Design Director, Design Systems

As a Design Director, Design Systems will lead Visual Design teams and best practices within the WONGDOODY Experience Design team. You will create and innovate digital visual design experiences for Fortune 1000 brands across Financial Services, Tech, Telco, and Life Sciences.

You will lead the definition and implementation of a digital visual design strategy for an experience. You are comfortable managing, inspiring, guiding, and leading large project teams or a portfolio of project teams. You bring a rich, deep experience of having created experiences in certain industries and complex projects to bear. You will support new business in the creation of proposals and pitches to win new work and consult existing clients to strengthen our relationships and ensure we deliver high design quality and client value.

You will collaborate with the client and teams often comprised of Designers, Developers, BA, Product Owners, Product Managers, Creative and Brand Stakeholders, and Delivery Managers to deliver thoughtfully crafted visual design. 

The role requires a focused and thorough individual with successful prior experience designing robust and innovative visual design and design systems. You are comfortable delivering fast-paced, scalable design that often requires deployment across multiple digital platforms, using tools like XD, Figma, or Zeplin.  

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Collaboratively design world-class products, services, and experiences
• Serve as the SME for the client on project-related activities and beyond. Proactively identifies risks and issues and proposes mitigation solutions; participates in client visits, guides and channels client’s design vision; provides regular reports, articulates value, and manages expectations in order to increase client satisfaction.
• Pitch work to clients and partners and facilitate workshops
• Support New Business in effort estimation
• Distill business requirements, market research and user needs into actionable insights. Derive, articulate and test hypotheses
• Work with your team and the client on a journey of product creation based on insights
• Drive brilliant interface and Brand Experience design
• Partner with client brand, creative, and engineering stakeholders to synthesize requirements into a visual design strategy
• Direct development and roll-out of visual design strategy across multiple product tracks, digital interfaces, form factors, and experiences (including globalization)
• Direct team and collaborate with engineering teams to create and evolve design systems
• Direct design audits
• Advocate for, and ensure visual design is compliant with Accessibility requirements for the user interface
• Drive development of new components or incremental enhancement to existing design systems
• Inspire and motivate an energetic and collaborative team
• Responsible for performance management of your more junior designers
• Work closely with team members across time zones to ensure ways of working, quality and best practices are in line with WONGDOODY’s standards.

WHAT YOU'RE LIKE

• Highly organized, with abundant care for the details and respect for the craft
• Passionate about the user and providing meaningful experiences 
• Clever and curious, always noodling your next extra-circular project or jaunt  
• Eager to work within cross-functional teams
• Strong relationship-building skills, especially across disciplines and timezones

WHAT YOU'VE GOT

• 10+ years of experience working at leading digital agencies as an experience design practitioner, with foundational depth in visual design.
• extra bonus points for: working at a startup or having the opportunity help shape an approach or end product
• Dynamic portfolio of complex, digital experiences for global brands
• multichannel deliverables including mobile, tablet and web
• ex: digital products, connected experiences, or services
• Ability to think at a high level about product strategy and vision (not just 'how it should look' but 'what and how we should build')
• Bias for action and tolerance to navigate a sometimes ambiguous environment
• Excellent communication and client-facing presentation skills
• Exceptional abilities to explain visual design rationale, to align and persuade stakeholders, and to drive conversation
• Solid understanding of other disciplines (such as business, technology, delivery, marketing, and content) needed to create a brilliant product 
• Appreciation for other disciplines (such as business, technology, delivery, marketing, and content) needed to create a brilliant product 
• Experience pitching for, winning and maintaining large programs of product delivery
• Experience rolling out large products from proposition through to delivery – not just across the design spectrum
• Significant hands-on experience creating a wide range of digital visual experiences across channels, industries and audiences
• Experience with design system and asset management tools such as InVision, Frontify, UXPin, Framer, etc.
• Ability to define the approach, plan and estimate the effort for new, complex pieces of visual design work
• Ability to collaboratively work with other experience design team members to create visual design that supports the usability and experience of digital products
• Experience managing a governance process that controls decision-making, contribution, enhancements to a design system
• Familiar with design system methodologies such as atomic design, material design, carbon, bootstrap, and others
• Familiarity with UI frameworks such as REACT and Angular
• Experience integrating design into large, complex, scaled Agile programs across various frameworks (e.g. SAFe, LeSS, etc.)
• An appreciation of the other disciplines needed to create a brilliant product, such as business, technology, delivery, marketing, and content
• And of course, proficiency across in Figma, Adobe XD, Sketch, InVision, Craft, Zeplin and Keynote
• Our business is global and occasional international travel is to be expected
• A sense of humor!

TO APPLY: For full consideration please upload both a resume and cover letter.

THE PERKS

We’ll pay you to come work at WONGDOODY, because we’re generous like that. But on top of your paycheck, you’ll receive a whole lotta benefits to help keep you healthy, secure and balanced. You’ll get great health insurance (paid in full), 401k with company contribution, extended winter holiday, flexible summer hours, and volunteer time off just to name a few!

ABOUT US

WONGDOODY is a proud Equal Employment Opportunity employer where we are committed to creating an equitable, diverse and inclusive workspace regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, or Veteran status. We are intentional about creating a space which not only celebrates and embraces, but also reflects the diversity of the world we live in. Candidates from diverse backgrounds strongly encouraged to apply.

All candidate information is kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

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