Title: Director, User Experience
Reports To: Senior Director, Digital Operations and Strategy
Location: US Home-Based
Status: Full Time; Exempt (M3/B8)
Start Date: Immediate
Salary Range: $120,000 - $135,000
Facing History and Ourselves is a global education non-profit organization that challenges teachers and students to use lessons of history to stand up to bigotry and hate.
The Director, User Experience is responsible for the success of Facing History's user experience strategy and design operations initiatives. The Director leads a diverse team, overseeing user research, user experience design, visual design, and design operations.
The Director works closely with product, engineering, and marketing leaders to inform Facing History's digital product strategy with human-centered design principles and excellent, cohesive experiences.
The position leads collaboratively to develop, scale, and operationalize design best practices across diverse stakeholders. The Director defines and orchestrates the vision for user experience design at Facing History.
Specific Responsibilities Include:
User Experience Strategy & Design (40%)
- Lead user experience strategy and design across Facing History's digital touchpoints and platforms, including the design process and experience strategy, as well as research activities.
- Scale the user experience design function, and confidently build a strong community of practice for various stakeholders in a remote/distributed environment.
- Lead meetings, workshops, and presentations to inform and influence executive leadership, and build cross-functional skills and practices across the organization.
- Represent UX expertise and KPIs in the ongoing strategic leadership of DXP products.
- Champion high-impact enhancements informed by research and a strong understanding of organizational context and goals.
Design Operations (40%)
- Ensure your team has what they need to thrive, grow, and deliver great work. Defining design processes; providing direction, mentorship, and development opportunities; constructively resolving conflict; and fostering a collaborative and inclusive work culture.
- Ensure the technical excellence of UX design operations within an agile development environment, and maintain up-to-date design systems using Figma.
Professional Development (10%)
- Seek opportunities to submit proposals, join panels, participate in thought leadership, and present our work.
- Maintain proficiency, obtain certifications, and increase expertise in user experience design, design ops, and nonprofit technology solutions by attending trainings, reading industry-relevant resources, attending conferences, and more.
- Model and nurture Professional Development plan development and knowledge acquisition and knowledge sharing practices for the team.
Community & Commitment (10%)
In addition, qualified candidates can expect to:
- Engage in special projects and other duties as assigned
- Center principles of equity, inclusion, and belonging in all work
- Demonstrate a commitment to the mission of Facing History & Ourselves
- Demonstrate a commitment to diversity using a personal approach that values all individuals and respects differences in regard to race, ethnicity, age, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, religion, disability, and socioeconomic circumstance
- Demonstrate a commitment to work collaboratively and respectfully toward resolving obstacles and/or conflicts
Essential Skills and Qualities:
Facing History understands that restrictive job requirements may exclude historically marginalized groups from applying to jobs for which they are qualified. We take an equitable and holistic screening approach. If you feel you have demonstrated experience and expertise relevant to perform this role, please don’t hesitate to apply!
- 8+ years of hands-on and 5+ years of people leadership experience in product design or UX roles, with a proven ability to influence at the executive level and drive design and research activities throughout the product lifecycle.
- Demonstrated experience with tools such as Figma and foundational knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and CMS platforms, especially Drupal.
- Experience managing, coaching, and mentoring team members. Ability to leverage your team’s strengths, recruit great talent, develop individual team members, and build empowered teams.
- Act as a strategic systems thinker with a focused and adaptable approach to design. Experience applying best practices, while knowing when to run a quick experiment, push for more data and just make a judgment call.
- Strong listening, communication, and facilitation skills whether presenting complex information in a compelling way for multiple stakeholders, interviewing users, or hashing out technical tradeoffs.
- Ability to clarify ambiguity while staying laser-focused on your team’s priorities within the context of our organizational strategy.
- Commitment to our mission and desire to spend your time making a meaningful impact.
Benefits Summary: In addition to meaningful and rewarding work, Facing History provides an excellent and competitive compensation and benefits package including medical with a health reimbursement account, dental, vision, life & AD&D, long-term & short-term disability insurance, 403(B) retirement plan with a discretionary organizational contribution, generous paid time off, an employee assistance program, travel assistance plan, pre-tax commuter spending accounts, flexible spending accounts, voluntary Colonial Life group plans, robust wellness programs through aHealthyMe & weekly virtual yoga and meditation, WellCents 403(B) advisement, and a friendly work environment.
Facing History values a diverse workforce and an inclusive culture. We encourage applications from all qualified individuals without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, national origin, marital status, citizenship, disability, veteran status and record of arrest or conviction, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer.
Facing History’s Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. At Facing History, we honor and value the uniqueness of each and every human being. Our strength as an organization that provides and distributes educational content and pedagogy to teachers across the globe is directly tied to our diversity of staff, leadership, educators, students, scholars, and volunteers. Our commitment is to treat individuals with dignity and to build and maintain a community of full participation, inclusive of the voices, needs, and contributions of all. As an organization, we are deeply aware of the legacies of injustices that persist in society and in the workplace, and we value and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in their association with excellence.
Hybrid Work Model: Facing History and Ourselves operates in a hybrid work model, allowing staff flexibility in both schedules and work locations. This particular position is home-based. Some travel is required.
* We strive to offer competitive salaries commensurate with experience in a similar position. New hires are typically brought into the organization at a salary range between the minimum and midpoint depending on experience and in alignment with internal parity.