Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Director of UX Research and Design

🎯 Role Definition

The Director of UX Research and Design is a senior, strategic leader who sets the vision for user experience, leads a blended team of UX researchers and designers, and embeds a customer-centered approach across the product lifecycle. This role establishes research rigor (qualitative and quantitative), design systems, and operational processes that scale, while influencing company strategy through user insights and validated design. The Director owns hiring, mentoring, budgeting, vendor relationships, and executive-level storytelling to ensure design and research produce measurable business impact.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Senior UX Researcher with cross-functional leadership experience
Lead Product Designer / Principal Product Designer
Head of Research or Design Manager with P&L or program ownership

Advancement To:

VP of Design / VP of UX & Research
Head of Product Experience / Chief Design Officer
Global Head of Customer Experience (CX) or Product Strategy

Lateral Moves:

Director of Product Management (customer-centered product leadership)
Director of Research Operations or Design Operations

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Lead the creation and execution of a multi-year UX research and design strategy that aligns with company goals, product roadmaps, and business KPIs, ensuring user insights directly inform prioritization and product investment.
Build, scale, and manage a high-performing cross-disciplinary team of UX researchers, UX/UI designers, content strategists, and design operations specialists; own hiring, development plans, performance reviews, and career ladders.
Define and institutionalize a mixed-methods research practice (qualitative interviews, ethnography, usability testing, diary studies, surveys, analytics-backed experiments) to generate actionable insights across discovery, product development, and post-launch optimization.
Establish research operations (participant recruitment, research repository, templates, tooling, budgets) to ensure efficient, repeatable, and compliant human-centered research at scale.
Lead the development and stewardship of the design system and component library (tokens, patterns, accessibility standards) to improve design consistency, developer handoff, and engineering velocity.
Partner closely with Product Management and Engineering leadership to embed continuous discovery into agile workflows and ensure research and design inputs are represented in sprint planning and roadmaps.
Translate research findings into clear, prioritized recommendations and measurable success criteria; define UX metrics, experiment designs, and dashboards that tie design outcomes to business metrics (activation, retention, conversion).
Plan and manage team budgets, vendor contracts, and external research partnerships; negotiate and monitor research vendor SLAs and deliverables to maximize ROI.
Create and present compelling executive-level narratives and research artifacts (synthesis, opportunity maps, personas, journey maps) that influence senior stakeholders and drive product/cross-functional decisions.
Champion inclusive design, accessibility (WCAG compliance), and ethical research practices across teams, ensuring products meet legal and company standards for privacy and accessibility.
Drive cross-product discovery initiatives (service blueprints, ecosystem mapping, cross-channel research) to identify strategic opportunities and reduce duplicated effort.
Operationalize rapid experimentation and usability testing frameworks (remote moderated/unmoderated, A/B testing collaboration) to validate hypotheses and accelerate learning loops.
Own the hiring plan and competency model for research and design roles; mentor senior leads and create succession pathways to build long-term bench strength.
Create and maintain a centralized knowledge base (research repository) with searchable insights, decision logs, and playbooks to increase organizational reuse of findings and reduce research redundancy.
Design and implement governance for research data, participant privacy, and legal compliance in partnership with legal, privacy, and security teams.
Facilitate synthesis workshops and cross-functional ideation sessions that translate customer insights into validated product concepts and prioritized backlogs.
Partner with analytics, data science, and product analytics teams to integrate quantitative data (behavioral analytics, funnel analysis) with qualitative insights for robust mixed-methods evidence.
Measure and report on the impact of UX research and design investments via cohort analysis, pre/post usability scores, NPS/CSAT trends, conversion lift, and other product KPIs to demonstrate ROI to stakeholders.
Create a culture of user empathy and research literacy across the organization by designing and delivering training, office hours, and stakeholder enablement programs.
Lead design reviews, critique sessions, and research readouts to uphold quality standards for product experiences and ensure designs scale across platforms (web, mobile, native apps).
Set standards for prototyping fidelity and tooling strategy (Figma, Framer, Axure, Miro) to optimize iteration speed and cross-functional collaboration.
Manage complex cross-functional initiatives, remove team blockers, and advocate for engineering and product investments that lead to superior end-user outcomes.
Foster relationships with external research communities, academic partners, or industry groups to keep the team current on emerging methodologies and to recruit specialized talent.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
Coordinate cross-team scheduling, resource allocation, and research priority trade-offs to maintain momentum on high-impact initiatives.
Maintain and evolve team tooling, vendor lists, and procurement processes to reduce friction for everyday research and design work.
Support organizational initiatives like mergers & acquisitions due diligence, new market entry research, and post-merger design consolidation.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Advanced user research capabilities: ethnography, contextual inquiry, generative & evaluative research, diary studies, diary research, moderated and unmoderated usability testing, and longitudinal studies.
Strong quantitative analysis & experimentation skills: A/B testing design, funnel analysis, cohort analysis, statistical significance, and integration with analytics platforms (Mixpanel, Amplitude, GA4).
Design leadership and system thinking: building and maintaining design systems, pattern libraries, component governance, design tokens, and developer handoff best practices.
Proficiency with modern design and collaboration tools: Figma (design systems), Sketch, Adobe XD, Framer, Miro, FigJam, and prototyping tools to accelerate validation.
Research operations & tools: participant recruitment platforms, research repositories (Dovetail, Notion, Airtable), remote testing tools (UserTesting, Lookback, Maze), and ethics/compliance tooling.
Accessibility and inclusive design expertise: WCAG guidelines, accessibility testing tools, assistive technology knowledge, and inclusive research methodologies.
Strong data literacy: ability to work with SQL, product analytics, dashboards (Looker, Tableau), and to partner with data teams to triangulate evidence.
Product discovery and validation: experience running discovery sprints, opportunity solution trees, jobs-to-be-done frameworks, and rapid prototyping to validate product-market fit.
Budgeting, vendor negotiation, and contract management skills for research agencies, tooling, and training.
Familiarity with service design, CX mapping, and multi-channel experience orchestration for complex product ecosystems.

