Director, AI Experience Design Lead

Pfizer; Collegeville (PA); Hybrid; USD 177,000 - 294,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) matching

Health benefits

Paid vacation

Relocation assistance may be available

Job summary

Pfizer is seeking a Director, AI Experience Design Lead to own and shape the AI experience for colleagues globally. You will build and lead the team and design foundation that ships across Pfizer’s AI platforms, ensuring coherent, trustworthy, and distinctly Pfizer interactions across screens, voice, and agents.

You will prototype in code, explore emerging AI capabilities, and drive design standards as production code while growing a high‑performing team of AI-native experience designers.

Qualifications

• 10–15+ years of progressive experience in Experience Design, UX, or Product Design in enterprise environments.
• 5+ years of direct people management experience, including hiring and growing teams.
• Working fluency with front-end development principles, APIs, and design-token pipelines to partner with Engineering.

Responsibilities

• Own Pfizer’s AI-first design system for colleague experiences across human and agent surfaces.
• Deliver design standards as code: tokens, patterns, components shipped into the build pipeline.
• Lead end-to-end design delivery for high-impact initiatives with executive-ready prototypes.
• Define assistant behaviors, tone, and transparency cues for regulated contexts.
• Partner with AI, Data, Product, and Engineering teams to co-own AI-enabled products.

Skills

AI design leadership

Experience design

Executive presence

Team building

Design systems

Conversations/UI/UX for AI

Tools

Front-end basics

Job description

At Pfizer, our mission is to create breakthroughs that change patients’ lives. As part of the Customer Experience function in the Chief Technologist Organization, we are seeking a Director, AI Experience Design Lead to own and shape the AI experience for Pfizer colleagues globally. This includes how Pfizer’s AI looks, sounds, and behaves, and to build and lead the team and design foundation that ships it. Pfizer is putting AI in front of 80,000 colleagues across a growing ecosystem of enterprise platforms. This role is about the colleague experience with the AI that Pfizer’s own workforce relies on to do their jobs. The role is accountable for ensuring those experiences feel coherent, trustworthy, intuitive and distinctly Pfizer across every platform and every modality. This role is designed for for a highly experienced design leader who has evolved beyond conventional product design practices and operates at the intersection of design, AI, and engineering. A builder who prototypes in code, experiments with emerging AI capabilities, and helps define new interaction paradigms rather than applying established design frameworks. To enable this scale, this role owns Pfizer’s AI-first design system: the patterns, standards, behavioral frameworks that drive consistency across human and agent experiences. Defining what colleagues see, what agents say, how uncertainty gets disclosed, and how regulated content behaves. The deliverables are working systems: tokens, patterns, and standards that live in MCP and flow into the build pipeline, so engineers and the Design QA Agent get the correct pattern by default and teams build compliant experiences without waiting on review cycles. This role is accountable for the system the way a product owner is accountable for a product: adoption in code, pattern reuse, override rates, and first-pass compliance are the scoreboard. When telemetry shows a pattern failing, the Director retires it. This role will also build the team that makes this real. We are looking for someone who brings exceptional executive presence, narrative storytelling ability, and political acumen, while remaining deeply hands-on and invested in hiring talent and growing the people on their team: a player-coach who ships production design work alongside the team and leads complex, high-stakes design initiatives across Pfizer’s AI platforms and enterprise LLM integrations. This is a Director-level role combining people leadership with deep individual contribution. The Director works across every modality the platforms speak (screens, conversation, voice, and agent-to-agent interaction) and moves fluidly between shipping production design work, delivering design standards as code, and growing the team. Deep technical understanding of how LLMs, agents, and modern product stacks behave anchors the role’s credibility with Engineering and Product.

