The ad says“Working knowledge of design systems, accessibility, and localization, and the judgment to know when to defer to functional experts versus weigh in directly”
The ad says“Working knowledge of design systems, accessibility, and localization, and the judgment to know when to defer to functional experts versus weigh in directly”
The ad says“15+ years in product design, including 6+ years leading design managers or leads (not just individual designers) in a SaaS or enterprise software environment”
The ad says“Working knowledge of design systems, accessibility, and localization, and the judgment to know when to defer to functional experts versus weigh in directly”
The ad says“15+ years in product design, including 6+ years leading design managers or leads (not just individual designers) in a SaaS or enterprise software environment”
The ad says“15+ years in product design, including 6+ years leading design managers or leads (not just individual designers) in a SaaS or enterprise software environment”
Values
The ad says“Experience building and running design operations at scale: resourcing models, metrics, review cadences, and tooling”
We’re in the middle of an exciting shift: from workflows people run to agentic experiences that reason, act, and deliver outcomes on their behalf. Design is central to making that shift feel trustworthy, intuitive, and genuinely delightful, which is exactly what this role is here to lead
This is a senior leadership role inside Alteryx’s Experience & Insights organization, which also includes Customer Signals, Experience Foundations, and Content. The Senior Director of User Experience will directly manage the leaders of four product design teams — roughly 30 designers in total, spread across the globe — and will partner closely with cross-functional peers so design decisions are grounded in strategy, built on shared foundations, and delivered with real operational rigor
The opportunity is to scale and elevate the work of the product design teams today while setting the vision for our future design state. We believe strong design leadership rests on three things: the ability to shape design and product strategy (increasingly, AI-powered and agentic product strategy), the discipline to run design as a scalable, measurable operation, and the people leadership skill to grow and unlock a talented global team. This role calls for real depth in all three
Reports to: VP, Experience & Insights
Design & Product Strategy
Evolve the design vision and strategy for Alteryx’s product portfolio, with particular focus on shaping how AI-powered and agentic experiences show up for customers, ensuring they feel trustworthy, explainable, and genuinely useful, not just automated
Represent design in senior leadership forums, advocating for user-centered outcomes and defending design quality under commercial pressure
Partner with product management, engineering, and executive leadership to shape roadmaps, influence prioritization, and represent the user’s perspective in major product decisions
Translate customer signals — research, telemetry, Voice of Customer, and preview program findings — into design direction, working closely with the leaders who own those disciplines
Operational Discipline
Build and run the operating model for a 30-person, globally distributed design organization: staffing, capacity planning, prioritization frameworks, and design-ops processes that scale across four teams and multiple product lines
Set clear, repeatable processes and expectations for design discovery, design review, and handoff to engineering, so quality and rigor don’t depend on any one person being in the room
Establish design metrics and quality bars to demonstrate the team’s impact and identify where to improve
Champion the integration of AI across the design practice to streamline repeatable work and create space for the team to experiment with new approaches and focus deeply on solving complex problems
Own budget, tooling, and contractor/vendor relationships supporting the design organization
People Leadership
Directly manage the four design leaders running each product design team, coaching them to grow their own people and raise the bar for their teams
Continue building a culture of rigorous, kind critique and high craft standards across a strong, globally distributed team, protecting what works while pushing it further
Champion career paths, leveling, and growth plans for designers at every level, and be a visible advocate for design careers inside Alteryx
Help the team blaze trails with AI, building their fluency and confidence designing agentic, AI-powered experiences, and modeling curiosity rather than caution
Preferred experience
Experience building and running design operations at scale: resourcing models, metrics, review cadences, and tooling
15+ years in product design, including 6+ years leading design managers or leads (not just individual designers) in a SaaS or enterprise software environment
A genuinely collaborative approach: this role sits inside a broader ecosystem and succeeds only in close partnership with peer leaders across the product, experience & insights, and engineering organizations
Working knowledge of design systems, accessibility, and localization, and the judgment to know when to defer to functional experts versus weigh in directly
Genuine enthusiasm and point of view about designing AI-powered and agentic experiences, not just familiarity with the trend
Excellent written and verbal communication, and the ability to influence peers and executives without formal authority over adjacent functions like product management, engineering, and research
Demonstrated ability to operate across all levels, from shaping strategy with executives to reviewing craft and providing hands-on design feedback
Experience managing distributed, global teams, with the cultural fluency to lead well across every time zone
A track record of leading multiple design teams at once across a broad product portfolio; experience with complex, technical, or data-heavy products is a strong plus
If you meet some of the requirements and you share our values, we encourage you to apply
