Director of Design

Versant; Carlsbad (CA); Hybrid; USD 170,000 - 195,000; Full time

Job summary

Versant Media is seeking a seasoned design leader to build and lead a new Design Center of Excellence, spanning UI/UX strategy, standards, and career paths across simulator software, companion apps, and web platforms.

You will partner with engineering, product, QA, and program management to establish a formal design review process, scale the design organization, and ensure consistent brand and interaction design across all products.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of UX/UI or product design experience with leadership.
• Experience scaling a design organization with standards, systems and review processes.
• Partnering with engineering, product, and leadership on roadmaps and trade-offs.
• Ability to allocate design capacity across multiple product lines with data.
• Establishing or maintaining a design system, pattern library, or style guide.
• Strong portfolio showing craft and leadership outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Define design vision and standards across all active product lines.
• Institute a formal design review process from concept to sign-off.
• Hire, mentor, and grow the design organization with leveling and growth paths.
• Develop and maintain a shared design system, library, and style guide.
• Plan design capacity across concurrent product lines using workload data.
• Collaborate with engineering, product, QA, and program leadership to ensure design involvement from requirements to architecture.

Skills

UX/UI design

Design leadership

Team management

Cross-functional collaboration

Portfolio

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in Design or HCI

Tools

Jira

Confluence

Job description

• Business Segment: Digital Platforms & Ventures
• Compensation: USD 170,000 - USD 195,000 - yearly

Company Description

VERSANT (Nasdaq: VSNT) is an industry-changing media and entertainment business and home to trusted brands that shape culture, inform audiences, and build lasting connections. It operates across four core markets: political news and opinion, business news and personal finance, golf, and sports and genre entertainment. These markets are served through a powerful portfolio of iconic and innovative brands, including CNBC, MS NOW, USA Network, Golf Channel, Oxygen, E!, SYFY, and Versant's sports division USA Sports, along with complementary digital assets including Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow and GolfPass.

Job Description

Summary/Objective
Full Swing's product design process runs through a defined set of stage gates, from initial concept and
architecture alignment through multiple rounds of design review to final UI/UX sign-off, spanning our
simulator software, companion apps, and web platforms. That process currently has no single design leader
accountable for it end to end. This is an opportunity to build and lead a new Design Center of Excellence:
establish design as a strategic, well-run function with its own standards, systems, and career path, rather than
a set of individual contributors assembled reactively around whatever ships next.

Primary Functions

• Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
• The design vision and standards for Full Swing's products, ensuring consistency in brand, UX, and interaction design across every active product line.
• A formal design review process, from concept and architecture alignment through final UI/UX sign-off, so design decisions are made deliberately and on a predictable cadence rather than ad hoc.
• Hiring, mentorship, and career growth for the design organization, including leveling, growth paths, and performance standards for an already existing and high performing small team.
• A shared design system, pattern library, and style guide used consistently across the company's software and web products.
• Design capacity planning across concurrent product lines, including making the case for additional headcount grounded in real workload data and product roadmaps.
• Direct partnership with engineering, product, QA, platform, and program management leadership to ensure design is engaged at the requirements and architecture stage.
• Design representation in executive and cross-functional planning, presenting strategy, trade-offs, and resourcing needs directly to senior leadership.
• Partnership with QA and Release Management so design sign-off functions as a genuine readiness gate.
• The craft bar for the organization: running critique, giving direct feedback, and holding the team to a consistent standard of execution.

Qualifications

Required Education, Experience & Skills

• 10+ years of UX/UI or product design experience, including substantial experience leading and
• managing a design team.
• A track record of building or significantly scaling a design organization or practice, including establishing standards, systems, and review processes where they didn't previously exist.
• Experience partnering directly with engineering, product, and program leadership on cross-functional roadmaps and delivery, including presenting design strategy and trade-offs to senior or executive stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to allocate a design team's capacity across multiple concurrent product lines and defend resourcing decisions with evidence.
• Experience establishing or maintaining a design system, pattern library, or style guide at an organizational level.
• A strong portfolio demonstrating both individual design craft and the outcomes of teams you've led.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, comfortable setting a bar and holding the team and stakeholders to it.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, or a related field, or equivalent hands-on experience.

Preferred Education, Experience & Skills

• Experience leading design for a games, simulation, consumer hardware, or interactive entertainment product.
• Experience designing across both consumer-facing apps and internal/admin tooling (e.g., admin consoles, back-office utilities) at the same time.
• Experience running design across multiple distinct product lines or brands at once, each with its own visual identity, under a single shared design system.
• Experience designing data-dense, real-time or performance-data interfaces (e.g., sports statistics, shot or session data, analytics dashboards) for a non-technical consumer audience.
• Familiarity with Jira and Confluence-based design review and PRD workflows.
• Interest or hands-on experience in applying AI tools to the design practice itself (prototyping, critique, design ops), reflecting the company's broader push toward AI-forward ways of working.

Salary Range: $170,000-$195,000

Other Duties
Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties
or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may
change at any time with or without notice.

• This role operates in a hybrid or office-based environment, depending on company needs.
• Work is primarily performed in an office setting with standard working hours; however, occasional after-hours support may be required.
• The position requires frequent interaction with employees across different departments, requiring strong collaboration and communication skills.
• The role may involve sitting for extended periods, working on a computer.
• Able to lift 25 lbs

Additional Information

As part of our selection process, external candidates may be required to attend an in-person interview with a VERSANT Media employee at one of our locations prior to a hiring decision. VERSANT Media's policy is to provide equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, veteran status, membership in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.

If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran and require support throughout the application and/or recruitment process as a result of your disability, you have the right to request a reasonable accommodation. You can submit your request to [e-mail] .

VERSANT Media is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. We include a good faith pay range for each position to comply with applicable state and local pay transparency laws and to promote equity across our organization. Actual compensation will be based on factors such as the candidate's skills, qualifications, experience, and location and may include additional forms of compensation and benefits such as health insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, etc.

VERSANT Media is not accepting unsolicited assistance from search firms for this employment opportunity. All resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at VERSANT via-email, the Internet, or in any form and/or method without a valid written Statement of Work in place for this position from VERSANT's Talent Acquisition team will be deemed the sole property of VERSANT. No fee will be paid in the event the candidate is hired by VERSANT as a result of the referral or through other means.

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