ROLE RESPONSIBILITIES

• AI Design System Ownership: Own, extend, and evolve Pfizer’s AI-first design system for the colleague experience across human and agent surfaces: the single source of truth for how Pfizer’s AI looks, sounds, and behaves.
• Design Standards as Code: Deliver design standards as code: tokens, patterns, and components shipped into the engineering build pipeline, so the correct, compliant pattern is the default, with accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA) built in.
• Adoption Tracking & Standards Drift: Track adoption in code (pattern usage, override rate, exception requests) and retire patterns the data shows are not working.
• Experience Metrics: Connect design outcomes to measurable KPIs: adoption, task success, trust, time-to-resolution, and first-pass compliance.
• Lead by Example & Innovation: Set the design bar: continuously explore emerging AI capabilities, build functional prototypes in code, introduce emerging tools and methods, validate and scale new ways AI can improve the colleague experience.
• Hands-On Design Delivery: Independently own end-to-end design execution for high-impact, ambiguous initiatives, from problem framing through high-fidelity, interactive, and executive-ready prototypes.
• Agentic & Conversational Design Authority: Act as the design authority for Agentic AI experiences, including systems that plan, reason, invoke tools, and execute multi-step workflows with humans in the loop.
• Own Conversational UX end-to-end (chat and/or voice), including dialog flows, conversation state, error recovery, escalation, and safe fallback behaviors.
• Assistant Behavior Design: Define assistant behaviors such as tone and voice, refusal patterns, transparency cues, and explainability, designing edge cases and failure modes in regulated contexts.
• LLM Product Partnership: Partner closely with AI, Data, Product, and Engineering teams to co‑own LLM-enabled products that balance autonomy, usability, safety, and trust.
• Craft Excellence: Maintain an exceptional design bar across interaction design, visual design, systems thinking, product thinking, and storytelling.
• Executive Design Advisory: Serve as a trusted design advisor to Product, Engineering, and Executive stakeholders across the Chief Technologist Organization’s platform teams and translate complex design and AI concepts into decisions leaders can act on.
• Product Vision & Roadmap: Support product vision and roadmap prioritization, helping Product and Engineering partners evaluate which AI capabilities to build, sequence, or sunset based on user value and experience impact.
• Team Building & Talent Lifecycle: Build, lead, and grow a high‑performing team of AI‑native experience designers: set the hiring bar, define roles, levels and growth paths, and the full talent lifecycle, establish the team’s AI‑native ways of working, and mentor direct reports by modeling the craft in their own work.
• Budget & Resourcing: Own the team’s operating budget and staffing across platforms and initiatives; partner with Finance on annual planning.

ROLE BEHAVIOURS

• Don't Lose Your Curiosity: Leads the practice’s exploration of new design tools and methods; experiments in the open and brings validated techniques into the team’s standard ways of working.
• Set an Example for Your Team: Models the craft daily; ships production design work that sets the bar for the team and shows, rather than tells, how AI-first design gets done.
• Act with Agency: Makes decisions without waiting for a laid-out plan; gathers just enough context and starts making, improvises around missing inputs, and corrects course with evidence from the work itself.
• Care for the Craft: Holds a strong, defensible point of view on visual and interaction style; treats typography, motion, tone, and interaction detail as the product rather than the polish.
• Own the Outcome: Takes accountability for experience quality and adoption on every surface the design system touches; treats pattern reuse and first-pass compliance as the team’s scoreboard.
• Be Polymath Oriented: Works fluently across design, engineering, and AI; translates between design intent and technical implementation and builds the team’s depth beyond a single specialty.
• Communicate with Precision: Sets the standard for spec-driven design communication; presents design rationale clearly to audiences from engineers to senior leadership.
• Think in Systems: Designs patterns once so they scale across every platform and agent surface; connects design decisions to how the whole experience, organization, and platform behave together.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

• 10–15+ years of progressive experience in Experience Design, UX, or Product Design, with a proven track record of delivering complex, high-impact digital products and experiences in enterprise or highly matrixed environments.
• 5+ years of direct people management experience, including hiring, developing, and leading high-performing design teams.
• Working fluency with front-end development principles, APIs, and design-token pipelines, sufficient to partner with Engineering on delivering design standards as code.
• Experience owning and evolving design systems and AI-first interaction patterns at scale to ensure scalability, consistency, and quality.
• Deep expertise in AI-driven experience design, including hands‑on experience designing Agentic AI workflows and Conversational UX (chat and/or voice), such as dialog flows, conversation state management, repair and fallback patterns, escalation models, and human‑in‑the‑loop controls.
• Advanced understanding of how AI systems behave, communicate, and build trust, including experience designing transparency cues, explainability patterns, refusal behaviors, safety guardrails, and responsible AI interaction models.
• Exceptional design judgment and craft excellence, with the ability to independently produce end-to‑end design work from problem framing through high-fidelity, interactive, and executive‑ready prototypes.
• Outstanding executive communication and storytelling skills, including the ability to clearly articulate, justify, and defend design decisions to senior leadership and diverse stakeholder groups.
• Expertise in accessibility and inclusive design, with hands‑on experience ensuring WCAG 2.1 AA compliance across digital products and platforms.
• Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills, with the ability to synthesize qualitative and quantitative inputs into clear design direction and actionable insights.
• A robust portfolio demonstrating system-level thinking, AI-powered experiences, and rapid prototyping approaches, including design standards or components shipped as production code.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Strong product design experience (not only UI): partnering with Product/Engineering to shape scope, prioritize tradeoffs, and define measurable outcomes.
• Hands‑on building with LLM APIs or agent frameworks to prototype real agent behavior in code, not only static interfaces.
• Advanced prompt engineering skills, using prompts as detailed creative briefs that set parameters, constraints, and brand identity.
• Expertise in working within lean or agile environments with fast-paced, iterative product cycles.
• Track record of building design teams from the ground up, including hiring, onboarding, and career‑pathing frameworks.
• Experience with AI experience evaluation approaches: conversation quality testing, scenario-based risk testing, and iterative improvement loops tied to product metrics.

