Position descriptionSonar is looking for a CVP of Design to own the end-to-end design vision and execution across our product portfolio. Reporting to the CPO, this is Sonar's most senior design leadership role, responsible for setting design strategy, scaling a high-performing global design organization, and ensuring our products deliver an exceptional, cohesive experience for developers and enterprise customers alike. You will partner closely with Product, Engineering, and Executive Leadership to translate customer needs and market trends into design decisions that drive measurable business impact.
What you will do- Own the end-to-end product design vision, including visual design, interaction design, workflows, and overall platform evolution across Sonar's product line.
- Define and drive a design strategy that ties directly to measurable business outcomes, working with Product and Engineering leadership to prioritize investments. Track and report on design's impact on key business and product metrics.
- Build, scale, and lead a global design organization, including hiring, mentoring, and developing design talent to foster a high-performing, creative, and inclusive team culture.
- Champion and evolve Sonar's design systems and UX best practices, ensuring consistency and quality across a complex, technical, developer-facing product suite.
- Guide the design approach for agentic and AI-driven features, ensuring the team understands emerging patterns and best practices in this space.
- Engage directly with customers, users, and industry leaders to gather insights, and translate those insights into actionable, high-impact design solutions.
- Represent design at the executive level, communicating strategy, trade-offs, and progress to executive leadership and cross-functional, global stakeholders.
- Partner with Product Management and Engineering to ensure design is embedded early in the product development process, not bolted on at the end.
Experience and qualifications- 7+ years of management experience in product design, UX, or a related field, with a proven track record of leading and scaling teams globally.
- Demonstrated success in end-to-end product design leadership, including visual design, interaction design, workflows, strategic product thinking, and platform evolution.
- Deep expertise in design systems and UX best practices, including experience designing for developer tools, API based tools, or similar technical/complex products.
- Good understanding of the agentic domain and how it shapes product and design decisions.
- Experience defining design strategy that drives measurable business outcomes.
- Exceptional collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to work effectively across executive leadership, cross-functional teams, and global stakeholders.
- Proven ability to mentor and develop design talent, fostering a high-performing, creative, and inclusive global design culture.
- Deep understanding of customer needs and market trends, with experience engaging directly with users and industry leaders to translate insights into actionable, high-impact design solutions.
Additional commentsThis role is based in Austin. We are unable to consider candidates unwilling to be in Austin, but we are willing to relocate the right candidate.
