Associate Director, CX/UX Design (TAA) – Hybrid R0060117

Overview

The CX/UX Design Associate Director for Tax & Accounting North America (TAA NA) leads product design strategy, UX practice maturity, and experience quality across multiple teams and product areas.

This role is accountable for both the outcomes UX teams deliver and the way UX is practiced, scaled, measured, and represented across the organization.

The Associate Director translates business strategy into clear UX direction, raises the quality and rigor of design work, and ensures UX is represented effectively in cross-functional leadership forums, executive conversations, and the DXG UX Center of Excellence.

This role leads through influence, coaching, operational discipline, and strategic decision-making across Product, Engineering, Research, Analytics, Business, Global Brand, and other enterprise partners.

The Associate Director also guides the UX strategy for AI-enabled product experiences, ensuring AI is integrated into tax and accounting workflows in ways that are usable, trustworthy, accessible, measurable, and aligned to customer and business outcomes.

Hybrid: Eight days a month we come together in the closest office (USA) within 50 miles to experience the value of connecting with colleagues. Please view the site office location directory for potential office preferences nationwide. | https://bit.ly/Find_A_WK_Office | #LI-Hybrid

Must be legally authorized to work in the United States without employer sponsorship, now or in the future.

Required Qualifications

• Experience leading UX, product design, or experience design in complex and ambiguous product environments.
• Experience managing managers, senior individual contributors, and/or multiple UX teams.
• Demonstrated ability to define UX strategy and translate business priorities into actionable design direction.
• Strong product thinking, business awareness, and ability to connect customer needs to measurable product outcomes.
• Experience leading cross-functional alignment across Product, Engineering, Research, Analytics, Business, and senior stakeholders.
• Strong facilitation skills with a track record of driving alignment, decision-making, and momentum across senior stakeholders.
• Ability to influence cross-functional partners and executive audiences without relying solely on formal authority.
• History of delivering impactful, user-centered product experiences at scale.
• Experience improving design quality, UX standards, design system adoption, governance, or UX practice maturity across teams.
• Experience or working knowledge in AI-enabled product experiences, including implications for usability, trust, transparency, workflow integration, and responsible adoption.

What You’ll Do

• Lead and align multiple UX and product design teams around a shared experience vision, ensuring consistent quality while supporting diverse product, customer, and business needs.  This position has direct line supervisory responsibilities, including leadership of managers, senior practitioners, and/or multi-disciplinary UX team members.
• Define and drive TAA NA UX strategy in alignment with enterprise priorities, balancing near-term delivery needs with long-term experience goals.
• Set product design direction across complex initiatives, ensuring teams focus on the right customer problems and deliver experiences that are usable, scalable, accessible, and measurable.
• Own UX outcomes across TAA NA in partnership with Product, Engineering, Research, Analytics, Business, and executive stakeholders.
• Lead the UX strategy for AI-enabled experiences, ensuring teams design interactions that support trust, transparency, explainability, workflow integration, human oversight, and responsible adoption.
• Partner with UX Research leaders and embedded research teams to ensure customer insights shape product strategy, prioritization, design direction, and decision-making.
• Guide the evolution, adoption, and governance of design systems, UX standards, reusable patterns, and scalable design practices across teams.
• Represent UX in cross-functional and executive settings by clearly articulating UX value, priorities, risks, tradeoffs, recommendations, and business impact.
• Represent the TAA NA UX practice within the DXG UX Center of Excellence by synthesizing work across initiatives and contributing to enterprise-wide UX direction, standards, and maturity.
• Provide structured executive reporting that translates research insights, design outcomes, delivery progress, experience risks, and customer impact into clear leadership narratives.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Business, Global Brand, Research, Analytics, and other leaders to create alignment, shared ownership, and effective decision-making.
• Collaborate with Global Brand as a strategic stakeholder, ensuring brand standards are incorporated in ways that support usability, accessibility, product clarity, and customer outcomes.
• Manage budgets, staffing plans, vendor partnerships, capacity planning, and resource allocation in support of strategic priorities and sustainable delivery.
• Create and maintain a respectful, inclusive, and high-performing team environment that encourages learning, open dialogue, constructive challenge, accountability, and sustainable performance.
• Develop managers, senior practitioners, and emerging leaders through coaching, feedback, talent planning, performance management, and growth-focused development.
• Strengthen leadership capability across UX teams by clarifying expectations, creating accountability, and supporting continued growth for all team members.
• Identify and address unproductive behaviors, delivery risks, talent gaps, or team dynamics while upholding high standards and supporting sustainable performance.