EXPERT-LEVEL SKILLS

• Craft Mastery: A recognized authority in interaction, visual, and conversation design; independently produces work from ambiguous brief to production-ready execution.
• Design-Engineering Fluency: Operates where design and engineering converge; ships tokens, patterns, and standards as code and engages engineers on implementation tradeoffs.
• Agentic AI Expertise: Deep working knowledge of how LLMs and agentic systems behave; designs trustworthy, transparent, and explainable experiences and anticipates failure modes.
• Multi-Audience Communication: Communicates design rationale from engineering standups to executive forums and translates complex AI and design concepts into decisions leaders can act on.
• Problem Discovery: Turns ambiguous, high-stakes briefs into clear design problems; the go-to person for the least defined design challenges on Pfizer’s AI platforms.
• Candidate demonstrates a breadth of diverse leadership experiences and capabilities including: the ability to influence and collaborate with peers, develop and coach others, oversee and guide work of colleagues to achieve meaningful outcomes and create business impact.

PHYSICAL/MENTAL REQUIREMENTS

Strong digital literacy and an "AI-first" mental model, with the ability to critically evaluate and integrate generative tools into the creative process to solve complex design challenges at scale. Ability to manage multiple complex programs and projects simultaneously. Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.

NON-STANDARD WORK SCHEDULE, TRAVEL OR ENVIRONMENT REQUIREMENTS

Occasional travel may be required for workshops, team meetings, or stakeholder engagement. Flexibility to work across global time zones as needed. Work Location Assignment: Hybrid. The annual base salary for this position ranges from $176,600.00 to $294,300.00. In addition, this position is eligible for participation in Pfizer’s Global Performance Plan with a bonus target of 20.0% of the base salary and eligibility to participate in our share based long term incentive program. We offer comprehensive and generous benefits and programs to help our colleagues lead healthy lives and to support each of life’s moments. Benefits offered include a 401(k) plan with Pfizer Matching Contributions and an additional Pfizer Retirement Savings Contribution, paid vacation, holiday and personal days, paid caregiver/parental and medical leave, and health benefits to include medical, prescription drug, dental and vision coverage. Learn more at Pfizer Candidate Site – U.S. Benefits | (uscandidates.mypfizerbenefits.com). Pfizer compensation structures and benefit packages are aligned based on the location of hire. The United States salary range provided does not apply to Tampa, FL or any location outside of the United States. This role is posted in multiple locations. If you are applying for the role in an secondary job posting location where pay transparency regulations apply, your Talent Advisor will share the local pay information with you during the first interview. Relocation assistance may be available based on business needs and/or eligibility. Candidates must be authorized to be employed in the U.S. by any employer. U.S. work visa sponsorship (such as TN, O-1, H-1B, etc.) is not available for this role now or in the future. Sunshine Act Pfizer reports payments and other transfers of value to health care providers as required by federal and state transparency laws and implementing regulations. These laws and regulations require Pfizer to provide government agencies with information such as a health care provider’s name, address and the type of payments or other value received, generally for public disclosure. Subject to further legal review and statutory or regulatory clarification, which Pfizer intends to pursue, reimbursement of recruiting expenses for licensed physicians may constitute a reportable transfer of value under the federal transparency law commonly known as the Sunshine Act. Therefore, if you are a licensed physician who incurs recruiting expenses as a result of interviewing with Pfizer that we pay or reimburse, your name, address and the amount of payments made currently will be reported to the government. If you have questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact your Talent Acquisition representative. EEO & Employment Eligibility

EEO & Employment Eligibility

Pfizer is committed to equal opportunity in the terms and conditions of employment for all employees and job applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, gender identity or gender expression, national origin, disability or veteran status. Pfizer also complies with all applicable national, state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment as well as work authorization and employment eligibility verification requirements of the Immigration and Nationality Act and IRCA. Pfizer is an E-Verify employer. This position requires permanent work authorization in the United States. Pfizer endeavors to make www.pfizer.com/careers accessible to all users. If you would like to contact us regarding the accessibility of our website or need assistance completing the application process and/or interviewing, please email [e-mail]. This is to be used solely for accommodation requests with respect to the accessibility of our website, online application process and/or interviewing. Requests for any other reason will not be returned. To learn more about acceptable and prohibited uses of AI during the recruitment process, please review our candidate AI-use guidelines available on Pfizer Careers. Bus Dev & Strategic Planning Pfizer careers are like no other. In our culture of individual ownership, we believe in our ability to improve future healthcare, and potential to transform millions of lives. We’re looking for new talent to join our global community, to unearth new innovative therapies that make the world a healthier place.