Director of Product Design, Foundations

Clio; Calgary; Hybrid; CAD 252,000 - 336,000; Full time

Job summary

Clio is seeking a Director of Product Design, Foundations to lead a world-class design organization focused on Design Systems, Core Experiences, and Platform Services. You will define long-term design strategy, partner with engineering and product leaders, and shape how the AI-enabled platform scales for firms of all sizes.

Based in Canada or the US with hybrid work expectations; you will drive cross-functional collaboration, elevate design quality, and mentor senior designers to deliver

Qualifications

• Evidence of AI-driven design transformation
• Service design mindset spanning platform and verticals
• Customer-centric storytelling grounded in customer learnings
• Experience building experimentation, learning, and validation systems leveraging AI
• Designing extensible platforms enabling cross-team collaboration
• Deep Enterprise B2B design experience for complex ecosystems
• Proven ability to lead leaders and scale design across products
• Ability to navigate ambiguity in self-directed culture

Responsibilities

• Lead multi-year experience strategy across a complex, multi-product portfolio
• Steward platform-level design thinking across onboarding, notifications, and permissions
• Align experience strategy with technical architecture and product-led growth
• Institutionalize design quality across large data structures and multi-user environments
• Drive alignment across initiatives and product boundaries to create a unified ecosystem
• Cultivate a high-performing design organization through coaching and mentoring

Job description

Clio is the global leader in legal AI technology, empowering legal professionals and law firms of every size to work smarter, faster, and more securely.

We are currently seeking a Director of Product Design, Foundations, to join our Product Design leadership team and lead some of our most critical areas of innovation (Design Systems, Core Experiences, and Platform Services) that will power our next phase of growth. This leader will own the systems, services, and AI foundations that connect our products, enable scale from solo practitioners to enterprise firms, and define how legal professionals work in an AI-first world. They will also play a central role in evolving how Clio discovers, designs, and delivers products in an AI-enabled environment.

This role is available to candidates across Canada (excluding Quebec) and the US. If you are local to one of our hubs (Burnaby, Calgary, or Toronto), you will be expected to be in office a minimum of twice per week on one of our Anchor Days.

Clio is committed to delivering world-class AI-first solutions that enable legal professionals to streamline their workflows, enhance collaboration, and provide exceptional client experiences. We are focused on delivering a comprehensive, unified platform experience that maximizes customer value across a suite of ever-growing products and services. We support a complex landscape of customers, including firms of varying sizes, across a variety of practice areas, within an expanding global market. We have big audacious goals, and we are growing fast! And with that comes increased complexity. Taming that complexity, and delivering simple, easy-to-use, best-in-class experiences that fit seamlessly into the daily lives of our customers is a primary goal.

What you’ll work on:

Lead Multi-Year Experience Strategy: Define and drive high-impact design strategies across a complex, multi-product portfolio, translating ambitious 3+-year "North Star" visions into pragmatic roadmaps that marry short-term impact with long-term business growth

Steward Platform-Level Systems Thinking: Navigate the "platform vs. vertical" tension by managing platform-wide patterns and cross-cutting workflows (e.g., onboarding, notifications, permissions) across a range of firm roles to ensure a cohesive, integrated experience across products of varying maturity

Align Experience and Technical Architecture: Partner deeply with engineering and product leaders to ensure experience strategy is harmonized with technical architecture, advocating for deep integration and an "anti-hub" philosophy that favors organic product-led growth over siloed UI solutions

Institutionalize Design Quality: Contribute to and implement mechanisms for assessing, measuring, and scaling design quality, maintaining a high bar for craftsmanship across complex B2B data structures and multi-user environments.

Drive Organizational Clarity and Alignment: Act as the primary bridge across initiative and product boundaries, fostering alignment between cross-functional stakeholders to resolve ambiguity and ensure a unified ecosystem for firm roles and other parties

Cultivate High-Performing Teams: Build and mentor a world-class design organization by investing in coaching, career development, and the recruitment of top-tier talent capable of navigating enterprise-grade architectural challenges.

Champion the Strategic User Voice: Influence product strategy at the highest levels by aligning customer-centric research with business goals, ensuring the platform remains resilient and intuitive as it scales into new enterprise markets.

Transform Organizational Operating Models: Redesign how teams discover, validate, and deliver products in an AI-enabled environment, embedding experimentation, automation, and learning into everyday workflows.