Soft Skills

Strategic thinking with strong business acumen; able to translate user needs into measurable business outcomes.
Executive communication and storytelling: concise, compelling presentations and ability to influence C-level stakeholders.
Strong stakeholder management and cross-functional collaboration skills; able to balance competing priorities and drive alignment.
Coaching and mentorship: proven track record of developing designers and researchers into senior leaders.
Empathy and user-centered mindset; advocates for the customer in product trade-offs.
Facilitation and synthesis skills: running workshops, design sprints, and synthesis sessions that produce actionable outcomes.
Change management and organizational influencing: ability to embed new processes and scale research/design practices across teams.
Prioritization and resource management: balance short-term delivery with long-term capability building.
Curiosity and continuous learning orientation; stays current on UX research and design trends, tools, and methodologies.
Resilience and adaptability in ambiguous, fast-moving product environments.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor’s degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Psychology, Anthropology, Human Factors, Computer Science, or a related discipline.

Preferred Education:

Master’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Human Factors, Design, Cognitive Psychology, or equivalent advanced degree; MBA or relevant business education is a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
Psychology (Cognitive, Social)
Anthropology or Ethnography
Industrial Design / Interaction Design
Computer Science or Information Systems

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 8–15+ years in UX research, product design, or related fields with at least 4–6 years in leadership roles managing cross-functional teams.

Preferred:

Demonstrated experience building and scaling research and design teams at a product-led company.
Proven track record of driving measurable product improvements through user-centered design and research.
Experience working with enterprise and consumer product stakeholders, complex B2B or B2C ecosystems, and cross-platform product portfolios.
Prior experience with hiring, mentoring, performance management, and building design/research career frameworks.
Experience managing budgets, vendor relationships, and global research operations is highly desirable.