Director, Product Design - AI in Experience Design

About the role

The Experience Design (XD) team at Capital One is at the forefront of enriching our customers’ digital and physical experiences. We are passionate about creating memorable, meaningful product experiences that build the Capital One brand with humanity and drive business advantage and innovation. We champion a thriving environment of collaboration, authenticity, and healthy critique, honoring diversity of thought, creating a culture of belonging, and elevating one another. If you’re a creative innovator who embraces an environment where you can experiment, learn, and change banking for good, we’d love to hear from you.

This role is part of our XD top-of-house team, working closely with the SVP, Chief Design Officer, and their Senior Leadership Team. The Director will build and own roadmaps across AI tooling, AI-enabled design process evolution, and AI-centric talent upskilling across Design at Capital One. With a destination-backed mindset, this leader will play a strategic role in defining the vision of how Design works with AI and also serve as a player-coach, modeling day-to-day implementation. Operating at the intersection of high-level strategy and hands-on execution, you will partner directly with Senior Executives across Product, Engineering, and Design to drive experimentation and adoption of AI, focusing on a roadmap that balances bold, big-picture thinking with immediate, actionable milestones. The mission is twofold: to establish a definitive future vision for AI integration and to act as a catalyst for accelerating AI adoption across the Experience Design organization and beyond, balancing both risk and fast-paced innovation.

We are looking for a seasoned design veteran who carries the gravitas to influence the C-suite, possesses the organizational rigor of a program lead, and maintains a deep, personal passion for AI experimentation—someone who isn’t just watching the AI shift happen but is actively rewriting what the design discipline looks like in the future.

Responsibilities

• Drive transformative efficiency by architecting and scaling AI-driven design processes and tooling—including Claude, Gemini, and assistive IDEs—across the organization’s highly matrixed environment.
• Define required workforce transformation, ensuring new technical capabilities are seamlessly integrated into the operating model.
• Partner with executive leadership to bridge the gap between high-level innovation and disciplined execution to deliver measurable business value and experience excellence at scale.
• Leverage established expertise and leadership in product design to elevate the quality and maturity of the design practice at Capital One.
• Collaborate with cross-functional partners to oversee and optimize the use of appropriate tools, platforms, frameworks, and design systems.
• Develop artifacts such as vision stories, journey maps, blueprints, high-fidelity designs, and prototypes.
• Shape product direction and outcomes by leveraging deep product design expertise, user insights, and an understanding of the business.
• Drive alignment with cross-functional executive leaders, ensuring user needs are central to overall strategy and enabling bold, innovative solutions to complex problems.
• Recognize and pursue opportunities where customer needs and business goals coincide, reinforcing the importance of diverse customer perspectives throughout the design process.
• Demonstrate mastery of products, processes, customers, competitors, and broader industry trends to predict shifts and shape how Design engages, uncovers, and solves significant business challenges.
• Drive cross-functional groups in thinking creatively about potential solutions, illuminating pitfalls, and fostering shared learnings.
• Build frameworks for complex decision-making that enable effective debate and accelerate getting to the right solutions.
• Connect the dots across the organization, proactively bringing together executive partners to drive more coherent experiences, accelerate delivery, and elevate the value of design.
• Present work to executive leaders and stakeholders, modeling a strategic human-centered approach that integrates design frameworks, data, and research insights to make the complex accessible, influence change, and drive strategic direction.

Requirements

• At least 8 years of experience in a product design role.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in a product design role.
• Experience leading a portfolio of work implementing AI processes and tools at scale in a design organization.
• Experience in a design toolkit that spans product design, service design, and content design.
• Expertise with AI assistants tools like Claude or Gemini, agentic development like Claude Code, state machine visualizers like Stately, XState, and assistive tools like Windsurf.
• Experience leading high-impact, highly complex projects from strategy through delivery to market.
• Experience partnering with product managers, engineers, marketing, and analytics leaders across multiple business lines to shape strategy, OKRs, roadmaps, and operating models.
• Experience working within an established design system.
• Proficiency with web and mobile technologies and platforms, navigating technology considerations and constraints to drive sound product and experience decisions.
• Expertise with design and prototyping tools such as Figma.
• Proficiency in business case development, grounding product and user experience decisions to business value.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills.
• Exceptional interpersonal skills and relationship building across complex organizations.
• Exceptional people management and development skills.
• A strong portfolio demonstrating leadership, process, results, and impact.

Pay

The minimum and maximum full-time annual salaries for this role are listed below, by location. Salaries for part-time roles will be prorated based on the agreed-upon number of hours to be regularly worked.

• McLean, VA: $230,400 - $263,000 for Director, Design
• New York, NY: $251,400 - $286,900 for Director, Design
• San Francisco, CA: $251,400 - $286,900 for Director, Design

Candidates hired to work in other locations will be subject to the pay range associated with that location, and the actual annualized salary amount offered will be reflected solely in the candidate’s offer letter.

This role is also eligible to earn performance-based incentive compensation, which may include cash bonus(es) and/or long-term incentives (LTI). Incentives could be discretionary or non-discretionary depending on the plan.

Benefits

Capital One offers a comprehensive, competitive, and inclusive set of health, financial, and other benefits that support your total well-being. Eligibility varies based on full or part-time status, exempt or non-exempt status, and management level.

Learn more at the Capital One Careers website.