Director, Inclusive Design & Accessibility

Unum; Chattanooga (TN); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Unum is seeking a Director of Inclusive Design & Accessibility to lead a centralized UX design practice and own enterprise accessibility capabilities. The role blends people leadership with governance, education, tooling, and cross-functional influence to embed accessible, user-centered practices across the software development lifecycle.

This campus-based, onsite role requires championing WCAG conformance and partnering with Product, Engineering, Legal, and Compliance to ensure accessibility is

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent in UX, design, tech, engineering, or related field.
• 10+ years of progressive UX, digital product, accessibility, or related experience including people leadership.
• Proven talent development, capacity planning, work assignment, and design capability building in a complex org.
• Deep knowledge of WCAG and ability to translate criteria into practical design, content, engineering, and testing.
• Working knowledge of ADA, 508, and related US accessibility requirements with judgment on Legal/Compliance involvement.
• Hands-on familiarity with assistive technologies and evaluation methods.

Responsibilities

• Lead UX design talent and practice across the enterprise.
• Coach and develop UX designers through performance management and career planning.
• Align staffing with product priorities and identify capability gaps.
• Set standards for design quality, inclusive design, and user-centered methods.
• Provide design leadership balancing user needs, business outcomes, usability, and accessibility.
• Foster an inclusive culture focused on learning, accountability, and improvement.
• Embed accessibility across the SDLC from planning to release and monitoring.
• Collaborate with Product, Engineering, Architecture, Quality, DevOps, Risk, Legal, and Compliance.
• Create scalable templates, checklists, and review processes for accessibility.
• Promote early engagement and shift-left practices to reduce defects.
• Define accountability while delivery leads own implementation and testing.
• Establish accessibility standards aligned with commitments and guidelines.
• Serve as senior expert for WCAG conformance, assistive tech, and accessible patterns.
• Curate resources for design review, evaluation, and monitoring.
• Identify risk and prioritize improvements with governance leaders.
• Build learning programs, coaching hours, and champion networks.
• Measure adoption, quality, defect trends, risk, and process effectiveness.

Skills

UX leadership

Accessibility

WCAG knowledge

Education

Bachelor's degree

Job description

Our Fortune 500 company is driving a digital transformation and looking for forward-thinking innovators to disrupt how our industry thinks about and uses technology. As one of the world's leading employee benefits providers, we help millions of people gain affordable access to benefits that help them protect their families, their finances and their futures.

Are you an asker of questions, a solver of problems, and a challenger of the status quo? Our mission is to provide a differentiated customer experience and exceed the expectations people have of technology at any company - not just insurers.

We are seeking individuals to join our team of talented IT professionals who share never-ending passion and an unwavering focus on our customer experience. Team members comfortable working in an agile, fast-paced, and delivery-focused environment thrive in our environment where we value an entrepreneurial spirit and those who challenge the status-quo.

Unum is changing, and we're excited about what's next. Join us.

General Summary:

The Director, Inclusive Design & Accessibility leads a centralized UX design practice and owns the enterprise capability for inclusive design and digital accessibility. The role combines people leadership with standards, governance, education, tooling, and cross-functional influence to embed accessible, user-centered practices throughout the software development lifecycle.

This is a campus-based, onsite position.

Principal Duties & Responsibilities

• Lead UX Design Talent & Practice
• Manage, coach, and develop UX designers through performance management, career development, succession planning, and ongoing feedback.
• Align assignments, capacity, and skills with product priorities; identify staffing and capability gaps.
• Set expectations for design quality, inclusive design, user-centered methods, documentation, collaboration, and professional practice.
• Provide design leadership across digital products, balancing user needs, business outcomes, usability, and accessibility.
• Build an inclusive, psychologically safe culture of learning, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Advance inclusive, user-centered design
• Champion diverse user needs, contexts, abilities, and barriers from discovery through production.
• Establish practices for research collaboration, usability evaluation, accessible annotations, design-system use, and cross-functional handoffs.
• Guide teams in applying inclusive design and accessibility to interactions, information architecture, content, prototypes, and production experiences.
• Connect user evidence, accessibility needs, business outcomes, technical feasibility, and risk in stakeholder recommendations.
• Operationalize accessibility across the SDLC
• Define accessibility practices across planning, discovery, requirements, design, development, testing, release, and monitoring.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Architecture, Quality, DevOps, Risk, Legal, and Compliance to embed requirements, acceptance criteria, checkpoints, and verification.
• Create scalable templates, checklists, annotations, definitions of done, review practices, and escalation paths.
• Promote early engagement and shift-left practices that prevent barriers and reduce avoidable production defects.
• Clarify shared accountability while delivery leaders retain responsibility for implementation, testing, remediation, and release.
• Own standards, governance & enablement
• Establish accessibility standards aligned with organizational commitments, applicable requirements, and recognized guidelines.
• Serve as senior subject matter expert for WCAG conformance, assistive technology compatibility, accessible patterns, and digital barriers.
• Curate approved resources and tooling for design review, code analysis, manual evaluation, assistive technology testing, validation, and monitoring.
• Partner with governance bodies and leaders to identify risk, support escalation, prioritize improvements, and incorporate expert and user feedback.
• Build role-based learning, coaching, office hours, champion networks, and reusable guidance.
• Measure adoption, capability, quality, defect trends, risk, and process effectiveness; maintain an improvement roadmap

Job Specifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent relevant experience in UX, design, technology, engineering, business, or a related field.
• Typically, 10 or more years of progressive experience in UX, digital product development, accessibility, or related disciplines, including people leadership.
• Demonstrated experience developing talent, planning capacity, assigning work, and building design capability in a complex organization.
• Deep working knowledge of WCAG and the ability to translate success criteria into practical design, content, engineering, and testing expectations.
• Working knowledge of ADA, Section 508, and related U.S. accessibility requirements, with judgment about when to engage Legal and Compliance.
• Hands-on familiarity with assistive technologies and evaluation methods,