• Establish governance for user experience standards across workplace technologies, ensuring consistency, usability, accessibility, and operational effectiveness throughout the employee technology lifecycle.• Manage the operating and capital budgets, vendor relationships, managed-service partners, and contracts for the functions within scope, identifying cost-saving and service-improvement opportunities and holding partners accountable to performance commitments.• Provide coaching, guidance, and development to the senior leadership and management team, building a customer-centric, high-performance culture grounded in service excellence, empathy, accountability, and continuous improvement.• Serve as a senior escalation point for critical incidents, executive escalations, and service recovery efforts, mitigating operational risk and communicating effectively with stakeholders throughout.ADDITIONAL DUTIES• Continually synthesize the latest industry trends, insights, and external benchmarks, and make recommendations on what to leverage within the K&L Gates environment.• Support the Firm’s ISO 27001 program and all governing bodies, including the Information Security Management System (ISMS) Management Committee, including attending meetings and reviewing, discussing, and enforcing policies, procedures, and standards.EXPERIENCE & SKILLS REQUIRED• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Business Administration, or a related field; advanced degree preferred.• At least ten years of progressive leadership experience within enterprise technology support, service management, digital workplace, or IT operations environments, including management of geographically distributed teams.• Demonstrated experience leading large-scale service desk, deskside support, or end-user computing organizations within a complex global enterprise environment; professional services or law firm experience preferred.• Experience leading a digital workplace engineering or Microsoft 365 platform function, including collaboration, endpoint, and productivity technologies.• Expert knowledge of IT service management principles and frameworks, including incident, problem, change, and continual service improvement practices; ITIL certification preferred.• Experience establishing and managing service level metrics, executive dashboards, performance scorecards, and customer and digital experience measurement programs.• Proven ability to lead organizational transformation initiatives involving automation, self-service technologies, AI-enabled support tools, or digital workplace modernization.• Strong financial and operational management skills, including budgeting, forecasting, vendor management, contract negotiation, and resource planning.• Exceptional stakeholder management and communication skills, with experience partnering effectively with executive leaders, business stakeholders, and technical teams.• Demonstrated success managing critical incidents, executive escalations, service recovery efforts, and operational risk mitigation activities.• Strong understanding of endpoint technologies, collaboration platforms, modern workplace services, cybersecurity considerations, and enterprise technology ecosystems.• Ability to analyze operational data, identify performance trends, and translate insights into actionable service improvements and business value.• Knowledge of process-improvement methodologies, e.g., Lean or Six Sigma, a plus.• Commitment to fostering an inclusive, collaborative, and high-performance team culture focused on innovation, accountability, and exceptional client service.ADDITIONAL ABILITIES REQUIRED• Ability to travel to firm offices and to work and communicate with department leaders and Firmwide stakeholders.• Manual dexterity required for typing, reaching and lifting of small objects, and operating office equipment.• Frequent computer use at workstation or office, up to and over eight hours at a time.• Frequently work at a fast pace, multitasking with unscheduled interruptions.• Responsibilities occasionally may require an adjusted work schedule, evening and weekend hours, in order to meet deadlines and support high-availability services.• Mobility within the office, including movement from floor to floor.• Carrying a mobile device and accepting calls from Firmwide stakeholders as needed.Compensation Salary $170,513 - $341,034 / yearThe compensation salary for this position will be determined during the interview process and will vary based on multiple factors, including but not limited to prior experience