Director of Product Design

Role overview

As Director of Product Design at Smartsheet, you will lead and grow a team of Product Designers, set the design vision, and define the user experience strategy. You’ll drive design quality and efficiency through strong processes, talent development, and cross-functional alignment.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a diverse Product Design team (including mentoring and coaching)
• Establish processes to improve design quality and efficiency
• Define UX strategy and future design vision, representing the end user
• Translate business goals into innovative product experiences with cross-functional partners
• Mentor UX designers and, when needed, guide design decisions and direction
• Create alignment across teams (e.g., Product Management and Engineering)
• Gather user insights and validate through activities such as usability testing

Requirements

• 12+ years in a highly cross-functional role leading strategic projects from idea through implementation
• Proven leadership: leading a large team of designers (10+) and 6+ years mentoring UX teams (manager of managers a plus)
• Agile experience
• Strong visual design skills and sensibilities
• Ability to find simple, innovative solutions to complex problems
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills; can partner effectively across the organization
• Demonstrated, broadly influential UX work tied to business outcomes
• Passion for User Experience and ability to advocate for the user
• Experience designing enterprise SaaS platforms
• Ability to articulate and defend design decisions
• Experience facilitating insight gathering and usability testing

Nice-to-haves / tools

• Figma and/or Creative Cloud (or comparable visual design, wireframing, and prototyping tools)
• Rapid prototyping skills