Product Director - UX & Design

As a leading financial services and healthcare technology company based on revenue, SS&C is headquartered in Windsor, Connecticut, and has 27,000+ employees in 35 countries. Some 20,000 financial services and healthcare organizations, from the world's largest companies to small and mid-market firms, rely on SS&C for expertise, scale, and technology.

Get To Know Us: SS&C is leading the way. We continue to look for today’s and tomorrow’s brightest talent, those who embody a spirit to improve not only their lives, but those around them. From college students to seasoned and experienced professionals, we encourage you to apply. SS&C prides itself on hiring diverse, honest, dynamic individuals who value collaboration, accountability, and innovation, to name a few.

The Opportunity

The Product Director – User Experience & Design will ensure that the products and services we deliver have their usability by our clients at their core ensuring simplicity of use and efficiency of interaction. You will be the point person for all User Experience, User Interface and User Interaction Design within the company. You will advise the Product and Technology community on design-centric development and where required manage 3rd party resources to the company to support this effort in practice. With client/customer research as a core skill, you will build rapid prototypes with your partners in development and oversee user research to gain insights on the validity of the value propositions and product/market fit. Actively participating in the agile development process, you will ensure “design thinking” is embedded right from the ideation stage.

What You Will Get To Do:

• Guide, own and communicate the overall Design strategy which influences the Product vision set by the Head of Product and in-line with our company strategy.
• Guide the organization into becoming UX design-centric.
• Establish relationships with design resources to provide the third-party support required.
• Determine if/when to scale up in-house talent to meet the demand for design resources – creating the business case to gain C-level buy-in.
• Recommend and drive prioritization of requirements from competing product domains.
• Collaborate with your development partners within Product and Technology and the client-facing teams in Sales, Operations and Marketing to ensure awareness of design and the positive impact on their areas.
• Aid the creation of the marketing content and Go-To-Market content when necessary, by working closely with Marketing.
• Undertake regular user research, gaining insights into the extent of our current and new product’s usability and relevance to our clients.
• Support, assign and motivate your virtual team of UX, UI and Researchers from third parties to efficient performance - driving achievement of the budgetary goals for Design.
• Support Sales in Client meetings, when required; investigating client needs and establishing views on new product design to meet them.

What You Will Bring:

• Teamwork: Able to provide support to those within their peer group and especially their team; able to set priorities and manage the team to cohesion and performance.
• Management: Able to set priorities and manage the team to cohesion and performance encouraging and coaching the performance of directly managed and virtually managed teams.
• Delivery and Impact: Raises risks and issues promptly to the relevant bodies alongside recommendations for mitigation.
• Problem Solving: Identifies, considers and solves problems of a product, political, organisational and technical nature – ensuring visibility and buy-in where required.
• Organisation: Provides regular 360 feedback to team, peers and leadership – with a view to addressing issues as well as encouraging performance.
• Influence: Provides open feedback with actionable intent – also solicits this from peers, team and leadership.

The technical knowledge required for the function includes but is not limited to:

• Mobile and web design tools – from prototype tools, to asset design and creation and collaboration tools.
• Software development lifecycle in an Agile environment.
• Microsoft office suite; Salesforce.

Desired business knowledge required for the Product function includes but is not limited to:

• Commercial results-oriented leadership with a keen eye for the revenues and costs of Design and Design resources.
• More than 3 years of leading a team, with specific experience of target setting and performance management of third party and contract resources.
• More than 3 years’ experience in a Design Lead/Senior Designer role.
• Have a track record of client/customer facing design delivery, showing how designs have moved from ideation to launch and growth.
• Direct experience of Agile development processes and able to evangelize its adoption.
• Stakeholder Management and influence with some experience of operating with C-level leaders.
• Able to create and embed Design processes within a disciplined Product development process – e.g. implementing a Design Sprint.
• Recognised as a great communicator – succinct, clear, direct and transparent in your interactions with peers, leadership and clients.
• Experience of budget ownership.
• Experience in the Fintech/Financial Services industry an advantage.
• Knowledge of the roles and actors involved within funds distribution and the functions within a fund management company.
• Experience in a regulatory-influenced industry with understanding of the role of the regulator; Market practice.

We encourage applications from people of all backgrounds to enable us to bring diverse perspectives to our thinking and conversation. It's important to us that we strive to have a workforce that is diverse in the widest sense.

Thank you for your interest in SS&C! If applicable, to further explore this opportunity, please apply directly with us through our Careers page on our corporate website.