Director, AI Experience Design Lead

Role Responsibilities

• AI Design System Ownership: Own, extend, and evolve Pfizer's AI-first design system across human and agent surfaces.
• Design Standards as Code: Deliver design standards as code: tokens, patterns, and components shipped into the engineering build pipeline with accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA) built in.
• Adoption Tracking & Standards Drift: Track adoption in code and retire patterns the data shows are not working.
• Experience Metrics: Connect design outcomes to measurable KPIs: adoption, task success, trust, time-to-resolution, and first-pass compliance.
• Lead by Example & Innovation: Set the design bar by shipping and working in new AI tools first.
• Hands-On Design Delivery: Independently own end-to-end design execution for high-impact, ambiguous initiatives.
• Agentic & Conversational Design Authority: Act as design authority for Agentic AI experiences and own Conversational UX end-to-end.
• Assistant Behavior Design: Define assistant behaviors such as tone and voice, refusal patterns, transparency cues, and explainability.
• LLM Product Partnership: Partner closely with AI, Data, Product, and Engineering teams to co-own LLM-enabled products.
• Craft Excellence: Maintain an exceptional design bar across interaction design, visual design, systems thinking, product thinking, and storytelling.
• Executive Design Advisory: Serve as a trusted design advisor to Product, Engineering, and Executive stakeholders.
• Product Vision & Roadmap: Support product vision and roadmap prioritization.
• Team Building & Talent Lifecycle: Build, lead, and grow a high-performing team of experience designers.
• Budget & Resourcing: Own the team's operating budget and staffing across platforms and initiatives.

Role Behaviors

• Don't Lose Your Curiosity: Leads exploration of new design tools and methods.
• Set an Example for Your Team: Models the craft daily and ships production design work.
• Act with Agency: Makes decisions without waiting for a laid-out plan.
• Care for the Craft: Holds a strong, defensible point of view on visual and interaction style.
• Own the Outcome: Takes accountability for experience quality and adoption.
• Be Polymath Oriented: Works fluently across design, engineering, and AI.
• Communicate with Precision: Sets the standard for spec-driven design communication.
• Think in Systems: Designs patterns once so they scale across every platform and agent surface.

Minimum Requirements

• Must have a bachelor's degree with at least 8 years of progressive experience in Experience Design, UX, or Product Design, OR a master's degree with at least 7 years of experience OR a PhD with 5+ years of experience.
• 5+ years of direct people management experience, including hiring, developing, and leading high-performing design teams.
• Working fluency with front-end development principles, APIs, and design-token pipelines.
• Experience owning and evolving design systems and AI-first interaction patterns at scale.
• Deep expertise in AI-driven experience design, including hands-on experience designing Agentic AI workflows and Conversational UX.
• Advanced understanding of how AI systems behave, communicate, and build trust.
• Exceptional design judgment and craft excellence.
• Outstanding executive communication and storytelling skills.
• Expertise in accessibility and inclusive design, with hands-on experience ensuring WCAG 2.1 AA compliance.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• A robust portfolio demonstrating system-level thinking, AI-powered experiences, and rapid prototyping approaches.

Preferred Requirements

• Strong product design experience (not only UI).
• Hands-on building with LLM APIs or agent frameworks.
• Advanced prompt engineering skills.
• Expertise in working within lean or agile environments.
• Track record of building design teams from the ground up.
• Experience with AI experience evaluation approaches.

Work Location and Travel

Work Location Assignment: Hybrid. Occasional travel may be required for workshops, team meetings, or stakeholder engagement. Flexibility to work across global time zones as needed.