Job DescriptionJOB SUMMARY
The Director, Associate UX - Revenue Strategy reporting to the VP, Experience Design + Innovation within the Business Transformation Office, plays a critical role in creating industry-leading associate-facing (employee, owner- and franchise-facing) digital experiences across the full portfolio of Marriott brands. The ideal candidate must be able to think strategically, obsess about the associate and implement at scale, all while fostering cohesion across the customer and associate journey.
The ideal candidate has experience rooted in an empathetic understanding of both the associate's physical and digital environments and where the two connect/overlap. The Director leads the design of on-property user experiences, with a keen focus on data-driven, best-in-class product design from both the travel industry and other key disruptors/innovators (think mobile, Web, voice, etc.). This UX leader advances digital experiences that deliver on both revenue conversion and emotional engagement to foster loyalty. Acts as a senior thought partner to Product and Domain leadership, influencing product vision, roadmap sequencing, and experience-driven prioritization decisions across the Revenue Strategy portfolio.
This role serves as the Design Lead for the Revenue Strategy domain, partnering closely with Product, Revenue Management, Data, and Technology leaders to translate revenue strategy into intuitive, decision-centric product experiences. The Director provides design leadership across multiple products within the domain, with a particular focus on Adaptive Pricing and Inventory and Yield, ensuring experiences work together as a cohesive system rather than independent tools.
A strong portfolio is critical. Your portfolio should showcase experience in UX and interaction design, particularly highlighting simplicity and ease of use. Diversity of projects is as important as curation to choose a solid collection of outcomes. Candidates should be prepared to discuss their role in leading and executing the work included in the portfolio.
CANDIDATE PROFILE Education and Experience Required - 8+ years experience in digital product design, 5+ as a manager, with demonstrated leadership experience across platforms
- 4-year undergraduate degree, with bachelor's degree in relevant discipline, or equivalent experience
- Demonstrated success in end-to-end UX design for specific digital products; ideally with associate/employee-facing and/or enterprise products
- Solid background/understanding of UX, design thinking, methodology, and design operations; passion for DesignOps and how to build, scale, train, and refine teams, tools, and processes/deliverables
- Proven experience delivering concepts, user flows/ journeys, wireframes, prototypes, etc. across platforms (desktop, mobile web, app, etc.) with inclusivity in mind
- Provides oversight and direction to achieve a cohesive user experience that fosters synergy between the digital and physical experience
- Understands and advocates for associate needs and how those manifests through digital experiences
- Promotes UX best practices drawn from a variety of disciplines (within and beyond hospitality)
- Proactively maintains a keen focus across product areas to ensure journey-wide synergy
- Communicates through appropriate visuals and deliverables
- Oversees the design work with resources both internal to Marriott and external
Education and Experience Preferred - Demonstrated strong presentation, negotiation, and persuasion skills
- Demonstrates self-confidence, energy, and enthusiasm in leading and influencing teams
- Is adept at explaining complicated concepts through clear visuals to facilitate understanding across the organization
- Proven ability to lead and work with cross-functional teams in support of specific business priorities, work well with counterparts from various business functions, and influencing work of counterparts without direct reporting accountability, through strong interpersonal skills
- Demonstrated ability to deliver results under challenging conditions, breaking complexity into understandable chunks, bringing ambiguity into focus
- Ability to solve problems quickly, think creatively, and drive speed-to-market delivery, while optimizing outcomes
- Strong grounding in general usability and transactional design best practices
- Demonstrated success in managing large-scale, omni-channel digital platform design and development initiatives, ideally for a major, large-scale global digital app, web site, or other digital product within the commerce or travel space.
