Sr. Director, Product Design

Key responsibilities

1. Vision and portfolio strategy

Define and communicate a compelling design vision for a large, integrated product portfolio

Translate company and product strategy into experience principles, customer journeys, design priorities and measurable outcomes

Identify opportunities to unify fragmented workflows into cohesive, AI-powered experiences that help customers move faster and get better results

Represent the customer, the end-to-end experience and the quality bar in executive-level product and business discussions

2. Design system leadership

Own the evolution of HighLevel's bespoke design system as a practical product accelerator, not just a library of components

Partner with design system, product design and engineering leaders to mature shared patterns, component quality, interaction standards and contribution models

Work horizontally across many product teams and functions to turn a new design system into a shared way of building, aligning designers, PMs, engineers and go-to-market partners around consistent experience standards

Drive adoption across product teams by making the system easier to use, easier to contribute to and clearly tied to product quality and execution speed

Reduce pattern drift and inconsistent experiences across the platform while still allowing teams to solve domain-specific product problems

Establish measures for design system adoption, contribution quality, component reliability and customer-facing consistency

3. Craft and product quality

Define, model and scale a high bar for visual craft, interaction quality, product design thinking and end-to-end usability

Coach design managers and senior ICs on how to recognize, critique and improve the quality of design work before it reaches customers

Create critique rituals, quality reviews and launch-readiness practices that improve outputs without slowing teams down unnecessarily

Ensure major launches are grounded in clear user needs, durable interaction patterns, thoughtful visual execution and measurable success criteria

Build a culture where speed and quality reinforce each other instead of competing with each other

4. Portfolio design leadership

Lead design across multiple product teams and product lines, ensuring the work connects into a coherent platform experience

Partner with Product and Engineering leaders to shape roadmaps, clarify tradeoffs and sequence work based on customer value and business impact

Guide teams through ambiguous, high-stakes product problems that require systems thinking, strategic judgment and strong execution

Connect growth, commerce, marketplace, community, admin, integration and platform utility experiences into customer journeys that feel cohesive

5. Design organization leadership

Build, coach and retain a high-performing design team capable of operating at HighLevel's speed and scale

Hire exceptional design talent, elevate existing designers and create clear growth paths for managers and individual contributors

Performance manage thoughtfully and directly when designers need additional support, clearer expectations or role calibration

Lead senior designers and design managers through direct feedback, career development, performance calibration and succession planning

Establish team rituals, staffing models and operating rhythms that improve clarity, accountability and output quality across a remote-first global team

6. Growth, data and business impact

Use research, analytics, experimentation and customer feedback to identify opportunities and evaluate design impact

Drive improvements in activation, adoption, conversion, retention, expansion, customer ROI and overall product usability

Partner with Growth, Marketing, Sales and Customer Success to understand customer segments, buying journeys and value realization moments

Ensure design decisions balance customer value with measurable business outcomes

7. AI and platform experience innovation

Shape how AI and automation show up across HighLevel's product experience in ways that are useful, trustworthy and easy to adopt

Help move product experiences from standalone tools toward intelligent workflows that can guide, recommend and execute for customers

Partner with product and technical leaders to define interaction patterns for AI-powered workflows, assistants, recommendations and generated content

Ensure AI experiences remain understandable, controllable and aligned with customer goals

8. Cross-functional and executive leadership

Build trusted relationships with leaders across Product, Engineering, Data, Marketing, Sales, Support and Customer Success

Bring clarity to complex initiatives with crisp narratives, decision frameworks and customer-centered recommendations

Align stakeholders around customer problems, business goals, quality standards, tradeoffs and sequencing

Act as a key executive voice for design internally and, when appropriate, externally with customers, partners and the broader market

Qualifications

10+ years of experience in product design, UX or related product experience disciplines, including 5+ years leading design teams

Proven experience leading design across large, complex B2B SaaS, platform or multi-product ecosystems

Superb visual craft skills and world-class interaction and product design instincts, with the ability to raise the quality of work across a team

Demonstrated experience building, evolving or accelerating adoption of a design system across multiple product teams

Demonstrated ability to lead senior individual contributors and design managers across multiple teams or product areas

Strong portfolio of work showing product strategy, systems thinking, design craft, measurable customer impact and business outcomes

Deep experience with complex workflows, information architecture, interaction design, design systems, research and experimentation

Proven ability to hire excellent designers, elevate existing talent and performance manage team members who need additional support

Strong product and business acumen, with fluency in metrics such as activation, adoption, conversion, retention, expansion, churn, LTV and customer ROI

Experience partnering with Product, Engineering and Data leadership to define strategy, priorities, roadmaps and success measures

Strong executive communication, storytelling and stakeholder management skills

Comfort operating in fast-paced, ambiguous environments with distributed teams and high ownership expectations

Nice to have

Experience designing for agency platforms, CRM tools, marketing technology, sales automation, lead generation, commerce, payments or SMB software

Experience with product-led growth, lifecycle design, monetization, onboarding, activation or retention systems

Experience shaping AI-powered product experiences, automation workflows or intelligent assistants

Experience leading design through a period of rapid scale, design-system maturation, platform consolidation or major product transformation

Familiarity with experimentation frameworks, growth metrics, customer analytics and mixed-method research practices

Experience designing marketplace, community, course, client-portal, commerce, payments, billing, document or integration experiences…