Lead Product Designer

About the role:

As a Lead Product Designer, you will define, champion, and elevate the overarching UX vision and strategy across multiple product areas or an entire product line. You will lead and inspire a team of designers, providing strategic direction and hands-on mentorship. You'll collaborate cross-functionally at the highest levels to proactively identify strategic opportunities, solve highly ambiguous and complex systemic problems, and deliver groundbreaking user-centered design solutions that drive transformative business growth and user engagement.

You will play a mission-critical role in shaping the strategic direction and holistic user experience of our products, directly influencing product roadmaps and organizational priorities. You'll establish and evolve design principles, patterns, and best practices, ensuring a cohesive, intuitive, and highly refined user experience across all touchpoints. You will demonstrate an exemplary ability to conceive, shape, and deploy innovative and highly impactful design solutions that set new standards for product features, end-to-end journeys, and strategic new initiatives.

You will build and nurture strong collaborative partnerships with Product, Engineering, Research, Content, and Business Leadership. You'll translate complex, often undefined business objectives into clear, actionable design strategies and initiatives. You will champion design excellence, advocate for user needs at the executive level, and significantly contribute to building a world-class design organization by attracting, developing, and retaining top design talent.

About us:

Founded in 2005, 8am™ (formerly AffiniPay) is the professional business platform built to help legal, accounting, and other client-focused professionals run stronger, more profitable businesses. Today, more than 250,000 professionals across the U.S. trust 8am to help them work smarter, serve clients better, and unlock their full potential. We have been recognized as one of Inc 5000’s fastest growing companies in the U.S. for 13 years in a row, and as a result, our teams continue to grow as well!

What you'll do:

• Define & Champion Strategic Product-Led Growth
• Define, articulate, and champion the overarching UX vision and strategy that directly drives transformative product-led growth across an entire product portfolio or strategic business unit.
• Set the strategic direction for leveraging AI and automation across our products, identifying opportunities for competitive differentiation, new market creation, and exponential user value, ultimately ensuring sustainable business growth.
• Own the holistic user journey and ensure design contributes meaningfully to core business objectives.
• Build & Lead Cross-Functional Partnerships
• Build and nurture executive-level partnerships with Product, Engineering, Research, Content, and Business Leadership to influence product roadmaps, organizational priorities, and overall company strategy.
• Guide and empower design teams to collaborate effectively with engineering leadership, defining technical architecture implications of design decisions, especially for complex AI/ML systems and highly automated workflows.
• Cultivate User Empathy & Design Excellence
• Instill a deep culture of user empathy across the organization, advocating for the user at the highest strategic levels and ensuring design decisions are rooted in profound customer understanding.
• Establish and evolve design principles, standards, and best practices across the design organization, ensuring a cohesive, intuitive, and highly refined user experience that considers the unique challenges and opportunities of AI/automation in user interfaces.
• Elevate Design Craft & Systemic Impact
• Set the bar for design excellence and innovation, leveraging a masterful command of user-centered design methodologies and tools, including cutting-edge applications of AI, generative design, and design automation, to solve the most ambiguous and impactful problems.
• Own the vision, strategy, and evolution of the design system, ensuring it is a scalable, robust, and indispensable asset for design efficiency, consistency, and innovation across the entire product ecosystem, guiding its adaptation for future AI/ML applications.
• Provide critical feedback and guidance to maintain the highest quality deliverables across the team.
• Inspire & Influence Design Organization
• Serve as a key strategic partner and influencer for Product, Engineering, User Research, and Data/Product Science leadership, shaping company-wide initiatives and ensuring design has a voice at every table.
• Articulate complex, often undefined strategic problems and design solutions with unparalleled clarity and persuasive influence to executive stakeholders, fostering a truly innovative and AI-first design culture.
• Mentor, coach, and inspire a team of designers, fostering their professional growth, advocating for their needs, and shaping the next generation of design leaders.
• Drive Organizational Scalability & Efficiency
• Define and implement design processes, tools, and strategies that optimize the entire product development lifecycle for scalability, maintainability, and maximum organizational impact, actively leading initiatives for design automation and AI-driven efficiencies.
• Champion product-led strategies that enable exponential self-service adoption and minimize reliance on human intervention.
• Pioneer Innovation & Future Vision
• Anticipate future trends and technological shifts, particularly in AI, human-computer interaction, and product-led growth strategies, to define and champion innovative design solutions that position the company as a market leader.
• Orchestrate advanced user research initiatives and collaborate strategically with research leadership to uncover foundational insights, address complex challenges like AI explainability, bias mitigation, and user trust, and drive breakthrough innovation.
• Direct the development of visionary prototypes and strategic proofs-of-concept that push the boundaries of user experience, validate new market opportunities, and demonstrate the transformative power of AI/automation in creating novel user interactions and product capabilities.

