Director, Product Design - AI in Experience Design

Director, Product Design - AI in Experience Design

The Experience Design (XD) team at Capital One is at the forefront of enriching our customers’ digital and physical experiences, and we are passionate about creating memorable, meaningful product experiences that build the Capital One brand with humanity and drive business advantage and innovation. We champion a thriving environment of collaboration, authenticity and healthy critique, in which we honor diversity of thought, create a culture of belonging, and elevate one another. If you’re a creative innovator who embraces an environment where you can experiment, learn, and change banking for good, we’d love to hear from you.

Role Expectations

The role will work closely with our XD top of house team, including the SVP, Chief Design Officer and their Senior Leadership Team.

This Director will be responsible for building and owning the roadmaps across AI tooling, AI-enabled design process evolution, and AI-centric talent upskilling across Design at Capital One. With a destination-backed mindset, this leader will play both a strategic role in defining the vision of how Design works with AI and also be a player-coach role model for day-to-day implementation. Operating at the intersection of high-level strategy and hands-on execution, you will partner with Senior Executives across the Product, Engineering, and Design landscape across the experimentation and adoption curve in AI, and focus on building a roadmap that balances bold, big-picture thinking with immediate, actionable milestones.

The mission is twofold: to establish a definitive future vision for AI integration and to act as a catalyst for accelerating AI adoption across the Experience Design organization and beyond, balancing both risk and fast-paced innovation. We are looking for a seasoned design veteran who possesses the organizational rigor of a critical program lead, and maintains a deep, personal passion for AI experimentation—someone who isn't just watching the AI shift happen but is actively writing the future of design.

Here are some of the expected competencies for this role:

Technical Change Management: Drive transformative efficiency by architecting and scaling AI-driven design processes and tooling—including Claude, Gemini, and assistive IDEs—across the organization's highly matrixed environment. Define required workforce transformation ensuring new technical capabilities are seamlessly integrated into the operating model. Partner with executive leadership to bridge the gap between high-level innovation and disciplined execution to deliver measurable business value and experience excellence at scale

Product Design Expertise: Leverage established expertise and leadership in product design to elevate the quality and maturity of the design practice at Capital One. Leveraging a variety of skills across interaction, visual and service design; in collaboration with cross-functional partners, help to oversee and optimize the use of appropriate tools, platforms, frameworks and design systems and develop artifacts that may include vision stories, journey maps, blueprints, high-fidelity designs and prototypes

Strategic Influence: Create an infrastructure for design leaders to shape product direction and outcomes by leveraging deep product design expertise, user insights, and an understanding of the business. Drive alignment with cross functional executive leaders, ensuring user needs are central to our overall strategy and enabling bold, innovative solutions to complex problems.

Human-Centered: Recognize and pursue opportunities where customer needs and business goals coincide, while reinforcing with teammates and partners the importance of collecting and considering diverse customer perspectives throughout the design process

Business-Focused: Demonstrate a mastery of products, processes, customers, competitors and broader industry trends and apply this knowledge to predict shifts in these areas and shape how Design should engage, uncover and solve significant business challenges

Problem-Solving: Revel in the art of the possible, driving cross-functional groups in thinking creatively about potential solutions, illuminating potential pitfalls and fostering shared learnings; build frameworks for complex decision-making that enable effective debate and accelerate getting to the right solutions

Collaboration: Connect the dots across the organization, proactively bringing together executive partners in ways that drive more coherent experiences, accelerate delivery and elevate the value of design

Communication: Present work to executive leaders and stakeholders, modeling a strategic human-centered approach that integrates design frameworks, data and research insights to make the complex accessible, influence change and drive strategic direction

The ideal candidate has a strong portfolio demonstrating your leadership, process, results and impact.

Basic Qualifications:

• At least 8 years of experience in a product design role

Preferred Qualifications:

• 10+ years of experience in a product design role

• Experience leading a portfolio of work implementing AI processes and tools at scale in a design organization

• Has experience in a design toolkit that spans product design, service design, and content design

• Expertise with AI assistants tools like Claude or Gemini, agentic development like Claude Code, state machine visualizers like Stately, XState, and assistive tools like Windsurf

• Experience leading high-impact, highly complex projects from strategy through delivery to market

• Experience partnering with product managers, engineers, marketing, and analytics leaders across multiple business lines to shape strategy, OKRs, roadmaps, and operating models

• Experience working within an established design system

• Proficiency with web and mobile technologies and platforms, navigating technology considerations and constraints to drive sound product and experience decisions

• Expertise with design and prototyping tools such as Figma

• Proficiency in business case development, grounding product and user experience decisions to business value

• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills

• Exceptional interpersonal skills and relationship building across complex organizations

• Exceptional people management and development skills

At this time, Capital One will not sponsor a new applicant for employment authorization for this position.

The minimum and maximum full-time annual salaries for this role are listed below, by location. Please note that this salary information is solely for candidates hired to perform work within one of these locations, and refers to the amount Capital One is willing to pay at the time of this posting. Salaries for part-time roles will be prorated based upon the agreed upon number of hours to be regularly worked.

McLean, VA: $230,400 - $263,000 for Director, Design

New York, NY: $251,400 - $286,900 for Director, Design

San Francisco, CA: $251,400 - $286,900 for Director, Design

Candidates hired to work in other locations will be subject to the pay range associated with that location, and the actual annualized salary amount offered to any candidate at the time of hire will be reflected solely in the candidate’s offer letter.

This role is also eligible to earn performance based incentive compensation, which may include cash bonus(es) and/or long term incentives (LTI). Incentives could be discretionary or non discretionary depending on the plan.

Capital One offers a comprehensive, competitive, and inclusive set of health, financial and other benefits that support your total well-being. Learn more at the Capital One Careers website. Eligibility varies based on full or part-time status, exempt or non-exempt status, and management level.

This role is expected to accept applications for a minimum of 5 business days.

No agencies please. Capital One is an equal opportunity employer (EOE, including disability/vet) committed to non-discrimination in compliance with applicable federal, state, and local laws. Capital One promotes a drug-free workplace. Capital One will consider for employment qualified applicants with a criminal history in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable laws regarding criminal background inquiries, including, to the extent applicable, Article 23-A of the New York Correction Law; San Francisco, California Police Code Article 49, Sections 4901-4920; New York City’s Fair Chance Act; Philadelphia’s Fair Criminal Records Screening Act; and other applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations regarding criminal background inquiries.

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Capital One Financial is made up of several different entities. Please note that any position posted in Canada is for Capital One Canada, any position posted in the United Kingdom is for Capital One Europe and any position posted in the Philippines is for Capital One Philippines Service Corp. (COPSSC).