What you bring:

Evidence applying AI to transform design craft as well as the design of user-centered AI experiences, innovating across surfaces and interaction models

A service design mindset that brings together vertical-specific requirements with platform-level solutions that meet the needs of a range of user types and connect our products together

Customer-centric to the core, weaving customer stories and evidence into strategies, design work, and storytelling as a result of regular customer learnings

Demonstrated experience establishing experimentation, learning, and validation systems, leveraging AI to accelerate insight generation and product iteration.

Experience designing extensible platforms and ecosystems that enable internal and external teams to build safely on shared foundations.

Deep Enterprise B2B experience, crafting experiences for highly technical end users across a multi-stack technology platform

Demonstrated expertise being a leader of leaders, driving a team of designers to conceptualize, build, and scale experiences across complex ecosystems.

Equally comfortable leading teams through big, complex platform-level initiatives that touch multiple products and teams

Established track-record of building and leading design efforts across surfaces from setting strategies to delivering design solutions across touchpoints

Business acumen and ability to connect design strategy to business value.

Ability to communicate complex subjects with clarity and impact to a variety of audiences.

Strong leadership, partnering, and influencing skills.

Ability to create solutions that scale across short- and long-term customer and business goals simultaneously.

High level of comfort working within a self-directed culture and navigating ambiguity.

Deep desire to help everyone (customers, stakeholders, and employees) do their best possible work.

Clio is the global leader in legal AI technology, empowering legal professionals and law firms of every size to work smarter, faster, and more securely.

We are transforming the legal experience for all by bettering the lives of legal professionals while increasing access to justice .

Summary:

We are currently seeking a Director of Product Design, Foundations, to join our Product Design leadership team and lead some of our most critical areas of innovation (Design Systems, Core Experiences, and Platform Services) that will power our next phase of growth. This leader will own the systems, services, and AI foundations that connect our products, enable scale from solo practitioners to enterprise firms, and define how legal professionals work in an AI-first world. They will also play a central role in evolving how Clio discovers, designs, and delivers products in an AI-enabled environment.

This role is available to candidates across Canada (excluding Quebec) and the US. If you are local to one of our hubs (Burnaby, Calgary, or Toronto), you will be expected to be in office a minimum of twice per week on one of our Anchor Days.

Clio is committed to delivering world-class AI-first solutions that enable legal professionals to streamline their workflows, enhance collaboration, and provide exceptional client experiences. We are focused on delivering a comprehensive, unified platform experience that maximizes customer value across a suite of ever-growing products and services. We support a complex landscape of customers, including firms of varying sizes, across a variety of practice areas, within an expanding global market. We have big audacious goals, and we are growing fast! And with that comes increased complexity. Taming that complexity, and delivering simple, easy-to-use, best-in-class experiences that fit seamlessly into the daily lives of our customers is a primary goal.

What you’ll work on:

• Lead Multi-Year Experience Strategy: Define and drive high-impact design strategies across a complex, multi-product portfolio, translating ambitious 3+-year "North Star" visions into pragmatic roadmaps that marry short-term impact with long-term business growth

• Steward Platform-Level Systems Thinking: Navigate the "platform vs. vertical" tension by managing platform-wide patterns and cross-cutting workflows (e.g., onboarding, notifications, permissions) across a range of firm roles to ensure a cohesive, integrated experience across products of varying maturity

• Align Experience and Technical Architecture: Partner deeply with engineering and product leaders to ensure experience strategy is harmonized with technical architecture, advocating for deep integration and an "anti-hub" philosophy that favors organic product-led growth over siloed UI solutions

• Institutionalize Design Quality: Contribute to and implement mechanisms for assessing, measuring, and scaling design quality, maintaining a high bar for craftsmanship across complex B2B data structures and multi-user environments.

• Drive Organizational Clarity and Alignment: Act as the primary bridge across initiative and product boundaries, fostering alignment between cross-functional stakeholders to resolve ambiguity and ensure a unified ecosystem for firm roles and other parties

• Cultivate High-Performing Teams: Build and mentor a world-class design organization by investing in coaching, career development, and the recruitment of top-tier talent capable of navigating enterprise-grade architectural challenges.

• Champion the Strategic User Voice: Influence product strategy at the highest levels by aligning customer-centric research with business goals, ensuring the platform remains resilient and intuitive as it scales into new enterprise markets.