Senior Director - Design Strategy

Location Designation: Remote 

When you join New York Life, you’re joining a company that values career development, collaboration, innovation, and inclusiveness. We want employees to feel proud about being part of a company that is committed to doing the right thing. You’ll have the opportunity to grow your career while developing personally and professionally through various resources and programs. New York Life is a relationship-based company and appreciates how both virtual and in-person interactions support our culture.

It is an exciting time to join New York Life Insurance Company, a Fortune 100 company and the largest mutual life insurance company in the US, as we continue to innovate our technology and build the next generation digital experience for our customers and agents. You will join a growing team which is at the forefront of New York Life’s evolution to providing more innovative and differentiated consumer and agent/advisor experiences that lean into the power of human guidance, improving our customer’s financial wellness and peace of mind, and enabling our agents to grow their small businesses. 

Recognizing the significance of the life insurance industry in people's lives, this role isn't just about aesthetics—it’s about weaving trust, clarity, and empathy into our digital experiences. Beyond the visual, you will partner within the marketing digital design team to lead strategic direction, ensuring our digital experiences are not just user-friendly, but also intuitive, harmonious, engaging, and in line with our core values and brand promise. By collaborating with cross-functional teams, you will elevate our web and digital marketing products, ensuring they resonate with our audiences, drive engagement and conversion, and bolster our position as a trusted leader in the life insurance industry. This is a chance to truly make a mark, leveraging design as a tool to bridge technology and the deep-rooted human-centric ethos of NYL.

We are looking for highly qualified player-coach to lead the design strategy for a portfolio of digital marketing products used by consumers (e.g., NYL.com, agent locator, interactive tools) and NYL agents (e.g., agent website builder). This role will provide hands-on efforts, lead a small internal team, engage with external design agencies, and partner with product design peers to lead design strategy including user/design research and analysis, creation of design visions and strategies and associated artifacts (e.g. journey maps, blueprints), support for vision and concept design and prototyping across a spectrum of fidelities, lead UX content strategy and information architecture, steward AB/multivariate testing designs, and direct and incorporate experience measurement, usability, competitive, behavioral, trends, web/digital product, voice of customer/agent and similar analyses to ensure strategies and designs are data-informed and high performing.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design Strategy, Research, and Concepting
  • Lead design strategy process in support of marketing’s key digital products employing human-centered design methodologies and ensuring the strategy aligns business and user needs, is consistent within brand standards, and supports counterparts in product design/UX/UI  
  • Partner with directors of product design/UX/UI to set mid and long-term vision for marketing digital experiences
  • In partnership with marketing research and insights colleagues, lead user and design research (quant and qual) and insights generation including writing research briefs/objectives, guiding research methodologies and artifacts (e.g., interview guides, diary study journals/capture, observation study focus areas, card sorting and other IA related research), review and present insights to design teams and other stakeholders
  • Incorporate operational, behavioral, and other relevant data into design strategies to drive both business and user value
  • Architect and lead the visualization of design and experience strategy and research deliverables including mood boards, journey maps, blueprints, personas, etc.
  • Lead periodic reviews and reporting and incorporate competitive, industry trends, and advancements in design patterns, user experience evolutions, and innovations in digital design for web and other digital products experiences and platforms within Life insurance, broader financial services, and among design leaders
  • Co-create with product design/UX/UI partners design concepts across the spectrum of fidelities, storyboards, prototypes, and other visual storytelling mediums to articulate the design direction of marketing’s digital experiences
  • Collaborate on refreshes of style guides, design system, and other design assets with product design/UX/UI partners, brand partners, and other design teams in NYL
  • Partner with product design, production, and product management colleagues to develop implementation plans to bring design strategy to life across products and content
• UX Content Strategy and Information Architecture
  • Lead and manage the planning and development of content (messaging, copy, imagery, video, interactivity) for nyl.com and associated web properties – balancing marketing KPIs and organizational content needs
  • Partner with brand, financial education, SEO, media, product marketing, corporate communications, and other content stakeholders to align and carry forward broader marketing content strategies, campaigns, and financial education inputs to meet audience needs and business model/strategy and is consistent with brand voice/identify, and compliance/regulatory requirements
  • Participate in and maintain alignment with content audits/inventories, gap analysis, content calendars, tagging schemas, and content metrics/KPIs
  • Lead UX copywriting and ensure UX content is optimized for digital/web and aligns to broader audience/user goals, journeys, and needs (e.g., comprehension, understanding) and meets business objectives for discoverability, engagement, and conversion as well as maintains regulatory compliance
  • In partnership with content-focused stakeholders, lead UX content execution to translate complex financial topics into easy-to-understand, actionable, inclusive, and empathetic content that meets our target audiences where they are and helps them move forward in an often confusing, barrier-ridden industry
  • Partner with design system/ops peers to lead portions of our design system guidelines and assets related to content (e.g., web copywriting guidelines)
  • Lead information architecture and associated projects to maintain and periodically refresh navigation and way finding models and elements (e.g., site maps, site navs, menus, breadcrumbs, etc) of our digital products and web experiences as well as other IA related projects (e.g., onsite search schemas, glossaries, labeling systems, other taxonomy and categorization elements)
• Measurement and Testing
  • Partner with peers to further define and implement measurement of design quality, usability, and accessibility KPIs
  • Partner with marketing analytics, media, and product management counterparts to lead web and digital product AB/multivariate testing including aligning on testing hypotheses, audiences, goals, and designs to support the testing and optimizations
  • Mature and expand moderated and unmoderated usability testing practice including setting standards and KPIs, strategies and roadmaps, execution (e.g, methodologies, questionnaires, stimuli, etc.), and regular reporting
  • Mature and expand experience measurement program to include strategies and executions for web and digital products in partnership with marketing insights team – driving learning/measure objectives, survey design and execution, insights generation and report outs
• Leadership and Collaboration
  • Grow, mentor, develop, and manage a high-performing team of UX strategists, UX content strategists and designers
  • Manage contract and agency design partners and projects for execution of key responsibilities
  • Partner with design leadership peers to mature a culture of design, feedback, continuous improvement and inspiration
  • Collaborate closely and broadly across Marketing with designers, product managers, production team, marketing enablement, and other stakeholders to execute projects, enable effective decision making in a consensus-driven culture, and maintain alignment on strategic directions
  • Structure and facilitate meetings, workshops, and brainstorming sessions to co-create design strategy related outcomes and deliverables

