Lead, Design Thinking & UX

Summary/Objective

The Lead, Design Thinking & UX acts as our go-to facilitator, leading innovation workshops and design sprints to tackle complex business challenges. This unique, hybrid role also applies deep UX expertise to improve the usability and overall experience of our internal, employee-facing applications. The ideal candidate is a hands-on player-coach who is equally skilled at guiding high level ideation sessions and executing tactical user flows.

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Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• Design, plan, and facilitate high-impact Design Thinking workshops, design sprints, and co-creation labs for diverse business units.
• Guide teams through the full Human-Centered Design process: from building empathy and defining problems to ideating, prototyping, and testing new solutions.
• Synthesize workshop outputs into actionable insights, journey maps, service blueprints, and strategic recommendations.
• Conduct qualitative user research (interviews, observation, journey mapping, persona development) for both external innovation concepts and internal employee workflows.
• Translate ambiguous business problems and user needs into clear, focused problem statements and actionable design criteria.
• Partner with internal departments to provide hands-on UX support for employee-facing applications.
• Develop and deliver core UX artifacts, including user flows, wireframes, and interactive prototypes for internal tools.
• Conduct usability testing and heuristic evaluations on internal systems, providing clear recommendations for improvement.
• Champion HCD, Design Thinking, and UX best practices across the organization.
• Coach and mentor colleagues on human-centered methodologies, helping to build a self-sustaining culture of innovation and empathy.
• Manage and evolve our "innovation toolkit," including templates and best practices for workshops and user research.
• Advanced facilitation and workshop leadership skills with the ability to guide diverse groups through complex problem solving and ideation.
• Human-centered design expertise with the ability to translate user research and empathy into clear insights, design criteria, and solutions.
• Strong UX execution skills with experience creating user flows, wireframes, prototypes, and usability improvements for employee-facing tools.
• Ability to synthesize ambiguity into actionable direction, transforming complex or unclear problems into focused design outcomes.
• Collaborative partnership and influence skills across technical and non-technical teams to align on user needs and business priorities.
• Clear communication and storytelling skills to present insights, recommendations, and design rationale to stakeholders and leaders.
• Coaching and knowledge-sharing mindset with the ability to mentor others and build organizational capability in design thinking and UX.

• 5+ years of experience in UX Design, UX Strategy, Service Design, or a dedicated Design Thinking/Innovation role.
• A strong portfolio demonstrating expert-level experience in designing and facilitating workshops, design sprints, and co-creation sessions.
• Proven mastery of the full Human-Centered Design process and a deep toolkit of research and ideation methods (e.g., Journey Mapping, Empathy Maps, "How Might We" statements, Prototyping).
• Hands-on proficiency with modern design and collaboration tools (e.g., Figma, Sketch, Miro, Mural).
• Experience conducting qualitative user research and a passion for turning ambiguity into actionable insights.
• Exceptional communication, storytelling, and interpersonal skills; you must be able to inspire, align, and motivate groups from the front of the room.
• Proven ability to manage multiple projects, from high-level strategic explorations to tactical UX improvements.

• Experience applying UX principles to internal enterprise applications, intranets, or complex employee-facing tools.
• Formal training or certification in Design Thinking, facilitation (e.g., Luma, IDEO), or HCD.
• Experience in a corporate innovation lab, consultancy, or agency environment.
• Famili…