Senior Manager, Innovation Design & Research - Remote

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Job Title

Senior Manager, Innovation Design & Research - Remote

Requisition Number

R7454 Senior Manager, Innovation Design & Research - Remote (Open)

Location

California - Home Teleworkers

Additional Locations

Alabama - Home Teleworkers, Alabama - Home Teleworkers, Arizona - Home Teleworkers, Arkansas - Home Teleworkers, Colorado - Home Teleworkers, Connecticut - Home Teleworkers, Delaware - Home Teleworker, District of Columbia - Home Teleworkers, Florida - Home Teleworkers, Georgia - Home Teleworkers, Idaho - Home Teleworkers, Illinois - Home Teleworkers, Indiana - Home Teleworkers, Iowa - Home Teleworkers, Kansas - Home Teleworker, Kentucky - Home Teleworkers, Louisiana - Home Teleworkers, Maine Home Teleworkers, Maryland - Home Teleworkers, Massachusetts - Home Teleworkers, Michigan - Home Teleworkers, Minnesota - Home Teleworkers, Mississippi - Home Teleworker, Missouri - Home Teleworker, Montana - Home Teleworkers {+ 20 more}

Job Information

CSAA Insurance Group (CSAA IG), a AAA insurer, is one of the top personal lines property and casualty insurance groups in the U.S. Our employees proudly live our core beliefs and fulfill our enduring purpose to help members prevent, prepare for and recover from life's uncertainties, and we're proud of the culture we create together. As we commit to progress over perfection, we recognize that every day is an opportunity to be innovative and adaptable. At CSAA IG, we hire good people for a brighter tomorrow. We are actively hiring for a Senior Manager, Innovation Design & Research. Join us and support CSAA IG in achieving our goals.  

Your Role:

The Senior Manager, Innovation Design & Research is a UX Futurist and senior design leader dedicated to shaping how people will engage with the technologies of tomorrow. Responsible for ensuring the desirability of all innovation initiatives, this role grounds solutions in the needs of members, agents, and employees through human-centered design. Acting as both player and coach, the Senior Manager combines the craft of design with the foresight of a futurist, tackling complex and unexplored questions about future interaction models and experiences. Leveraging a keen technical understanding and expertise in designing complex processes, systems, and interconnected workflows, this leader brings clarity to multifaceted problems and ensures solutions are both scalable and intuitive. As the voice of the future user, the Senior Manager champions design best practices, advances thought leadership on human-AI experiences, and pushes boundaries by translating emerging trends into meaningful, future-ready solutions that redefine the insurance experience.

Your work:

 

Shape the ICD innovation design and research approach

• Anticipate how future technologies, interaction models, and business shifts will reshape user expectations, applying foresight to drive innovation.

• Demonstrate a deep understanding of emerging technologies and their implications for interaction design, ensuring CSAA stays at the forefront of innovation.

• Champion and evolve the CSAA enterprise design system, establishing standards that scale across new innovative products, services, experiences and platforms.

• Author thought leadership and points of view on future interaction models.

Lead desirability of innovation concepts and solutions

• Lead design and research workstreams for innovation projects ensuring initiatives deliver desirable, human-centered experiences aligned to member, agent, and employee needs.

• Direct and conduct ethnographic research, usability testing, and trend analysis to uncover unmet needs and emerging opportunities.

• Oversee the development of personas, detailed journey maps, process flows, and experience blueprints to guide solution design.

• Lead the creation and iteration of concepts, prototypes, and interaction models, validating desirability with users (members, agents, partners, employees).

• Ensure innovations deliver compelling, future-ready experiences by integrating research insights, design frameworks, and foresight practices.

Storytelling & Facilitation

• Facilitate workshops, co-creation sessions, and executive showcases, translating complex design insights into clear narratives that influence decision-making.

• Advocate for design best practices across CSAA, elevating the role of design in shaping the future of insurance.

Team Leadership and talent development

• Manage, coach, and mentor Design & Research direct reports, building skills in UX research, design, and foresight.

• Foster a culture of creativity, inclusion, and continuous learning that strengthens enterprise design capabilities.

Collaborate across ICD

• Collaborate with Engagement Leads, Innovation Strategy, and AI and Emerging Tech Labs teams to integrate desirability into business opportunities.

• Support portfolio evaluation, ensuring a balanced mix of initiatives that align with CSAA’s broader transformation strategy.

• Support external awards/recognition processes (e.g., AM Best).

  

Required Experience, Education and Skills: 

• Bachelor’s degree required.

• 10+ years of experience in design consulting, UX design.

• Significant experience in UX, interaction, or product design, with a strong portfolio showcasing a history of innovative work.

• Proven ability to think at a systems level, translating broad research and business strategy into actionable, customer-centric solutions.

• Expertise in conducting both exploratory research and leveraging existing data to inform design decisions.

• A track record of thriving in undefined problem spaces and confidently navigating uncertainty.

• Exceptional communication and presentation skills, with the ability to build compelling narratives around future concepts for diverse audiences.

• Proficiency with industry-standard design and prototyping tools (e.g., Figma, Visio, Adobe Creative Suite), with a deep understanding of emerging technology.

• An ability to influence and guide a team toward innovative, long-term goals. 

What would make us excited about you? 

• Master of Science (M.S.) or Master of Arts (M.A.) in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Interaction Design, or User Experience Design.

• Service Design and Process Design expertise.

• Strong background in P&C insurance, financial services, or adjacent industries preferred.

• Familiarity with human-centered design, AI/automation, and digital transformation approaches.

• Creates a collaborative, inclusive and psychologically safe environment, demonstrating authenticity and fostering trust to inspire and empower team members and colleagues.

