ROLE OVERVIEW As Senior Director, Design, you will lead and scale LifeStance's design organization (Product Design, Research, Service Design, Content, and related disciplines). You will own the strategy for delivering cohesive, end-to-end experiences across the patient journey and the workflows of all key user groups-patients, clinicians, operations staff, referring providers, and payors. Your role is to empower and enable designers and researchers to execute this vision, while raising the bar on craft, embedding human-centered thinking, and ensuring design is a strategic differentiator in mental health care.
You will partner closely with Product, Engineering, Clinical, Operations, Marketing, and leadership to align design impact with business goals, clinical outcomes, and operational realities, and you will advocate with senior leadership to ensure design thinking remains a top organizational priority.
Consistent with LifeStance's values, every member of the LifeStance team is expected to support each other and the mission, which may mean participating in projects and initiatives and performing functions and responsibilities not specifically outlined in this job description.
COMPENSATION: $229,000 - $286,000/annually in addition to a competitive bonus plan
KEY RESPONSIBILITESStrategy & Vision- Define and drive the design vision and strategy aligned with LifeStance's mission, growth objectives, and care model
- Translate strategic priorities into coherent design roadmaps and initiatives
- Evangelize design thinking across the organization-ensure design is deeply woven into how decisions are made
- Champion the User: Be the ultimate advocate for our users in all product decisions. Drive a culture of deep user empathy and leverage research and data to inform our design direction.
Leadership & Team Building- Build, mentor, and lead a multidisciplinary design organization (product designers, design ops, design managers, and research)
- Hire top talent and foster an environment of psychological safety, craftsmanship, collaboration, growth, and innovation
- Champion and elevate the craft of design across the organization. Be the standard-bearer for quality, establishing processes and systems that ensure we ship polished, thoughtful, and impactful work.
- Define competencies, career paths, performance frameworks, learning & development for designers
Cross-Functional Collaboration- Partner with Product, Engineering, Clinical leaders, and Operations to integrate design thinking early
- Be a voice for user empathy, human values, accessibility, equity, and inclusion in all design decisions
- Help measure and define design-led KPIs (e.g. adoption, retention, NPS, usability metrics, engagement) and tie design work to business outcomes
- Act as design representative in executive-level discussions, board-level discussions, and external forums
Research, Insights & Innovation- Oversee strategy for generative and evaluative research-ensure insights continuously inform design direction
- Foster experimentation mindset (A/B tests, prototyping, rapid iteration)
- Partner with collaborators to bring more personalized, data-driven, adaptive experiences
- Continuously scan design, health-tech, and mental-health trends for opportunities (e.g. AI/ML personalization, conversational UX, VR/AR therapeutic experiences)
REQUIREMENTS- 10+ years in product / experience / service design, with at least 5 years in leadership (VP, Head, or equivalent)
- Proven track record scaling and leading design organizations across disciplines (UX, UI, research, content, service design)
- Experience in high-complexity, regulated domains (healthcare, wellness, mental health, medical, fintech, etc.)
- Deep expertise in user-centered design, design systems, service design, research methodologies
- Ability to partner with executives, communicate design vision, and influence strategy
- Portfolio demonstrating end-to-end design thinking, strategic impact, and high craft
- Strong operational skills: setting up process, structure, metrics, design governance
- Passion, empathy, and sensitivity-you deeply care about improving mental health access, experience, equity
- Qualified candidates must be legally authorized to be employed in the United States
PREFERRED SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE- Experience in behavioral health, clinical workflows, telehealth, or health operations
- Experience working with AI/ML/personalization in design
- Exposure to physical or hybrid care experiences (clinic, in-person, environmental design)
PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS- The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of the job. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
- While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to sit, stand, bend, talk and hear. The employee is frequently required to walk. The employee must be able to lift and/or move objects up to 25 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, color vision, peripheral vision, depth perception and the ability to adjust focus.
LifeStance provides the compensation range and benefits that it in good faith believes it might pay and/or offer for this position. LifeStance reserves the right to ultimately pay more or less than the posted range and offer additional benefits and other compensation, depending on circumstances not related to an applicant's sex or other status protected by local, state, or federal law.
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