Qualifications:

Education Requirements

• A bachelor's in a relevant field such as Design, Interaction Design, Fine arts, or a related discipline (Master’s degree preferred). Equivalent practical experience will also be considered.

Work Experiences

• Minimum of 10 years of experience in design strategy, design leadership or a related field with consumer facing digital experiences, with at least 4 years in a leadership or management role
• Minimum of 3 years managing user/design research
• Minimum 3 years of managing usability analysis
• Minimum 2 years overseeing UX content strategy and/or copywriting
• A track record of successfully developing and seeing through the application of design strategy and user/design research
• Experience designing for digital experiences delivered in a Scaled Agile (SAFe) environment and for web experiences that use component-based and content management systems (CMS)
• Experience delivering in Life Insurance, financial services, or other highly regulated industry a big plus

Technical Expertise

• Expert understanding of design principles, interaction design, visual design, and user experience.
• Mastery of quantitative and qualitative user research methodologies and familiarity with associated tools/platforms (e.g., Qualtrics, dScout)
• In-depth knowledge and mastery of design and prototyping tools (e.g., Figma, Adobe Creative Suite, ) and digital whiteboard/facilitation tools (e.g., Figjam, Miro)
• Advanced skills with usability testing tools (e.g., Usertesting) and experience/session monitoring tools (e.g., ContentSquare)

Leadership and Collaboration Expertise

• Advanced skills in design thinking/human-centered design principles and execution including leading others through structured, empathy-building collaborations
• Ability to quickly build relationships with stakeholders and peers and facilitate alignment on complex (and often competing) interests and needs among teams
• Excellent communication, presentation, and interpersonal skills are necessary to effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams, stakeholders, and executives.
• The ability to articulate design concepts, design value, usability/experience data to design and non-design audiences is vital.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to think analytically and systemically
• Experience with managing multiple projects in a fast-paced, very deadline-driven environment

Please include a portfolio or case studies as a document or link with your resume when applying**

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Salary range: $145,000-$215,000 

Overtime eligible: Exempt 

Discretionary bonus eligible: Yes 

Sales bonus eligible: No 

Click here to learn more about our benefits. Starting salary is dependent upon several factors including previous work experience, specific industry experience, and/or skills required.

Recognized as one of Fortune’s World’s Most Admired Companies, New York Life is committed to improving local communities through a culture of employee giving and volunteerism, supported by the Foundation. We're proud that due to our mutuality, we operate in the best interests of our policy owners. We invite you to bring your talents to New York Life, so we can continue to help families and businesses “Be Good At Life.” To learn more, please visit LinkedIn, our Newsroom and the Careers page of www.NewYorkLife.com.

Job Requisition ID: 89514