About you:

• A bachelor's degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Graphic Design, or a related field, and/or the equivalent of 9+ years of experience in UX/Product Design, with 2+ years in a lead-level capacity.
• An exemplary portfolio demonstrating a track record of defining and executing design strategies for entire product areas or platforms, significant organizational impact, and contributions to design culture and excellence.
• Mastery of industry-standard design tools, capable of setting best practices and evaluating new tools/technologies for team adoption.
• Expert knowledge of research methodologies and tools, with the ability to define research strategy for a product line or team.
• Proven ability to define and drive strategic user research initiatives that inform product vision and strategy across multiple product lines or the entire product.
• Experience collaborating at a strategic level with Research leaders.
• Exceptional communication, presentation, and negotiation skills, capable of influencing executive leadership and building strong cross-functional partnerships at the highest levels (e.g., with VP-level stakeholders).
• Ability to inspire and empower design teams and cross-functional partners.
• Visionary understanding and application of user-centered design principles, usability, accessibility, and ethical design to establish new standards and drive innovation across an organization.
• Ability to articulate and champion complex design strategies, their rationale, and their transformative impact on the business to executive stakeholders, while addressing organizational challenges.
• Ownership of the vision, strategy, and governance for enterprise-level design systems, ensuring their scalability, adoption, and ongoing evolution to support the entire product ecosystem. Experience leading and mentoring designers in design system contribution.
• Demonstrated experience leveraging AI tools and technologies to improve workflows, enhance decision-making, or drive innovation.
• This position is preferred to sit in Austin, Texas.

Why 8am 

At 8am, our culture is shaped by the people who bring it to life every day. Together, we build a company rooted in continuous learning, genuine community, holistic wellness, and meaningful engagement—values that empower us as individuals and unite us as a team. Our culture is grounded in our core values: Work Smart, Win Fast; Outshine Ordinary, and We Find a Way. These values drive how we serve our customers and work with each other in a collaborative, inspiring, and empowering environment, every day.

Here’s how we support our 8Team:

• Health Insurance Coverage: We offer our 8Team a variety of medical, dental, and vision plans, designed to fit your needs, including a 100% company-paid HDHP plan for employees.
• Financial perks: We offer a competitive compensation and benefits package including annual bonuses, equity options and 401(k) or RRSP if in Canada, with a company match for all team members.
• Time for what matters: Flexible Time Off, paid holidays, and a parental leave program for our new parents.
• Wellness: Wellness stipends, mental health support, and one-on-one nutrition coaching.
• Learning and Development: Continuous learning through 8am.edu, leadership programs, professional development funds, and individually focused talent development.
• Giving back to the communities around us: Participate in our charitable matching gift program, paid time off for volunteer service, and company-sponsored volunteer events (both local and virtually).
• Engagement: Virtual and in-person team-building events, quarterly award recognition through our Rise & Shine Award of Excellence Program, and our peer-to-peer appreciation platform.

At 8am, we don’t just offer benefits—we create an environment where people can thrive, grow, and make a real impact every day.

Diversity, equity & inclusion at 8am

At 8am, we recognize that innovation occurs with a strong team of people who are diverse in background, personality, talent and ideas. Experience comes in many forms and ensuring a diverse and inclusive workplace where we continue to learn from each other is an integral part of our culture. We are committed to creating a welcoming and transparent environment for all that embraces those differences through education, equal access to opportunities and information, inclusionary programs, and community outreach. 

Security advisory

Our hiring teams at 8am are dedicated to recruiting top talent that share our passion for serving the professional services industry through innovative financial technology.  As such, our Talent Acquisition Team only follows legitimate hiring practices.  We will always communicate with our candidates using emails with the 8am domain and will never ask for sensitive/personal data during the application process.  All interviews take place over phone call, Zoom/Google Meet or in person.  All offers are communicated verbally by our Talent Acquisition Specialists with a written offer letter as a follow up.