Senior Director - Product Design, Auto Design

Senior Director, Product Design - Auto Design

At Capital One, we’re building a leading information-based technology company. Still founder-led by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Richard Fairbank, Capital One is on a mission to help our customers succeed by bringing ingenuity, simplicity, and humanity to banking. We measure our efforts by the success our customers enjoy and the advocacy they exhibit. We’re succeeding because they’re succeeding.                                               

Guided by our shared values, we thrive in an environment where collaboration and openness are valued. We believe that innovation is powered by perspective and that teamwork and respect for each other lead to superior results. We elevate each other and obsess about doing the right thing. Our associates serve with humility and a deep respect for their responsibility in helping our customers achieve their goals and realize their dreams. Together, we’re on a quest to change banking for good.

We’re currently seeking a Senior Director, Product Design Leader for the Top of House Auto Design Team, which is part of the Experience Design organization. 

Our Top of House Design team serves as a strategic catalyst within the Auto Design organization, connecting the foundational architecture of our platform ecosystem with unified, human-centered experiences. Our team operates horizontally across high-impact product areas to align strategy, scale operational frameworks, and elevate end-to-end customer visibility. By partnering closely with leadership and cross-functional partners, Top of House Design translates complex platform capabilities into cohesive, market-leading experiences built on a standard of scalability, security, and design excellence. If you’re a creative innovator who embraces an environment where you can experiment, learn, and change banking for good, we’d love to hear from you.  

Role Expectations 

As Senior Director of Top of House Design, you’ll lead a talented, cross-disciplinary team of design leaders and designers, and collaborate deeply with Design, Product and Tech leadership. You’ll be responsible for identifying and advocating for high-leverage opportunities with executive stakeholders and leading high-impact, highly complex design projects that set the bar for and drive experience excellence and business outcomes. 

Additional responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Partner with Product, Technology, and Business unit leaders to understand financial, technical, and experiential objectives, while helping to drive & enable design, product and experience outcomes
• Inspire and mentor a team of high-potential design leaders and designers to stretch and grow their leadership and operational skills; oversee quality and efficiency of the work and create the space and support for learning and growth
• Enable innovation incubation that can then scale across Auto design, including practices and processes that bring about world-class solutions
• Collaborate with peer design leaders across Capital One to orchestrate the greater experience ecosystem, find efficiencies across shared technologies and common service moments, and unlock higher order value from the cross-line-of business perspective
• Recruit top talent, run a best-in-class team, and invest in their continued success
• Champion human-centered methodologies across the Auto line of business 

Here are some of the expected competencies for this role:

Product Design Expertise: Leverage established expertise and leadership in product design to elevate the quality and maturity of the design practice at Capital One. Leveraging a variety of skills across interaction, visual and service design; in collaboration with cross-functional partners, help to oversee and optimize the use of appropriate tools, platforms, frameworks and design systems and enable your team to develop artifacts that may include vision stories, journey maps, blueprints, high-fidelity designs and prototypes

Leadership: Build a thriving community of designers who are well supported, trained for excellence and able to collaborate with peers in multiple functions and set the vision and strategic direction for your team in close partnership with your cross-functional partners. 

Human-Centered: Recognize and pursue opportunities where customer needs and business goals coincide, while reinforcing with teammates and partners the importance of collecting and considering diverse customer perspectives throughout the design process

Business-Focused: Demonstrate a mastery of products,  processes, customers, competitors and broader industry trends and apply this knowledge to predict shifts in these areas and shape how Design should engage, uncover and solve significant business challenges

Problem-Solving: Revels in the art of the possible, driving cross-functional groups in thinking creatively about potential solutions, illuminating potential pitfalls and fostering shared learnings; Deep understanding for how things are interconnected and systems mindset to build frameworks for complex decision-making that enable effective debate and accelerate getting to the right solutions

Collaboration: Connect the dots across the organization, proactively bringing together executive partners in ways that drive more coherent experiences, accelerate delivery and elevate the value of design 

Communication: Present work to executive leaders and stakeholders, modeling a strategic human-centered approach that integrates design frameworks, data and research insights to make the complex accessible, influence change and drive strategic direction

The ideal candidate has a strong portfolio demonstrating your leadership, process, results and impact.

Basic Qualifications:

•  At least 10 years of experience in leading product design teams and delivering products to market
• At least 3 years managing managers

Preferred Qualifications:

• At least 12 years of experience in leading product design teams and delivering products to market
• Deep expertise in building, scaling, and governing enterprise-grade design systems, shared platforms, or developer/designer tool ecosystems across multi-platform environments 
• Deep experience leading product design teams operating across UX and UI, strategy, content, and research from strategy through delivery to market 
• Deep experience partnering with product managers, engineers, marketing, and analytics leaders across multiple business lines to shape strategy, performance metrics, roadmaps, and operating models
• Track record of defining and deploying AI-augmented design workflows, design agents, or generative UI tooling
• Demonstrated success establishing global standards for visual quality, interaction patterns, code/design parity testing, and contribution models 
• Proficiency with web and mobile technologies and platforms, navigating technology considerations and constraints to drive sound product and experience decisions 
• Proven ability to treat design systems as internal SaaS products, articulating business cases and measuring platform ROI through developer/designer velocity, defect reduction, code reusability, and time-to-market metrics
• Exceptional interpersonal skills and relationship building across complex organizations 
• Exceptional people management and development skills 

This role is designated as a hybrid position. You are expected to adhere to Capital One's hybrid policy regarding required on-site presence at your designated office location

At this time, Capital One will not sponsor a new applicant for employment authorization, or offer any immigration related support for this position (e.g. H1B, F-1 OPT, F-1 STEM OPT, F-1 CPT, J-1, TN, E-3, and O-1, or any other forms of work authorization that require immigration support from an employer)

The minimum and maximum full-time annual salaries for this role are listed below, by location. Please note that this salary information is solely for candidates hired to perform work within one of these locations, and refers to the amount Capital One is willing to pay at the time of this posting. Salaries for part-time roles will be prorated based upon the agreed upon number of hours to be regularly worked.

Plano, TX: $245,100 - $279,800 for Sr. Director, Design

Candidates hired to work in other locations will be subject to the pay range associated with that location, and the actual annualized salary amount offered to any candidate at the time of hire will be reflected solely in the candidate’s offer letter.

This role is also eligible to earn performance based incentive compensation, which may include cash bonus(es) and/or long term incentives (LTI). Incentives could be discretionary or non discretionary depending on the plan.

Capital One offers a comprehensive, competitive, and inclusive set of health, financial and other benefits that support your total well-being. Learn more at theCapital One Careers website. Eligibility varies based on full or part-time status, exempt or non-exempt status, and management level.

This role is expected to accept applications for a minimum of 5 business days.No agencies please. Capital One is an equal opportunity employer (EOE, including disability/vet) committed to non-discrimination in compliance with applicable federal, state, and local laws. Capital One promotes a drug-free workplace. Capital One will consider for employment qualified applicants with a criminal history in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable laws regarding criminal background inquiries, including, to the extent applicable, Article 23-A of the New York Correction Law; San Francisco, California Police Code Article 49, Sections 4901-4920; New York City’s Fair Chance Act; Philadelphia’s Fair Criminal Records Screening Act; and other applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations regarding criminal background inquiries.

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Capital One Financial is made up of several different entities. Please note that any position posted in Canada is for Capital One Canada, any position posted in the United Kingdom is for Capital One Europe and any position posted in the Philippines is for Capital One Philippines Service Corp. (COPSSC).