Lead User Experience Designer - Research & Development Engineering

About Eaton:

Eaton is a power management company made up of over 99,000 employees, with business in more than 175 countries. Our energy-efficient products and services help our customers effectively manage electrical, hydraulic, and mechanical power more reliably, efficiently, safely, and sustainably.

Eaton’s products – transformers, circuit breakers, electric vehicle chargers, just to name a few – power critical infrastructure and technology like airports, hospitals, factories, data centers, vehicles, and the electrical grid. The functionality and design of our products and services impact millions of people every day, and our customers depend on us to help solve incredibly complex power management challenges.

About Studio Blue
Our team, Studio Blue, is responsible for growing the practice of Human-Centered Design at Eaton and empowering employees to be more collaborative and creative. We function as an internal design consultancy and educational hub, collaborating with Eaton teams based all over the world. Through our expertise in design thinking, industrial design, and digital user experience design we are working to make Eaton a more design-minded company.

Eaton is over 100 years old and many of its products and processes are rooted in industrial manufacturing. Our team is central to the modernization and digital transformation of the company. Every day, we are helping internal teams from engineering, marketing, finance, sales, etc., create meaningful experiences for users through connected services, hardware, and software. It’s an exciting time to be a creative at Eaton because every contribution we make has a significant impact on the future of the company, and the opportunities for innovation are never-ending.

About this role
We are looking for a Lead User Experience Designer to help lead at the bleeding edge of datacenter and user experience design, specifically for Boyd Thermal products. You’ll work across the entirety of grid-to-chip, researching and designing end-to-end experiences across Boyd Thermal’s range of digital and physical products. You’ll work closely with a global team of engineers, marketing, and sales roles and must be able to represent the user and their needs, translating requirements and complex workflows into clean, intuitive design. The ideal candidate will possess exceptional problem solving, communication, and visual design skills. You’ll be part of a multi-functional, global enterprise, and must be a team player.

A defining opportunity in Eaton’s data center strategy is the recent acquisition of Boyd Thermal, a global innovator and manufacturer of engineered materials and thermal management solutions, including liquid and air cooling. By bringing together Eaton’s grid-to-chip power expertise with Boyd’s thermal-management portfolio, this work creates the opportunity to shape connected experiences across and beyond the data center ecosystem.
Digital portfolio link should be included at the time of submission. Candidates must be able to travel up to 25% of the time, internationally and domestically. This role is on a hybrid schedule, which requires 3 days in-office in Moon Township, Pittsburgh and 2 days remote.

What you will do:

•    Lead UX execution for products within Boyd Thermal’s portfolio
•    Plan and conduct research with customers, operators, engineers, sales partners, and other subject-matter experts to understand data center thermal management decisions, workflows, and unmet needs
•    Design low and high fidelity wireframes, interactive prototypes, and UI
•    Independently scope, project plan, and review incoming work with stakeholders and internal team
•    Coach and mentor earlier career design colleagues in their execution of wireframes, prototypes, and UI
•    Expand the capabilities of Eaton’s design system, from integrating new patterns to updating foundations as appropriate
•    Contribute to and socialize the larger strategy of design at Eaton – as a platform and within your projects, in coordination with the rest of the team
•    Lead the creation and prioritization of product-specific design requirements that relate to business goals and work cross-functionally with product, engineering, and other designers to meet them
•    Lead user testing and analysis to validate design decisions and iterate accordingly
•    Support design and product strategy, including feature planning and implementation
•    Design and facilitate collaborative working sessions
•    Suggest, create, and own crucial long-term initiatives that further UX maturity across the internal team and the enterprise

Qualifications:

Basic Qualification:
•    A degree in human-computer interaction, design, psychology, software engineering, a related field, or relevant experience
•    At least 5 years experience designing software and digital product experiences
•    At least 3 years experience in business and design software, including Adobe Suite, Figma, and Microsoft Office
•    At least 5 years experience conducting and applying user research, including working directly with end-users to identify needs and translate them into designed solutions
•    Ability to travel up to 25% internationally and domestically (anticipated that at most, this travel would look like up to 2 work-weeks of travel per quarter to Eaton sites or partners; travel weeks may not be consecutive or back-to-back; domestic travel would be 2-3 business days at a time and international travel would be 5-10 business days).
•    Must provide a portfolio

Preferred Qualifications:
•    Experience with human-centered workshop facilitation, including Design Thinking, and translating workshop outcomes into socialized next steps
•    Advanced understanding of user-centered design methodologies, guidelines, and best practices, including design systems
•    Proven experience collaborating effectively with cross-functional teams and present designs to stakeholders
•    Interest and ability in identifying and leading strategic initiatives that further UX maturity across an enterprise, such as Design Community leadership, Design System Governance, or more specific UX practice area playbooks and templates
•    Experience designing for complex technical, industrial, engineering, energy, date center, or infrastructure workflows, with the ability to quickly build domain knowledge and make sophisticated systems understandable
•    Previous experience establishing product or portfolio-level UX vision, roadmaps, research priorities, and reusable design patterns across multiple products or platforms
•    Experience utilizing AI toolkits and workflows with UX design and research

Additional Information:

How you will spend your time
•    60% UX and Product Design – End-to-end design, from research and discovery to wireframing and prototyping to high-fidelity hand-off to developers and supporting production reviews
•    20% UX Innovation – Leading longer-term parts of a larger collaborative strategy to make mature design available and applicable across all of Eaton
•    10% Design Operations – Supporting and leading design operations initiatives to better design and contribute to Eaton’s larger, global UX community
•    10% Team Operations – Supporting your immediate team’s growth and goals through collaboration and established ceremonies and routines

Your first six months
Your first six months will establish the foundation of UX across Boyd Thermal at Eaton. You will immerse yourself in Boyd’s thermal management portfolio, customer landscape, product strategy, and technical workflows; build trusted relationships across Boyd and Eaton; and turn that learning into an actionable UX vision with research and product-design outcomes. Specifically, you will:

•    Facilitate the creation of, socialize, and execute on a UX vision and priority of product lines, providing both internal and external research on where to focus and how to make sense of sometimes complex projects that supports a larger product vision
•    Lead journey mapping and other critical UX artifacts across Boyd’s product line
•    Lead UX design for energy-based simulation, tracking, and management software
•    Support the creation and iteration of critical design systems across web and embedded technologies
•    Own and manage the roadmap and design of any Boyd-specific design components and systems, coordinating with larger design systems teams to integrate into Eaton’s repositories
•    Scale UX systems and designs across new products, and integrate Boyd product technologies into existing digital platforms