Director, User Experience & Design Strategy

How will you make an impact in this role? Digital Labs is American Express’ innovation engine, responsible for identifying, incubating, and scaling emerging products, experiences, and technologies that shape the future of our business. As Director of User Experience & Design Strategy, you will combine expertise in design craft, customer-centered thinking, and emerging technology innovation to create impactful experiences that drive business outcomes and delight users. You will lead the UX function for Digital Labs, overseeing a multidisciplinary team spanning design, research, and content while partnering closely with product, engineering, and business leaders. This role requires both strategic leadership and hands-on execution. You will establish a vision for experience design across Labs products, drive consistency and design excellence, and serve as a thought leader in the application of AI to user experiences. Collaboration is critical to our success, so we value leaders who build strong relationships, ask thoughtful questions, challenge assumptions, and connect the dots across products, technologies, and customer needs. Design Leadership & Strategy Develop and communicate a compelling design vision and strategy for Digital Labs products that aligns with business goals and innovation priorities. Define and maintain design principles, guidelines, and standards to ensure consistency, quality, and scalability across Labs products and prototypes. Establish a cohesive user experience strategy that connects multiple products, experiments, and innovation initiatives. Stay current on industry trends, emerging technologies, AI advancements, and evolving design practices, integrating relevant innovations into the Labs roadmap. Partner closely with product, engineering, data science, and business leaders to influence product strategy and shape customer-centric solutions. AI Leadership Serve as the UX thought leader for AI-powered experiences within Digital Labs. Define and evolve AI design patterns, interaction frameworks, and best practices for conversational interfaces, agentic experiences, and other emerging AI capabilities. Partner with engineering teams to ensure experiences are intuitive, transparent, trustworthy, and aligned with responsible AI principles. Drive experimentation and learning around emerging interaction models and future user experience paradigms. Team Leadership & Development Lead, coach, and develop a multidisciplinary UX team consisting of: UX Researcher UX Writer Product Designer Set clear goals and expectations for the team while fostering a culture of creativity, innovation, experimentation, and continuous improvement. Provide guidance, mentorship, and support to cultivate individual growth and elevate team capabilities. Ensure effective planning, prioritization, and delivery of all UX work across the Labs portfolio. Act as a hands-on design leader, contributing directly to design work, concept development, prototyping, and executive presentations when needed. Review and elevate design outputs to ensure they meet the highest standards of usability, accessibility, and craftsmanship. Champion a user-centered design approach, ensuring customer needs, behaviors, and pain points remain at the center of the design process. Ensure customer insights are translated into actionable design and product recommendations. Agency & Vendor Management Manage relationships with external design, research, and innovation agencies. Oversee agency engagement models, scope, budgets, deliverables, and performance expectations. Manage the UX-related A&P budget and ensure effective investment across internal and external resources. Ensure agency work aligns with Labs design standards and integrates seamlessly with internal teams. 8+ years of experience in UX, Product Design, Interaction Design, Service Design, or related disciplines. Curious, optimistic, and energized by solving complex problems. 3+ years of experience leading and developing design teams. Experience working in complex, matrixed, or global organizations. Strong foundation in Design Thinking methods and user-centered design practices. Experience leading design efforts for digital products across web and mobile platforms. Experience building design systems, governance frameworks, and scalable UX practices. Demonstrated ability to leverage customer insights and data to inform strategic decisions. Experience managing external agencies and consulting partners. Knowledge of Agile product development methodologies. Exceptional communication, presentation, storytelling, facilitation, and stakeholder management skills. Deep understanding of AI/ML-enabled products, generative AI experiences, conversational interfaces, and human-AI interaction design. Employment eligibility to work with American Express in the United States is required as the company will not pursue visa sponsorship for these positions.