Director, UI/UX

We are seeking a dynamic and strategic leader to join our team as Director of UI/UX, someone who thrives on shaping impactful omni-channel experiences while remaining hands-on. This role is essential in crafting digital guest and loyalty experiences and creating cohesive design systems and processes that span web, mobile, and app platforms. This position combines strategic vision with practical execution, making it ideal for a leader who can seamlessly balance creativity, collaboration, with results-oriented execution.

The Director of UI/UX will drive short and long-term strategies that align with business objectives, ensuring the delivery of cohesive, enterprise-wide user experiences. By fostering a collaborative culture, this leader will work closely with product, development, marketing, and brand teams to create a scalable, componentized product platform across multiple brands through templatized design tokens and standardized content management modules.

As part of a small and highly agile design and development team, this role involves overseeing the end-to-end design process for new product opportunities. This includes iterating on product designs in collaboration with Product Management, customer insights, Engineering, and brand teams to gather feedback and refine solutions. The ideal candidate will have a proven track record of delivering elegant, customer-focused solutions that address complex business challenges.

With an impeccable eye for design, a customer-centric research approach, and a commitment to pixel-perfect execution, this results-driven leader will deliver measurable outcomes that enhance customer satisfaction, improve app store reviews, and drive higher conversion rates.

This role also involves partnering with stakeholders to define and execute user experience strategies for web, mobile, and in-store environments. It requires designing and leading UX processes, roadmaps, and engagement initiatives that prioritize user satisfaction and business growth. A critical aspect of the role is reviewing and approving all UX designs and ensuring the UI execution by our development vendor aligns with the feature design, brand identity, accessibility and usability standards.

This is a hybrid role based out of our Atlanta headquarters with Tuesdays - Thursdays being in-office days.

Strategic Leadership

• Define the overall UX strategy and vision for creating best-of-class web and app experiences, ensuring alignment with broader omni-channel brand and product strategies.
• Articulate and evangelize the UX vision, translating it into an actionable roadmap developed in collaboration with cross-functional partners, including Brand, Product Marketing, Product Management, and Engineering.
• Design, document, and promote a cohesive set of design principles, patterns, and guidelines to ensure consistent experiences across all touchpoints.
• Build and evolve a robust Design System, Component Library and CMS modular templates, driving adoption and execution across teams.
• Define experience roadmaps and enhance customer journey paths, including site navigation, information architecture, discovery, customization, personalization, purchase funnel and overall user experience strategy for eCommerce and loyalty.
• Provide updates to senior executives on UX initiatives, demonstrating ROI with measurable outcomes and serving as a trusted advisor to align user experience strategies with business objectives.

Operational and Team Leadership

• Develop and implement organizational structures, systems, and processes to scale the UX function effectively with the business's growth.
• Manage and mentor top UX and UI designers, fostering a high-performing team culture.
• Advocate for the value of user-centered design in achieving key performance indicators (KPIs), such as increased conversion rates, customer satisfaction, and loyalty.
• Develop relationships and foster collaboration across Product Management, Engineering, Brand, Marketing, and other teams.
• Project management of UX design initiatives, ensuring seamless coordination across internal teams and effective management of vendors and contractors to deliver high-quality outcomes on time and within budget.
• Conduct thorough visual inspection and testing of delivered products to ensure alignment with design specifications, UI standards, and WCAG accessibility compliance.

Customer Experience Design

• Lead and direct UI/UX development projects, providing concepts, direction, and critical evaluation while designing wireframes, mock-ups, and prototypes as needed to solve complex problems.
• Conduct UX research, user testing, and usability studies in-lab and online, managing resources to deliver actionable insights.
• Represent the customer's voice throughout the design process by leveraging customer satisfaction survey results, app store reviews, competitive research, and jobs-to-be-done development to inform decision-making.
• Collaborate with Product Management and Engineering to evaluate feasibility, propose alternative solutions as needed, and ensure high-quality implementation of UX designs that best meets customer and business needs.
• Design and optimize A/B testing flows in collaboration with the analytics team to identify opportunities for increasing revenue and reducing user friction, ensuring data-driven improvements to the customer experience.

Innovation and Advocacy

• Build influence across the organization, focusing on coaching cross-functional partners and teams on UX best practices.
• Champion and evangelize user experience principles that are inclusive, impactful, and user-centered.
• Lead design thinking initiatives to foster innovation, align cross-functional teams and develop personalization user-centered solutions to enhance guest experience.
• BA/BS degree in design, HCI, Intractive Media, or equivalent experience
• Experience: 10 years in product design or content design, must have leadership roles in consumer-facing online experiences (eCommerce and/or hospitality preferred).
• Leadership: 5 years managing, mentoring and leading multidisciplinary design teams.
• Figma and Tokens Studio Skills: Proficiency in Figma and Tokens Studio, with experience using these tools for design creation and management of design tokens.
• Content Management System: Proven experience designing for enterprise-level CMS platforms such as Contentful, Adobe AEM, or similar systems in a multi-brand environment.
• Design Tokens Expertise: Strong understanding of design tokens, including how to implement, maintain, and scale them across design systems and digital products.
• Strategic Planning: Proven ability to develop and implement UX strategies that align with business goals and adapt to evolving needs.
• Creative Direction: Experience providing creative direction to design teams, ensuring work meets high standards of quality, cohesion, and innovation.
• Project Management: Strong skills in managing UX design projects, including setting design sprint priorities, allocating resources, effectively managing competing priorities, and delivering on time and budget.
• Team Building: Proven ability to recruit, lead, and retain design teams while establishing foundational processes.
• Multi-Brand Influence: Experience influencing and aligning multiple brands toward cohesive digital solutions.
• Technical Collaboration: Strong experience collaborating with product management, marketing, and engineering teams (UI and API) within Agile environments, utilizing tools like Scrum, A/B testing, and KPI measurement for UX.
• Soft Skills: Exceptional communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills, with the ability to connect strategic vision to practical execution.
• Expertise in system-level thinking for components, patterns, and styles.
• Advanced knowledge of the end-to-end iterative product design process.
• Strong verbal and written communication, with the ability to influence stakeholders and executives.
• Demonstrated ability in influencing product direction through user insights and usability best practices.
• Proven ability to manage multiple projects, prioritize effectively, and meet deadlines.
• Understanding of the software development lifecycle, including design’s role in planning, architectural design, testing, and deployment.
• Familiarity with frameworks like React and Angular for design implementation.
• Excellent storytelling and presentation skills, effectively communicating design visions and outcomes to diverse audiences.
• Empathetic leadership style, ensuring team and customer needs are at the forefront of all initiatives.
• Attention to detail and a commitment to pixel-perfect execution while maintaining a holistic perspective.
• A “can-do” attitude with a solutions-oriented mindset, consistently seeking opportunities to say “yes, and” to challenges and drive results.
• None