Senior Director, Product Design

About the role

Bentley Systems is seeking a Senior Director, Product Design for Bentley Open Applications. Reporting to the Chief Design Officer and with a dotted line to the SVP, Open Applications, this role will set the vision and strategy for product design across one of Bentley's most critical product portfolios.

Responsibilities

• Set the multi-year vision and strategy for product design across Bentley Open Applications, ensuring that design is a driver of business outcomes, product differentiation, and user value.
• Lead and scale a multi-layered organization of UX designers and researchers, including managers and senior individual contributors, across a distributed global environment.
• Operate as a peer to leaders in Product Management and Engineering, representing design in executive forums and shaping portfolio-level roadmap, investment, and prioritization decisions.
• Champion AI integration across BOA products, identifying opportunities to embed AI capabilities that boost user productivity and surface intelligent insights for infrastructure professionals.
• Drive adoption of AI-assisted design and research workflows to accelerate delivery without compromising craft.
• Establish design principles and patterns for AI-powered experiences, ensuring trust, transparency, and explainability across the portfolio.
• Define and evolve the design operating model, including design systems, research practices, experience strategy, and standards of craft across the portfolio.
• Advocate for responsible and ethical AI, embedding considerations around bias, user agency, and privacy into design decisions.
• Build and steward executive and cross-functional relationships, influencing senior leaders across product, engineering, marketing, and data to align user-centered priorities.
• Own department budget, headcount planning, and organizational design, making strategic investment decisions that balance growth, capability, and efficiency.
• Foster a culture of AI fluency, experimentation, and continuous learning across the design organization.
• Develop the next generation of design leaders, mentoring managers and senior ICs and building a strong community of practice.

Qualifications

• 12+ years in product design and research, with 7+ years leading teams, including experience managing managers and scaling organizations through growth and change.
• Proven track record influencing at the C-suite and executive level and shaping product strategy as a peer to senior Product and Engineering leaders.
• Strategic systems thinker with experience setting multi-year design vision and translating it into measurable business and user outcomes.
• Experience leading design in AI-enabled or data-intensive products, with a point of view on how AI reshapes user experience and design practice.
• Strong commercial acumen, including budget ownership, workforce planning, and prioritization across competing demands.
• Exceptional communicator, facilitator, and storyteller, able to inspire teams and influence executives alike.
• Experience in complex enterprise, B2B, or technical software domains (infrastructure, engineering, or industrial software a plus).