Director of Product Design

Company Description

A Place for Mom is the leading online resource connecting families searching for senior care with a team of expert advisors providing insight-driven, personalized solutions. As the nation's largest senior care advisory service, A Place for Mom helps hundreds of thousands of families every year navigate the complexities of finding the right senior care solution for their loved ones across home care, independent living, memory care, assisted living, and more. Established in 2000 as a family business, A Place for Mom employees are deeply committed to the company mission to enable caregivers to make the best senior care decisions. A Place for Mom fosters, cultivates, and preserves a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Our employees live the company values every day:

• Mission Over Me: We find purpose in helping caregivers and their senior loved ones while approaching our work with empathy.
• Do Hard Things: We are energized by solving challenging problems and see it as an opportunity to grow.
• Drive Outcomes as a Team: We each own the outcome but can only achieve it as a team.
• Win The Right Way: We see organizational integrity as the foundation for how we operate.
• Embrace Change: We innovate and constantly evolve.

Job Description

The Position:

We're seeking a visionary Head of Product Design to lead and scale our design organization, driving the strategy, execution, and evolution of our platform experiences. As a key member of the product leadership team, you will champion a user-centered mindset, elevate design quality across the board, and ensure our platforms meet the emotional and practical needs of the groups we serve.

What you will do:

Lead the Design Function

• Build and scale a world-class product design team, attracting top-tier talent across UX, UI, content design, and research
• Create a team culture rooted in psychological safety, feedback, continuous improvement, and design excellence
• Set clear goals, establish rituals (crits, reviews, retros), and ensure accountability across the team
• Mentor and grow individual designers, with a strong emphasis on career development and leadership cultivation

Define the Design Vision

• Develop and articulate a compelling, long-term vision for the design function that aligns with company strategy and product roadmaps
• Evolve and maintain a unified design language across all platforms and touchpoints
• Own and scale our design system, ensuring consistency, flexibility, and adoption across teams
• Translate user and business needs into north star experiences that inspire and guide product direction

Collaborate Cross-Functionally

• Partner closely with Product, Engineering, Data, and Marketing to co-create customer-centric solutions from discovery through delivery
• Participate in roadmap planning, ensuring design has a strong seat at the table and advocates for the voice of the user
• Facilitate alignment and shared ownership of outcomes across teams, using tools like journey mapping and experience visioning
• Bridge brand and product experiences, ensuring a consistent and trustworthy feel throughout the customer journey

Raise the Craft

• Set a high bar for design quality, clarity, and execution across all user experiences
• Guide designers through complex problems, providing strong design critique, coaching, and direction
• Establish design best practices, tooling, and workflows that streamline collaboration and reduce friction
• Embed accessibility and inclusive design into everything we create, ensuring experiences work for all users

Drive Outcomes

• Leverage qualitative and quantitative data to inform design decisions, validate hypotheses, and optimize experiences post-launch
• Ensure design work ties directly to company goals - improving conversion, retention, satisfaction, trust, et al
• Push for design that's not just functional, but emotionally resonant with targeted user groups
• Lead strategic initiatives that elevate design's impact on business and user outcomes at scale

Evangelize Design

• Advocate for the role of design in shaping strategy and creating differentiated user experiences
• Champion design thinking and human-centered methodologies across the organization
• Present work clearly and persuasively to executives, peers, and cross-functional partners
• Act as a public-facing design leader when needed - representing the company at industry events, recruiting functions, or internal all-hands

Qualifications

Required Skills and Competencies:

• 8-12+ years of experience in digital product design, with 4+ years in a leadership role
• Proven success leading high-performing design teams in a product-driven company
• Deep understanding of UX, interaction design, visual systems, and accessibility
• Strong portfolio of shipped, user-facing work - ideally across responsive web, mobile, and/or CRM platforms
• Excellent communication and storytelling skills; can influence execs and peers alike
• Experience building and scaling a design system from scratch or evolving existing systems
• Bonus: Background in healthcare, senior services, or other high-empathy verticals

Additional Information

Compensation

• Base Salary: $160,000 to $175,000 + 30% Bonus
• Benefits:
  • 401(k) plus match
  • Dental insurance
  • Health insurance
  • Vision Insurance
  • Paid Time Off

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

A Place for Mom has recently become aware of the fraudulent use of our name on job postings and via recruiting emails that are illegitimate and not in any way associated with us. APFM will never ask you to provide sensitive personal information as part of the recruiting process, such as your social security number; send you any unsolicited job offers or employment contracts; require any fees, payments, or access to financial accounts; and/or extend an offer without conducting an interview.

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