Lead Product Designer

Lead Product Designer

Job Number: 26-04494

Find your next opportunity in the Financial Services Industry. ECLARO is looking for a Lead Product Designer for our client in New York, NY.

ECLARO's client is one of the largest mutual life insurance companies and provides long-term care insurance, mutual funds and retirement-plan services across the US. If you’re up to the challenge, then take a chance at this rewarding opportunity!

Position Overview

• As a contract Lead Product Designer on client, you'll set the design direction and quality bar for a cross-functional squad and its roadmap.
• As a senior individual contributor, you'll shape the experience for key areas of client, govern design quality, and deliver prototypes using agentic design tooling and Madi, client's Figma-based enterprise design system.
• Reporting to the Director of Product Design, you'll partner with Product, Engineering, and Implementation leaders in a Scaled Agile (SAFe) environment to influence the roadmap, align stakeholders, and mentor design peers.
• Hands-on through build and QA so what ships matches what was designed, while making sure the client experience holds together across web and/or mobile and simplifies complex workflows for users.

Responsibilities

• Experience strategy and design direction for client:
• Turn ambiguous, cross-cutting problems into clear user flows and high-fidelity prototypes for core client workflows (e.g., navigation, dashboards, servicing tasks, forms, document and data review, and key decision points).
• Set and govern the design quality bar: production-ready prototypes (component usage, states, responsive behavior, content guidance, accessibility notes, and edge cases), Dev Mode handoff, and design QA against intent.
• Lead client's use of Madi: apply and extend components and patterns, drive contributions through the contribution process, and keep documentation current so the team moves faster with each release.
• Influence the roadmap and drive delivery in SAFe:
• Influence roadmap and prioritization with Product Owners/Managers and leadership; contribute to PI planning and sprint ceremonies and keep design ahead of development across concurrent sprints.
• Collaborate daily with Product, Engineering, and Implementation teams; manage stakeholder conflict, make pragmatic tradeoffs, and unblock engineers during build.
• Work from analytics, usability research, support drivers, and stakeholder input to identify friction, prioritize fixes and enhancements, and translate findings into designs that move the numbers.
• Identify delivery, compliance, and experience risks early and escalate them with clear options.
• Lead co-creation and mentor the team:
• Facilitate working sessions (story mapping, journey mapping, design studios, and critique) to align on problems, explore options, and land decisions quickly.
• Coach and mentor designers on the client squad through critique and feedback, raising craft and consistency across the team's work.
• Present design strategy, rationale, and impact to senior and executive stakeholders, framing decisions in terms of business value.
• Ship for outcomes, not output:
• Advocate for the user in cross-functional discussions, using evidence to align stakeholders on the right problems to solve.
• Bring AI-assisted workflows into the team's practice and guide design for AI-powered client capabilities with transparency, accessibility, and compliance in mind.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of digital product design experience, including leading design for a product, workstream, or portfolio, with a track record of shipping high-quality, production-ready work across product types (e.g., responsive web, apps, portals, workflow tools).
• Deep craft in high-fidelity UI, design systems, responsive and multi-breakpoint design, and detailed developer handoff, with the judgment to set standards others follow.
• Experience owning a live product after launch, iterating through a continuous roadmap and tying enhancements to measurable outcomes.
• Experience leading design in a Scaled Agile (SAFe) environment, shaping sprint and PI planning with Product, Engineering, and Implementation teams, and staying through QA.
• Experience presenting to and influencing senior and executive stakeholders, and clearly articulating and defending design decisions.
• Experience designing complex, structured systems such as dashboards, portals, data-heavy workflows, and form-based experiences.
• Strong command of interaction design, visual design, and UX writing collaboration, including content architecture across journeys.
• Fluent in AI-augmented design workflows (e.g., Figma AI, Claude Design, ChatGPT, NotebookLM) with measurable efficiency gains; able to review AI-generated outputs for quality and compliance and lead AI toolset adoption across the team.
• Expert in Figma (components, variables, auto layout, prototyping, and Dev Mode handoff), able to set standards and train others. Proficient with FigJam and Miro; comfortable with Adobe Creative Suite.
• Familiarity with technical architecture concepts (service-oriented architecture, micro-services, data models) and front-end basics (HTML, CSS).
• Strong understanding of accessibility standards (WCAG 2.1 AA) and inclusive design, with the ability to define accessibility standards for a product portfolio.
• Executive-level communication skills; able to align cross-functional leaders and give engineers and designers clear, actionable direction.
• Meticulous attention to detail across states, edge cases, and content, with a pragmatic sense of what to ship now versus later.
• Comfortable using qualitative + quantitative inputs (e.g., usability testing, Qualtrics, Adobe Analytics/GA4) and OKR-based metrics to prioritize and iterate on live features.
• Portfolio required: Please include a portfolio or case studies as a document or link with your resume when applying (including any passwords). Please do not use Dropbox or other file-sharing tools we cannot access.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in life insurance, financial services, or other highly regulated industries designing complex application or servicing experiences.
• Experience architecting agentic or conversational UX patterns (e.g., goal-oriented flows, fallback states, trust and transparency, and AI-to-human handoff) with attention to Responsible AI and privacy-by-design practices.
• Experience shipping designs across a range of front ends (e.g., content management systems, low/no-code platforms, framework-based front ends, native apps).
• Experience with experimentation (A/B testing), personalization, and optimization of key journeys (adoption, task completion, and engagement).
• Advocates for accessibility best practices, with deep knowledge of ADA compliance and WCAG guidelines, and experience embedding them into design solutions.

If hired, you will enjoy the following

ECLARO Benefits

• 401k Retirement Savings Plan administered by Merrill Lynch
• Commuter Check Pretax Commuter Benefits
• Eligibility to purchase Medical, Dental & Vision Insurance through ECLARO

If interested, you may contact

Lester Candilado

jan.candilado@eclaro.com

6466800168

Lester Candilado | LinkedIn

Equal Opportunity Employer

ECLARO values diversity and does not discriminate based on Race, Color, Religion, Sex, Sexual Orientation, National Origin, Age, Genetic Information, Disability, Protected Veteran Status, or any other legally protected group status, in compliance with all applicable laws.