At MassMutual, we’re passionate about helping millions of people find financial freedom and this passion has driven our approach to developing highly interactive digital experiences for our customers. The Digital Experience team, part of MassMutual’s Enterprise Technology & Experience organization, is comprised of collaborative, cross-functional, product centric groups who like to have fun, challenge each other, and are energized to create innovative solutions that exceed the changing needs of our customers.

To help us achieve our mission, we are hiring a Product Design Lead to join our team.

What great looks like in this role

An established designer with proven ability to lead complex new and existing digital products from inception to delivery who defines the approach including timeframes and research activities.

A skilled designer with deep proficiency on a multiple subject matters. An inspiring presenter that leads a 1-2 person team to accomplish design deliverables

Great partner that earns trust and is able to easily reach agreement

Objectives of this role

• Establish the overall design approach for a new digital product using team’s approach
• Evangelize our approach to design and partner across teams and stakeholders to educate and successfully deliver
• Develop innovative and intuitive design solutions that meet users needs while balancing user needs

Daily and monthly responsibilities

• Establishes framework for competitive analysis by reviewing competitors/complementors and identifying differentiating capabilities and design trends with differentiating capabilities and trends
• Articulates and refines "problem space" identifying solution options and recommended approach
• Articulates the design direction for significant feature or digital product
• Develops design concepts rapidly and iteratively to address the user and business needs
• Details out design concepts with user flows and wireframes. Develop detailed design annotations for developers and QA engineers
• Create pattern libraries to establish consistent cross-platform design
• Leverage existing experience pattern library while looking for opportunities to extend and innovate
• Contributes significantly to Minimal Viable Products (MVP) using rapid prototyping and iterative design techniques
• Employs and participates in the full range of user research methods
• Conducts exploratory research in the early stages of concept development to identify users’ needs, motivation and frustrations as well as comparable tools
• Packages information in presentations that clearly communicate ideas tailored to the audience
• Leads workshops to support the design development process with cross-disciplinary team members and business partners
• Works closely with the rest of the product design team to review own work and critique the team’s designs
• Collaborates with cross-disciplinary team and partner with business stakeholders to develop designs from concept to details and capture feasibility and applicability. Closely works with copywriters
• Evaluates issues with technology and business partners. Identify potential solutions
• Leads 1-2 person team for work project. Supports junior resources with task estimation and guides design development. 

Skills and qualifications

• Minimum 5 years’ experience
• Ability to understand complex financial business landscape and drivers
• Experience with the full range of design problems from simpler (i.e. information & marketing) to complex (i.e. transactional)
• Experience designing for different platforms & form-factor
• Ability to develop user profiles, journeys and relevant features backed by data (user focused)
• Ability to use data to drive design decisions
• Can perform heuristic analysis of digital experiences 
• Expert at identifying and employing the full range of research methods from concept validation, to card-sorting and usability testing to ensure we’re meeting the users needs
• Able to present work employing different storytelling techniques, promoting the process and educating team members and stakeholders. Presents recommendations backed by analysis and solution options
• Proven ability to embrace change and ambiguity as an opportunity for design to lead product development with new features and user goals.
• Autonomous. Take full ownership of work, and responsibility for every last detail. Communicates progress and issues that affect expected completion. Troubleshoots alternatives for on-time delivery. Resolves conflicts, issues, risks
• Ability to plan design development activities based on our established approach. Accurately estimates own work and dependencies. Can break down the work and estimate how more junior resources will support the effort 
• Authorized to work in the USA with or without sponsorship
• Bachelor’s degree is required

Preferred qualifications

• Can evaluate full range analytics to identify areas of optimization and opportunity including opportunities for A/B testing
• Ability to coach team members and supports their growth. Helps junior team members remain positive when unexpected adjustments to activities occur.