Senior UX Design Manager

Aquent is thrilled to partner with a global retail pioneer that is redefining how millions of customers experience shopping and membership value every single day. In this high-impact leadership role, you will have the unique opportunity to shape the future of customer and member experiences on an unprecedented scale, guiding a talented team of designers to seamlessly bridge digital interactions with physical touchpoints and make everyday life easier and more valuable for millions of people worldwide.

The Opportunity

As a key design leader, you will define the experience vision across the entire customer lifecycle-from acquisition and onboarding to benefit discovery and long-term retention. You will collaborate closely with cross-functional partners in Product, Engineering, Research, Marketing, and Analytics to influence product roadmaps and deliver cohesive, integrated experiences. This role is perfect for a visionary who thrives on translating customer insights and behavioral data into actionable design opportunities, setting a high standard for customer-facing products, and pioneering the integration of cutting-edge AI tools to elevate the design process.

What You'll Do

• Define the experience vision and design strategy across the entire customer lifecycle, including acquisition, enrollment, onboarding, benefit discovery, engagement, renewal, and retention.
• Connect digital and physical touchpoints to ensure customers and members experience clear, consistent value across all interactions.
• Translate customer insights, business priorities, and behavioral data into actionable design opportunities that enhance both the user experience and business performance.
• Collaborate closely with Product, Engineering, Research, Marketing, and Analytics partners to influence roadmaps and deliver cohesive, integrated experiences.
• Set and maintain a high standard for customer- and member-facing experiences, guiding the team from early concepts through to shipped products.
• Provide expert guidance in interaction design, visual design, motion, prototyping, and compelling storytelling.
• Utilize motion design purposefully to explain transitions, guide attention, provide feedback, and create moments of delight.
• Develop clear narratives, storyboards, and realistic prototypes to make complex ideas tangible and foster alignment across teams.
• Partner with Engineering during implementation to ensure interaction behavior, visual details, accessibility, and performance meet intended design standards.
• Explore and apply AI to improve the speed, breadth, and quality of design approaches, integrating it across discovery, synthesis, concept exploration, content development, prototyping, critique, and engineering collaboration.
• Combine AI-assisted design and coding tools to create realistic, interactive prototypes and expand exploration possibilities earlier in the design process.
• Evaluate AI outputs with critical care, checking accuracy, challenging assumptions, identifying bias, and validating ideas with customers and members.
• Build repeatable team practices that enhance quality and productivity while maintaining accountability for design decisions and responsible use of information.
• Support team members at all levels of AI experience through shared learning, training, and best practices.
• Lead, coach, and develop a team of UX designers, providing clear direction, meaningful ownership, and actionable feedback tailored to individual growth and goals.
• Foster a strong critique culture where ideas are thoughtfully challenged, and feedback consistently improves the work.
• Support career development, performance management, hiring, and strategic allocation of design talent.
• Cultivate an environment that encourages questions, experimentation, respectful disagreement, and learning from mistakes.
• Apply a deep understanding of the customer-to-member lifecycle, including value perception, conversion, activation, habit formation, benefit utilization, renewal, and churn.
• Understand how UX influences these outcomes through clarity, relevance, ease of use, emotional connection, and trust.
• Partner with Research and Analytics to identify friction points, develop hypotheses, and evaluate experiments.
• Measure success through customer and member outcomes, alongside key metrics like conversion, engagement, retention, and long-term value.
• Make thoughtful tradeoffs that support growth while preserving customer confidence and trust.

Must-Have Qualifications

• 7-10 years of experience designing and delivering consumer-facing digital products.
• Minimum 2-3 years of experience leading and managing UX designers.
• A portfolio showcasing shipped customer or member experiences with strong craft in interaction design, prototyping, motion, and storytelling.
• Hands-on experience using AI tools in your work, with concrete examples of their impact on your process or outcomes.
• Experience in membership, subscriptions, loyalty, or consumer growth, demonstrating an understanding of design's contribution to measurable outcomes.
• Working knowledge of qualitative research, behavioral data, usability testing, and experimentation.
• Proven ability to navigate between long-term experience strategy and detailed design decisions.
• Strong communication and influence skills, with experience aligning diverse partners around clear customer problems and design directions.
• A commitment to creating accessible, inclusive experiences across both digital and physical contexts.

Nice-to-Have Qualifications

• Experience with retail, ecommerce, or omnichannel experiences that seamlessly connect digital interactions with physical stores.
• Experience leading design initiatives across complex organizations and multiple partner teams.
• Experience scaling design systems, motion principles, or AI-assisted workflows across a design team.