Senior Director, Design System Leader

Are you a design systems leader, with experience driving the vision, product management, creative, and development aspects of a global scale design system? Do you enjoy managing high-performing teams? If you’re obsessed with customer experience from both creative and technical viewpoints, and driving innovation, this Sr. Director role may be the right one for you.

Microsoft’s Global Demand Center (GDC) is responsible for driving scaled marketing and sales capabilities, leveraging cutting-edge technology, and innovating marketing & sales practices to deliver billions of dollars a year globally for all our business solutions.

We are looking for a Senior Director, Design System Leader to lead the visual and technical direction for our Design System Team, driving standards for Microsoft.com for our commercial and consumer web properties. In this role, you will lead a team of creative and engineering professionals focused on fostering and improving our world class design system, promoting standards and integrating feedback and changes into the design system and to web components as appropriate. This role will set the AI strategy for Microsoft’s web and design system and components, with a focus on engineering excellence via a technical agnostic component library, accessibility standards, and inclusive design best practices.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.
In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, User Experience, Interaction Design, or related field AND 9+ years experience working in product or service design
  • OR Master's Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, User Experience, Interaction Design, or related field AND 7+ years experience working in product or service design
  • OR equivalent experience (e.g., demonstrated experience working in product or service design or using design thinking to solve problems).
• 5+ years people management experience. 

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, User Experience, Interaction Design, or related field AND 15+ years experience working in product or service design
  • OR Master's Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, User Experience, Interaction Design, or related field AND 12+ years experience working in product or service design
  • OR equivalent experience (e.g., demonstrated experience working in product or service design or using design thinking to solve problems).
• 7+ years people management experience.
• 8+ years experience shipping products, services, or games and/or delivering to customers as a result of an end-to-end design process.

Product Design M6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $161,600 - $286,200 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $209,600 - $314,400 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.

Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until July 4, 2024. 

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.

• Set and convey a vision and product roadmap for Microsoft’s Design System, including driving the AI strategy for our web componentry. Use a variety of techniques, such as emotional, data driven, and customer experience driven techniques to convey an idea. Lead product communication with senior leadership, cross-disciplinary teams, and studios through all stages of design and development.
• Present direction for use across design systems from a company perspective (e.g., content templates, icons, form design, user-interface [UI] controls, navigation models, design trends). Provide high-level guidance for versioning of designs, consistencies, symbols, libraries, and builds upon artifacts created by others. Ensure that the team tracks an improvement in efficiency and collaboration through adoption and use of the system. Set guidelines, measures and governance for ensuring products are aligned with company-wide systems.
• Lead interactions with key stakeholders (team, Engineering, PM, User Research, etc.) to successfully align design solutions to business, technical, and user requirements. Lead interactions with Engineering to ensure implemented designs align to design specifications. Direct collaboration with senior developers and leadership to iterate further on designs during implementation to ensure optimal designs. Act as the owner approving readiness from a design perspective.
• Provide thought leadership to the team regarding storytelling, while connecting the story to relevant designs across the company. Communicates a compelling, convincing product story to a variety of audiences in a way that inspires excitement and support of the product, and influences buy in from key stakeholders.
• Lead workstreams with creative team members, program managers, and developers across the organization to define and iterate on new and existing product features, as well as to make decisions with leadership, team members, and external partners. Ensures that feedback is sought out and asked for to promote optimal product designs across the company. Provides expertise-level perspective on how to build on and leverage previous work.
• Lead both creative and dev teams for the Design System Team and serve as a subject matter expert for ideation to generate complex solutions for complex products (e.g., involving many constraints, needing workarounds, requiring holistic view of interconnected systems) to improve the design system. Manage complexities and provides leadership on the strategic utilization of a variety of perspectives when ideating (e.g., technology, business, marketing).
• Manage a high performing team, delivering success through empowerment and accountability by modeling, coaching, and caring.
  • Model - Live the Microsoft culture; Embody our values; Practice our leadership principles.
  • Coach - Define team objectives and outcomes; Enable success across boundaries; Help the team adapt and learn.
  • Care - Attract and retain great people; Know each individual’s capabilities and aspirations; Invest in the growth of others
• Embody our Culture and Values.