Ux Design Director

apply; Roseland (NJ); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

ADP is seeking a Director of UX Design to lead a small team while establishing governance and actively contributing as an IC across AI-powered payroll, HR, and compliance platforms. You will collaborate with product, engineering, and UX research to shape experiences that scale with enterprise needs.

This player-coach role requires strong systems thinking, credibility in technical conversations, and a track record of integrating GenAI into design workflows.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of hands-on UX design experience.
• Led and developed designers, providing actionable feedback.
• Active practitioner with recent IC work in design.
• Built or significantly influenced design governance or review processes.
• Credible in technical conversations with product, eng, and platform teams.
• Experience integrating GenAI / LLM tooling into workflows.
• Designed for AI-powered or agentic products and trusted user interactions.

Responsibilities

• Design governance: build review and gating for new platform components beyond design system execution.
• IC design work: contribute hands-on across interaction, flows, prototypes, visuals for product domains including AI-powered workflows.
• People leadership: manage and develop a small design team, run critique cadences, raise quality.
• Cross-functional influence: translate design rationale for diverse audiences and push back with data when needed.

Skills

Design leadership

IC design

Design governance

GenAI tooling

Cross-functional

Systems thinking

AI product design

Technical credibility

Regulated industries

Job description

ADP is hiring a Director of UX Design.

ADP is building a next-generation AI-native HCM platform for small businesses. We are rethinking what payroll, HR, and compliance software looks like when it is designed from the ground up with Generative AI technology at the center.

We are looking for a Director of UX Design who can do three things at once: 1) lead and develop a small team of designers, 2) establish design governance and related processes that do not exist yet, and 3) work hands-on as an individual contributor designer across product domains. This is a player-coach role. You will build scaffolding (process, rituals) and hold the quality bar, while still practicing your craft as a designer. You will move between big-picture conversations with senior stakeholders, engineering & product partners, and pixel-level critique among your own team.

This is a small team inside a large company, working through startup-level ambiguity while solving enterprise-scale problems.

Learn more about ADP at jobs.adp.com.

What you'll do:

Design governance.

You will build a review and gating process for proposals to add new components or capabilities to the platform, above the design system execution layer. This requires design credibility and cross-functional standing with individual designers, engineering team, platform leads, and senior stakeholders and leaders. You will not inherit a process. You will build and evolve something new.

IC design work.

You will collaborate daily with product, engineering, and UX research, contributing hands-on across product and design domains: interaction design, flows, prototypes, visuals, and go-to-market. You are not just setting direction; you are in the work. Product domains include AI-powered HCM workflows and experiences for small business users in payroll, tax, reporting, communications, HR, timekeeping, and so on.

People leadership.

Manage and develop a small team of designers. Run the critique cadence, enhance collaboration and communication among the team, elevate design quality across the team, and build a culture where rigorous feedback is normal. Create the conditions for your designers to do their best work: clear context, honest assessment, space to grow.

Cross-functional influence.

Represent the design perspective in product planning, engineering discussions, and leadership reviews. Translate design rationale into communications that resonate with diverse audiences, e.g. technical, non-technical, business stakeholders, and various levels of leadership. When the quality bar is slipping or you’re on the receiving end of proposals that don’t make sense, you’re expected to push back with product and design evidence and market data, not just objection.

TO SUCCEED IN THIS ROLE:

• You have 10+ years of hands-on UX design experience.
• You have led and developed other designers. You know how to give feedback that makes people better while protecting product quality.
• You are still an active practitioner. Your portfolio includes IC work you did recently and are proud of, not just work you directed.
• You have built or significantly influenced a design governance or review process, and you have gotten technology partners to adopt and use it.
• You have strong systems thinking. You see how a component decision ripples throughout the broader product (both existing and future), and can articulate that clearly to people who do not think in terms of design systems.
• You are credible in technical conversations. You do not need to write code, but you need to hold your own with product managers, engineers, and platform architects when design and technical constraints are under discussion.
• You have successfully, productively integrated GenAI / LLM tooling into your professional workflows and are on top of the latest developments with this technology.
• You have designed for AI-powered or agentic products. You understand the specific UX challenges of interfaces where the system acts on the user's behalf and the user needs to trust and verify what happened.
• You thrive in lean, ambiguous environments. You are comfortable building process from scratch, without a large team, design ops, or a pre-existing playbook.
• Bonus for experience in regulated domains, especially payroll, tax, HR, fintech, healthcare, where user trust and auditability are table stakes.
• Extra bonus for having worked and delivered experiences for chat-based products… even moreso for GenAI-powered chat-based products.

YOU'LL LOVE WORKING HERE BECAUSE YOU CAN:

• Have courageous team collaboration. Courage comes from how associates are willing to have difficult conversations, speak up, be an owner, and challenge one another's ideas to find the best solution.
• Deliver at epic scale. We deliver real user outcomes using strong judgment and good instincts. We are obsessed with the art of achieving simplicity with a focus on client happiness and productivity.
• Be surrounded by curious learners. We align ourselves with other smart people in an environment where we grow and elevate one another to the next level. We encourage our associates to listen, stay agile, and learn from mistakes.
• Act like an owner & doer. Mission-driven and committed to leading change, you will be encouraged to take on any challenge and solve complex problems. No tasks are beneath or too great for us. We are hands‑on and willing to master our craft.
• Give back to others. Always do the right thing for our clients and our community and humbly give back to the community where we live and work. Support our associates in times of need through ADP's Philanthropic Foundation.
• Join a company committed to equality and equity. Our goal is to impact lasting change through our actions.
• Attend client visits to gain deeper empathy with our market and users.

Find out why people come to ADP and why they stay: https://youtu.be/ODb8lxBrxrY

(ADA version: https://youtu.be/IQjUCA8SOoA )