What Success Looks Like

• UX is engaged early in product discovery, planning, and strategic decision-making across key TAA initiatives.
• Product design teams operate from clear experience principles, measurable outcomes, shared standards, and aligned design direction.
• Concepting, visioning, and facilitation practices help teams clarify problems, generate strong ideas, evaluate tradeoffs, and make better product decisions.
• UX teams use AI tools appropriately to improve speed, clarity, exploration, synthesis, and idea generation while maintaining design judgment, accountability, and quality standards.
• AI-enabled product experiences demonstrate responsible design practices, including trust, transparency, usability, workflow fit, human oversight, and measurable customer value.
• Accessibility, usability, and inclusive design are addressed early and consistently throughout the product design process.
• Design systems, UX standards, and governance practices improve speed, consistency, quality, and scalability across teams.
• UX leaders provide clarity, coaching, facilitative leadership, and decision-making support that helps teams navigate ambiguity and deliver strong outcomes.
• UX is recognized by Product, Engineering, Business, and executive stakeholders as a strategic product partner.
• Teams feel supported, empowered, accountable, and clear on expectations.

What We’re Looking For

• Strategic Leadership: Ability to set UX direction across multiple teams, product areas, and time horizons in alignment with business goals.
• AI Experience and Responsible Innovation: Experience designing or leading AI-enabled product experiences, with an understanding of usability, trust, transparency, explainability, workflow integration, human oversight, and responsible adoption.
• People-Centered Leadership: Demonstrated ability to lead high-performing teams with empathy, clarity, respect, accountability, and sound judgment.
• Practice Leadership and UX Maturity: Experience scaling UX practices, standards, design systems, governance, operating models, and quality expectations across complex organizations.
• Executive Communication and Influence: Ability to represent UX in senior forums and synthesize complex customer, product, technical, and business inputs into clear recommendations.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Ability to partner across Product, Engineering, Research, Analytics, Global Brand, Business, and executive stakeholders to drive alignment and shared ownership.
• Systems Thinking and Service Orientation: Ability to understand complex ecosystems, workflows, dependencies, and end-to-end customer journeys across products and touchpoints.
• Operational and Resource Management: Ability to manage budgets, capacity, staffing priorities, tradeoffs, vendor relationships, and delivery expectations in a matrixed environment.

Preferred

• Experience in tax, accounting, financial services, healthcare, education, legal, compliance, or another complex regulated industry.
• Experience leading UX strategy for AI, automation, decision-support, data-rich, workflow-heavy, or emerging technology experiences.
• Familiarity with responsible AI principles, including transparency, explainability, user control, bias awareness, human oversight, and appropriate escalation paths.
• Experience with accessibility and inclusive design practices.
• Background in systems thinking, service design, journey management, or complex workflow design.
• Experience developing UX metrics, experience health indicators, or outcome-based design measurement practices.
• Experience leading distributed, hybrid, or globally matrixed UX teams.
• Experience partnering with design systems, brand, content design, research operations, or product operations functions.

Additional Information:

Wolters Kluwer offers a wide variety of competitive benefits and programs to help meet your needs and balance your work and personal life, including but not limited to: Medical, Dental, & Vision Plans, 401(k), FSA/HSA, Commuter Benefits, Tuition Assistance Plan, Vacation and Sick Time, and Paid Parental Leave.   🔗 https://www.wolterskluwerbenefitsguide.com/welcome/

Company Overview

Wolters Kluwer (EURONEXT: WKL) is a global leader in professional information, software solutions, and services for the healthcare, tax and accounting, financial and corporate compliance, legal and regulatory, and corporate performance and ESG sectors. We help our customers make important decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with specialized technology and services.

Wolters Kluwer reported 2022 annual revenues of €5.5 billion. The group serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries, and employs approximately 20,000 people worldwide. We are headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands.

Disclaimer: The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed. They are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all responsibilities and requirements. The job description provided is subject to revision and modification at any time.

Our Interview Practices

To maintain a fair and genuine hiring process, we kindly ask that all candidates participate in interviews without the assistance of AI tools or external prompts. Our interview process is designed to assess your individual skills, experiences, and communication style. We value authenticity and want to ensure we’re getting to know you—not a digital assistant. To help maintain this integrity, we ask to remove virtual backgrounds and include in-person interviews in our hiring process. Please note that use of AI-generated responses or third-party support during interviews will be grounds for disqualification from the recruitment process.

Applicants may be required to appear onsite at a Wolters Kluwer office as part of the recruitment process.

Compensation:

$133,400.00 - $238,400.00 USDThis role is eligible for Bonus.

Compensation range listed is based on primary location of the position.  Actual base salary offer is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skills, experience and actual hiring location. Your recruiter can share more information about the specific offer for the job location during the hiring process. 

Additional Information:

Wolters Kluwer offers a wide variety of competitive benefits and programs to help meet your needs and balance your work and personal life, including but not limited to: Medical, Dental, & Vision Plans, 401(k), FSA/HSA, Commuter Benefits, Tuition Assistance Plan, Vacation and Sick Time, and Paid Parental Leave. Full details of our benefits are available upon request.