- Experience with Agile / SAFE development methodologies preferred
- Experience working with and managing offshore resources preferred
- Proficency manageing and contributing to the evolving design system
CORE WORK ACTIVITIES Goals - Sets and maintains personal development goals and works with leadership to set team goals
- Helps direct reports with setting and maintaining personal development goals and provides feedback on progress to goals through review process
- Provides discipline expertise and leadership to help meet department and company goals and KPIs
Managing Work, Projects, and Policies - Meets deadlines once agreed upon; ensures teams and directs also meet deadlines
- Provides regular status updates through appropriate channels
- Successfully leads multiple tracks of work at once
- Works based on priorities and ensures teams and direct reports are clear on their own priorities
- Accepts critique and critiques work of others in a helpful and professional manner
- Communicates in a timely and appropriate manner
Executing and Supporting Design - Produces sketches, wireframes, personas, journey maps, flows, designs, motion specs, prototypes and/or presentations as needed to communicate experience design
- Produces both innovative high-level design concepts as well as development-ready designs with specifications
- Ensure a quality experience on live digital products by participating in the user acceptance testing process
- Employ prototyping, user testing and research to inform your design work and thinking
- Present and clearly communicate design solutions and rationale
- Engage in critiques as well as share new learnings and case studies
- Manage and contribute to the evolving design system
- Challenge existing processes with new ways for the team to be more effective
- Create and maintain design documentation
Revenue Strategy Design Leadership
- Shape and evolve the experience vision for Revenue Strategy products, aligning design decisions across the domain, supporting OKRs and economic outcomes
- Lead design thinking for complex Revenue Strategy decisions, balancing usability with analytical rigor
- Ensure experiences across products reflect a shared mental model for how revenue decisions are made
- Partner with Product and Revenue leaders to influence roadmaps, prioritization, and tradeoff decisions
Leadership & Management - Leads work done by both internal associates and external vendors
- Manages vendor relationships
- Provides oversight and leadership for multiple tracks of work, providing quality feedback to both internal associates and vendor resources to move design work forward
- Thinks and works at both the strategic and executional levels; sees both the "forest" and the "trees" and guides teams accordingly
Demonstrating and Applying Discipline Knowledge - Where appropriate, communicates through rapid hand sketched interfaces and flows rather than more time-consuming deliverables.
- Provides subject matter expertise on key functional systems to help shepherd strategic initiatives from idea to feasible implementation
- Provides subject matter expertise on Associate Experience including associate needs and interactions to ensure optimal infusion throughout digital products
- Provides information architecture / user experience / visual design oversight through review and critique for all products to promote a cohesive user experience
- Produces both innovative high-level design concepts / strategy visualizations as well as development-ready designs with specifications
- Partners closely with the Customer User Experience to ensure continuity across Customer and Associate channels, where applicable.
- Works collaboratively with other sub-disciplines in User Experience as well as other teammates across the organization
- Keeps skills up-to-date on industry trends and applies new knowledge to job, identifying strategic opportunities for competitive advantages through those findings
Measurement and Analytics - With an evidence-based mindset, stay focused on continuously improving and re-evaluating the best business and user experience solutions across all channels and products
- Comfortable with multiple qualitative and quantitative research methods, like surveys, usability testing, multivariate testing, A/B testing, etc.
- Ability to take qual/quant dashboards/results and translate into an actionable design strategy
- Uses tracking, metrics, segment data, and user research to inform design decisions
- Collaborates with product managers to ensure priorities align with business objectives and KPIs
- Uses various user research methodologies to get design feedback and iterates designs based on findings
- Breaks down designs into options/variables for A/B or multi-variate testing
Demonstrating and Applying Technical Knowledge - Understands web technologies and principles- like responsive design, front-end markup and libraries such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery and Ajax methods, plus Content Management Systems, Web Services, Salesforce, and APIs-and uses this knowledge in collaboration with developers
- Understands underlying technologies behind guest communications (email and chat), guest services (check-in/out, service requests, shuttle service), venue applications (dining, spa, golf), guest room entertainment, smart screens, property portal and internet services, etc. and uses this in collaboration with developers and operations teams working on related business processes
- Expertise level understanding of design tools such as Figma, Sketch and Invision DSM and uses this knowledge in extending and maintaining a Design System
- Keeps technical knowledge up-to-date and applies new knowledge to job
Additional Responsibilities - Works and leads independently with minimal supervision, but knows when issues should be escalated to manager
- Foster relationships with key partners within and beyond the digital space
- Presents work with clarity and confidence; explains complex matters so that others can understand
- Uses appropriate communication mechanisms (i.e. in-person conversation, Microsoft Teams chat, email, phone call) for each situation
- Demonstrates self-confidence, energy and enthusiasm
- Performs other reasonable duties as assigned by manager
