UX Design Director: Lead Hands-On Design & AI Governance

Apex Systems; United States; On-site; USD 150,000 - 220,000; Full time

Job summary

Apex Systems seeks a UX Design Director to lead a small design team while contributing hands-on across multiple product domains. You will partner with senior stakeholders, engineering, and UX research to maintain design quality and drive key initiatives within a lean team embedded in a larger organization.

The role requires 10+ years of hands-on UX design experience, including leadership of designers, a strong portfolio, and experience shaping design governance.

Qualifications

• 10+ years hands-on UX design experience with leadership experience.
• Portfolio showing recent individual contributor work.
• Experience building or influencing design governance/review processes.
• Credibility in technical conversations with PMs/engineers/architects.
• Experience integrating GenAI/LLM tooling into workflows.
• Experience designing for AI-powered or agentic products.
• Ability to thrive in lean, ambiguous environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a small design team while contributing hands-on across multiple product domains.
• Partner with senior stakeholders, engineering, and UX research to maintain design quality and drive initiatives.
• Build and evolve a review and gating process for new platform components.
• Collaborate on interaction design, user flows, prototypes, and visual design.
• Run critiques and elevate overall design quality; represent design in product planning.

Skills

Leadership

UX design

Stakeholder management

Design governance

GenAI tooling

Systems thinking

Prototyping

Interaction design

Tools

Figma

Prototyping tools

Job description

Apex Systems seeks a UX Design Director to lead a small design team while contributing hands-on across multiple product domains. You will partner with senior stakeholders, engineering, and UX research to maintain design quality and drive key initiatives within a lean team embedded in a larger organization.

The role requires 10+ years of hands-on UX design experience, including leadership of designers, a strong portfolio, and experience shaping design governance.