Associate Design Director

About the role

As a Design Manager at Lilly, you will lead people, set creative direction, and operate as a strategic partner to the business. You will be in the work, not above it. Design managers at Lilly are expected to contribute directly to the quality of what their teams produce while building the culture, structure, and processes that allow great design to happen consistently at scale. The people benefiting from that work are patients, caregivers, and the scientists trying to help them.

Core Responsibilities

• Lead with craft. You are expected to contribute directly to the quality of the work, not just review it from a distance.
• Establish and communicate creative vision that gives your team the strategic clarity to execute with confidence.
• Mentor and develop designers across levels, owning growth conversations, work quality, and day-to-day direction.
• Operate as a trusted strategic partner to product, engineering, and business stakeholders, positioning design as a strategic function, not a service.
• Evaluate and raise the bar on both UX and UI/Visual deliverables across your team’s work.
• Run effective design operations: workload management, staffing, critique structure, and delivery processes that allow your team to do their best work.
• Set and uphold a high bar for visual quality across LillyDirect experiences, ensuring clarity, accessibility, polish, and system consistency across the portfolio.
• Stay hands-on across the work, contributing design direction and craft at the project level while managing others.
• Establish design direction across a workstream, ensuring teams have the clarity to execute with confidence.
• Operate as a trusted design partner to senior product and business stakeholders, shaping conversations beyond immediate project scope.
• Contribute directly to visual direction and execution while elevating the aesthetic standard across your team’s work.
• Drive design system evolution and visual quality standards across your product area, modeling the level of craft you expect from others.
• Set the bar for visual craft in critique, ensuring every touchpoint reflects a coherent, high-quality brand expression.
• Lead hybrid product designers who are expected to operate across both UI and UX, with stronger emphasis on visual craft and execution quality.

Basic Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, or a related field
• Or high school diploma/GED with 7+ years of equivalent practical experience
• 7+ years of experience in design, including 2+ years in a design leadership or management role
• A strong portfolio demonstrating personal craft depth alongside evidence of team leadership and quality elevation

Additional Preferences

• Hybrid craft capability: the ability to evaluate and give meaningful critique on both UX and UI/Visual work
• A track record of mentoring and developing designers, with evidence of growth in the people you have managed
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to represent design at senior levels of the organization