Director, Product Design

Role Overview

• As the Director of Product Design, you will lead and manage a team of Product Designers, providing them with guidance, coaching, and mentorship to ensure their professional growth and success. You will foster a supportive environment where team members can thrive and develop their skills, ultimately contributing to the overall success of the organization
• Collaboration is critical in this role as your team will work closely with cross-functional teams, including Product Managers, Tech Leads, and Business Partners. Together, you will discover effective solutions and bring them to market, ensuring that the products developed meet the needs of the customers and the business
• True team empowerment is crucial. You will ensure that the team is equipped to determine the best solutions to the problems to be solved, while holding them accountable for delivering valuable outcomes. This involves providing the necessary resources and support to enable the team to succeed
• Your passion will be self-evident. You believe in creating fabulous customer experiences that delight the end user, leveraging your years of knowledge and experience in this field to clearly explain UX concepts to those responsible for delivery quality solutions
• Creating a highly collaborative environment is essential for delivering great products. You will foster a culture built on trust, inclusion, and a genuine desire to deliver exceptional products. This collaborative atmosphere will extend beyond the confines of team members, as we work closely with our business partners to remain aligned in our priorities and focused on achieving the business objectives. As a mentor, your role ensures business objectives are clear and that our experiences reinforce the value we need to deliver in alignment with customer desirability
• You will also play a key role in evangelizing digital experience design both within the team and throughout the organization. By creating excitement and alignment around human centred design, you will ensure that everyone is working towards the same goals, using experimentation to help us fail forward quickly
• With many product teams operating simultaneously, coordination and communication is critical. This role will help ensure that product plans can be validated with customer feedback, using observation and insights to continually evolve and exceed business & user expectations
• You will be responsible for ensuring that the team delivers desirable products. This involves setting clear expectations, providing regular feedback, and measuring success based on clear customer insights. By holding the team accountable (via a KPI framework) and celebrating their successes, you will drive continuous improvement and ensure the long-term success of all delivery squads

Requirements

• Education – Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience
• Experience – At least 7-10 years working on technology-powered products as either a Director of UX, Product Designer, User Researcher
• Design Expertise – You are a user experience evangelist, growing through the ranks of digital design and understanding what it means for an organization to adopt a design-led philosophy that works in close coordination with technology and product teams
• Delivery Experience – You have a demonstrable understanding of the techniques and methods of modern product discovery and product delivery. You’re experienced with agile and understand the value of leveraging customer insights to deliver incremental product benefits over time, gaining experience and value from each release cycle
• Technical Comprehension – You understand the challenges and complexities associated with delivery and can collaborate and ideate effectively with your counterparts to assess viability
• Business Knowledge – You have demonstrated the ability to learn multiple functional areas of business – experience, finance, sales, and/or marketing. Financial industry experience would be a valuable asset, but not an absolute requirement
• Analytical and Problem-Solving Skills – You have the ability to devise solutions to difficult problems with many constraints, using sound judgement to assess risks, and to lay out your argument in a well-structured, data-informed, written narrative
• Software and Tools – Digital savviness and comfort with software including Design software (Figma, Photoshop, Miro, etc.), MS Office (esp. PowerPoint, Excel), Agile tools (Confluence, JIRA, etc.) and various digital analytics platforms (Google or Adobe Analytics)
• Communication – You possess outstanding communication and presentation skills. You're able to clearly articulate product vision and strategy to diverse stakeholders. Fluent communication skills in English are required and bilingual skills in French are an asset
• Teamwork – You have experience working with cross-functional teams and understand the importance of collaboration in delivering a successful product
• Understanding of Customer Experience – You possess a fundamental understanding of end-to-end customer experience, user journeys and service design fundamentals, enabling you to make decisions that enhance the overall user experience based on real-world user interactions, behaviours and digital footprints

Benefits

• Competitive compensation package that rewards and recognizes individual contributions
• Excellent health, dental and insurance benefits to meet the diverse needs of our employees
• Generous vacation time, fitness benefit, parental leave top-up options
• Matching contributions to our retirement program
• Commitment to the continuous improvement of our staff through learning & development and an education assistance program
• Regular social events to foster teamwork