Senior Vice President, Product Design Lead, Platform

About the role

We are seeking a Product Design Lead to own and drive the design strategy for one of our core platforms. This role is suited for a highly experienced individual contributor who excels at designing complex systems, operates with a high degree of independence, and can bring clarity and coherence to ambiguous problem spaces.

Responsibilities

• User-Centered Design at Platform Scale
• Lead design with a strong user-first perspective, grounding decisions in user needs, behaviors, and research insights.
• Balance usability, consistency, and flexibility to create platform experiences that support both expert users and evolving product needs.
• Ability to Learn and Navigate Complex Domains
• Demonstrate comfort working in highly complex, regulated environments without requiring prior subject-matter expertise. Quickly develop an understanding of new domains, such as depository receipts, by synthesizing information from product, engineering, and business partners, and translating that understanding into clear, user-focused design solutions.
• End-to-End Journey Thinking
• Map and analyze multi-step, cross-system user journeys involving clients, internal teams, and supporting systems. Identify friction, gaps, and opportunities to improve usability and coherence across the platform, and use journey artifacts to align teams on shared user needs and design intent.
• Interaction and UI Design for Complex Workflows
• Create clear interaction models, information hierarchy, and navigation patterns that make intricate processes understandable and efficient. Use motion and micro-interactions thoughtfully to guide users and reduce cognitive load.
• Design-Led Collaboration and Influence
• Partner closely with product managers, engineers, and business stakeholders as a design expert. Clearly articulate design principles, user impact, and rationale behind design decisions, helping non-design partners understand trade-offs and align around user-centered solutions, without requiring them to be design experts themselves.
• Independence and Ownership
• Operate with minimal direction, driving design work from problem framing through execution. Proactively identify design opportunities, risks, and dependencies, and move work forward in ambiguous environments while maintaining alignment with broader platform goals.
• Design System Contribution
• Contribute to and help extend a global design system, ensuring consistency and reuse across the platform. Identify where new patterns are needed, document them clearly, and collaborate with other designers to support adoption and scalability.
• Complex Systems Thinking
• Apply systems thinking to connect workflows, data, and interactions across the platform. Distill complexity into coherent experiences while preserving the depth and control required by advanced users.
• Communication, Critique, and Storytelling
• Communicate design concepts clearly and confidently to diverse audiences. Use visual storytelling to explain how design decisions support usability, consistency, and long-term platform health. Participate in and lead design critiques that raise the quality of work across teams.
• Design Leadership Without Line Management
• Act as a senior design leader by setting a high bar for craft, rigor, and clarity. Provide informal mentorship and feedback to other designers, helping elevate design quality through example, critique, and collaboration rather than formal people management.

Qualifications

A portfolio is required and should demonstrate strong interaction design, systems thinking, and experience working in complex or ambiguous problem spaces. A Figma link with view access is acceptable.

Experience typically includes 10–12 years of experience designing digital products, including time spent on complex, enterprise, or regulated systems. Prior domain expertise is less important than demonstrated ability to learn new domains and apply strong design principles effectively.

Skills

Strong user-centered design skills, ability to learn and navigate complex domains, end-to-end journey thinking, interaction and UI design for complex workflows, design-led collaboration and influence, independence and ownership, design system contribution, complex systems thinking, communication, critique, and storytelling, and design leadership without line management.

Benefits

At BNY, we offer highly competitive compensation, benefits, and wellbeing programs rooted in a strong culture of excellence and our pay-for-performance philosophy. We provide access to flexible global resources and tools for your life’s journey. Focus on your health, foster your personal resilience, and reach your financial goals as a valued member of our team, along with generous paid leaves, including paid volunteer time, that can support you and your family through moments that matter.

Pay

The base salary for this position is expected to be between $102,000 and $246,000 per year at the commencement of employment. However, base salary if hired will be determined on an individualized basis, including as to experience and market location, and is only part of the BNY total compensation package, which, depending on the position, may also include commission earnings, discretionary bonuses, short and long-term incentive packages, and Company-sponsored benefit programs.

Schedule

This position is at-will and the Company reserves the right to modify base salary (as well as any other discretionary payment or compensation) at any time, including for reasons related to individual performance, change in geographic location, Company or individual department/team performance, and market factors.