Director, Design Systems & Operations, Remote - Aledade

Job Title: Director, Design Systems & Operations, Remote
Job Location: Arlington, VA
Job Listing URL: https://jobs.lever.co/aledade/d5e600d2-c37e-4293-9eb9-10ca6cae9d90
Job Description: The Experience Design and Research (XDR) team at Aledade helps practices be more effective at value-based care through the use of thoughtfully crafted technology. We ensure that the design of Aledade products & services consider the needs of the people that use them, and fit within their existing work environments and workflows. We are looking for a Director to oversee a portfolio of work for the team where they will lead and influence, build trusted relationships with other disciplines, stakeholders, and customers, and contribute to the hiring and development of team members.

The Director, Design Systems & Operations is a key member of the Experience Design and Research (XDR) team at Aledade. Our multidisciplinary XDR team accelerates the ability of primary care practices to improve health outcomes for their patients by equipping them with thoughtfully crafted technology. We ensure that the design of Aledade products & services consider the needs of clinicians, practice staff, internal Aledade teams, and patients, fitting within their existing environments and workflows. As a Director, you will play a critical role in driving system and process evolution that will accelerate the work of our talented experience designers, service designers, and researchers, as well as our product and engineering partners. Your work will be guided by our core values of community, joy, evidence-based experiences, inclusive design, sustainability, and exploration.

As a Director of Design Systems & Operations, you will lead a team focused on enhancing XDR team effectiveness and design quality by optimizing team-wide processes and toolsets, including championing and scaling the Aledade design system. You strategize resource allocation, risk assessment, and team development. You partner closely with Product, Business, and Engineering to ensure your portfolio is aligned and having maximum impact. You take calculated risk on how to deploy resources, are transparent about outcomes, and hold yourself accountable for decisions. You develop senior team members to build a strong leadership bench. Your IC work - if any is done - is purely strategic in nature.
Primary Duties:
Balance projects across a portfolio of work and a matrixed organization, guiding your team’s priorities based on your assessment of potential impact and alignment with company priorities and user needs. Coordinate with peer leaders to align time, people, and projects on a yearly and quarterly time horizon.
Ensure your team’s execution is consistently high quality and aligned with business, user, technology, and market needs. Develop and maintain processes that support the team and allow them to focus.
Skillfully leverage multiple types of data to prioritize operational and design needs, and share your knowledge with cross functional teams to aid in decision making that focuses on user and business impact. Develop and regularly share operational metrics that measure success of the work and reveal opportunity areas for continued growth.
Develop and articulate strategy at multiple levels both to inspire and align teams involved in executing on the day to day work. Craft tailored narratives and compelling stories for different audiences that help them adopt and benefit from key systems and operational tools that deliver value for their unique needs.
Play an active role in developing the skills of your team members, supporting them in achieving their desired growth, and securing additional resourcing with inclusive hiring practices when team growth is needed.
Minimum Qualifications:
10+ years of professional experience in UX-related disciplines (e.g. product design, research, content strategy, design engineering, front-end development) working on end-to-end digital experiences with cross-functional teams in iterative environments.
Prior experience leading design systems for a team of designers and their associated product, design, and engineering teams
People management experience, including management of designers and/or engineers.
Experience with hiring individual contributors in any of the following UX-related disciplines (design, research, content strategy, front-end engineering, program management)
Demonstrated experience and skill in leading, facilitating, & executing complex, iterative design workstreams that span digital and non-digital touchpoints with diverse stakeholders of varying degrees of familiarity with design.
Proven experience planning work capacity for user experience disciplines, and crafting and managing a roadmap of design projects across multiple, related domains, managing multiple projects simultaneously and meeting deadlines effectively.
Experience facilitating design critiques and design review forums for your and other designers’ work.
Superb communication skills and proven storytelling ability – can clearly articulate the what, why, and how of their approaches and tailor a message to the audience.
Preferred KSA’s:
Experience in design system, design ops, or design program management roles
Experience leading the in-house design delivery of software in a complex enterprise industry, B2B2C, or regulated industry (healthcare, finance, enterprise SAAS).
Experience working closely with Product Management and Engineering teams.
Prior success partnering closely with engineering leaders and teams to strategize and plan improvements to front-end architecture systems and/or use of third party frameworks
Proficiency with agile, scrum, or other iterative software development processes and experience with common product prioritization and project management methods.
Fluency with Figma, UI libraries, token-based architectures, and emerging AI tools for design and development
Experience scaling teams and scaling team operations.
Experience facilitating workshops or design sprints.
Physical Requirements:
Must be able to work at a computer for prolonged periods of time
Must be effective at managing one’s time, energy, and productivity in a mostly remote working environment