• Actively shapes our company culture through words and actions (e.g., supporting employee resource groups, mentoring employees, volunteering, joining cross-functional projects, encouraging team member involvement in these activities).  

• Champions our cultural norms (e.g., willing to have cameras when it matters: interviewing candidates, building relationships with team members, etc.).  

• Translates our enterprise strategy and priorities for their team members to connect to the bigger picture.   

• Demonstrates a company ownership mindset, thinking beyond boundaries of their own area.   

• Travels as needed for role, including enterprise meetings, divisional / team meetings, and other in-person meetings.  

• Fulfills business needs, which may include investing extra time, helping other teams, etc.

  

CSAA IG Careers    

  

At CSAA IG, we’re proudly devoted to protecting our customers, our employees, our communities, and the world at large. We are on a climate journey to continue to do better for our people, our business, and our planet. Taking bold action and leading by example. We are citizens for a changing world, and we continually change to meet it.   

  

Join us if you…  

• BELIEVE in a mission focused on building a community of service, rooted in inclusion and belonging.  

• COMMIT to being there for our customers and employees.  

• CREATE a sense of purpose that serves the greater good through innovation.    

Recognition: We offer a total compensation package, performance bonus, 401(k) with a company match, and so much more!  Read more about what we offer and what it is like to be a part of our dynamic team at https://careers.csaa-insurance.aaa.com/us/en/benefits   

In most cases, you will have the opportunity to choose your preferred working location from the following options when you join CSAA IG: remote, hybrid, or in-person. Submit your application to be considered. We communicate via email, so check your inbox and/or your spam folder to ensure you don’t miss important updates from us.  

If a reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, please contact [email protected].   

As part of our values, we are committed to supporting inclusion and diversity at CSAA IG. We actively celebrate colleagues’ different abilities, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and gender. Everyone is welcome and supported in their development at all stages in their journey with us.  

We are always recruiting, retaining, and promoting a diverse mix of colleagues who are representative of the U.S. workforce. The diversity of our team fosters a broad range of ideas and enables us to design and deliver a wide array of products to meet customers’ evolving needs.  

CSAA Insurance Group is an equal opportunity employer.    

  

If you apply and are selected to continue in the recruiting process, we will schedule a preliminary call with you to discuss the role and will disclose during that call the available salary/hourly rate range based on your location. Factors used to determine the actual salary offered may include location, experience, or education.  

Must have authorization to work indefinitely in the US.   

Please note we are hiring for this role remote anywhere in the United States with the following exceptions:  Hawaii and Alaska. 

#LI_JH1

Duties & Responsibilities

Shape the ICD innovation design and research approach

• Anticipate how future technologies, interaction models, and business shifts will reshape user expectations, applying foresight to drive innovation.
• Demonstrate a deep understanding of emerging technologies and their implications for interaction design, ensuring CSAA stays at the forefront of innovation.
• Champion and evolve the CSAA enterprise design system, establishing standards that scale across new innovative products, services, experiences and platforms.
• Author thought leadership and points of view on future interaction models

Lead desirability of innovation concepts and solutions

• Lead design and research workstreams for innovation projects ensuring initiatives deliver desirable, human-centered experiences aligned to member, agent, and employee needs.
• Direct and conduct ethnographic research, usability testing, and trend analysis to uncover unmet needs and emerging opportunities.
• Oversee the development of personas, detailed journey maps, process flows, and experience blueprints to guide solution design.
• Lead the creation and iteration of concepts, prototypes, and interaction models, validating desirability with users (members, agents, partners, employees).
• Ensure innovations deliver compelling, future-ready experiences by integrating research insights, design frameworks, and foresight practices.

Storytelling & Facilitation

• Facilitate workshops, co-creation sessions, and executive showcases, translating complex design insights into clear narratives that influence decision-making.
• Advocate for design best practices across CSAA, elevating the role of design in shaping the future of insurance.

Team Leadership and talent development

• Manage, coach, and mentor Design & Research direct reports, building skills in UX research, design, and foresight.
• Foster a culture of creativity, inclusion, and continuous learning that strengthens enterprise design capabilities.

Collaborate across ICD

• Collaborate with Engagement Leads, Innovation Strategy, and AI and Emerging Tech Labs teams to integrate desirability into business opportunities.
• Support portfolio evaluation, ensuring a balanced mix of initiatives that align with CSAA’s broader transformation strategy.
• Support external awards/recognition processes (eg: AM Best)

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities

Required:

• Proven ability to think at a systems level, translating broad research and business strategy into actionable, customer-centric solutions.
• Expertise in conducting both exploratory research and leveraging existing data to inform design decisions.
• A track record of thriving in undefined problem spaces and confidently navigating uncertainty.
• Exceptional communication and presentation skills, with the ability to build compelling narratives around future concepts for diverse audiences.
• Proficiency with industry-standard design and prototyping tools (e.g., Figma, Visio, Adobe Creative Suite), with a deep understanding of emerging technology.
• An ability to influence and guide a team toward innovative, long-term goals. 

Preferred:

• Strong background in P&C insurance, financial services, or adjacent industries preferred.
• Familiarity with human-centered design, AI/automation, and digital transformation approaches.

EducationRequired:

• Bachelor’s degree

Preferred:

• Master of Science (M.S.) or Master of Arts (M.A.) in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Interaction Design, or User Experience Design

ExperienceRequired

• 10+ years of experience in design consulting, UX design
• Significant experience in UX, interaction, or product design, with a strong portfolio showcasing a history of innovative work.

Preferred

• Service Design and Process Design expertise