Senior Product Designer

About the role:

As a Senior Product Designer, you'll independently drive and elevate the UX for critical and strategic features, often across multiple product areas or complex initiatives. You'll collaborate cross-functionally to proactively identify systemic problems, define visionary solutions, and deliver user-centered design strategies that drive significant, measurable business and user impact. You'll also mentor and guide less experienced designers.

You'll play a pivotal role in shaping and optimizing the end-to-end user experience within our products, often influencing product strategy. You'll expertly craft intuitive and scalable user flows, design highly functional and elegant interfaces, and establish consistent design patterns across all product touchpoints. You'll demonstrate a deeply proven ability to conceive, shape, and deploy highly impactful user experiences across entire product features, end-to-end journeys, and often, new product initiatives.

You'll lead collaboration with Product Managers, Engineers, User Researchers, Content Designers, and Key Stakeholders. You'll translate complex user insights and ambiguous product requirements into innovative, efficient, and effective design solutions that not only align with user needs and business goals but also anticipate future needs and drive product evolution. You'll also be expected to influence cross-functional partners and advocate for design excellence at all stages.

About us:

At 8am, our vision is to power a world where professionals thrive. We start every day on a mission to empower professionals with the most trusted, innovative technology to deliver world-class outcomes for their clients and exceptional financial results for their business. They count on our purpose-built solutions to simplify operations, ensure compliance, and fuel profitable growth, so they can focus on their clients and do more of the work that matters.

Founded in 2005, 8am™ (formerly AffiniPay) is the professional business platform built to help legal, accounting, and other client-focused professionals run stronger, more profitable businesses. Today, more than 250,000 professionals across the U.S. trust 8am to help them work smarter, serve clients better, and unlock their full potential. We have been recognized as one of Inc 5000’s fastest growing companies in the U.S. for 13 years in a row, and as a result, our teams continue to grow as well!

What you'll do:

Drive Product-Led Growth & Strategic Impact

• Independently translate complex product and business objectives into innovative, user-centered design strategies that significantly accelerate product-led growth across key metrics (e.g., activation, retention, conversion, expansion, and advocacy).
• Lead the design and optimization of experiences leveraging advanced AI and automation, identifying strategic opportunities to drive efficiency, hyper-personalization, and new forms of user value, leading to demonstrable, high-impact business outcomes.
• Proactively identify and resolve systemic design challenges impacting product adoption and key customer journeys.

Lead Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Drive and orchestrate collaboration with Product Managers, User Researchers, Content Designers, and Cross-Functional Leadership from discovery through launch and iteration of critical features and complex initiatives.
• Partner deeply with Engineering leads to define technical feasibility, solve complex implementation challenges, and ensure the highest quality execution of designs, particularly for sophisticated AI/ML integrations and automated systems.

Champion the User & Advocate for Vision

• Develop a profound, holistic understanding of user needs, motivations, and pain points across diverse and complex user segments, often through leading advanced research methodologies.
• Be a leading advocate for intuitive, accessible, and consistent user experiences, setting the standard for design quality and ensuring features, especially those incorporating AI/automation, align with long-term user and product vision.

Master Design Expertise & Systems Thinking

• Autonomously select, adapt, and invent appropriate user-centered design methods and tools to solve highly ambiguous problems (e.g., service design blueprints, complex journey mapping, system-level design patterns, leveraging and evaluating emerging AI-powered design tools).
• Significantly contribute to the evolution and governance of our design system, ensuring its scalability, robustness, and adoption across the organization, guiding its adaptation for AI-driven interfaces.
• Consistently deliver exceptional quality at a rapid pace across multiple workstreams.

Influence & Mentor

• Proactively influence strategic direction by partnering with Product Leadership, Engineering Leadership, User Research, and Data/Product Science teams.
• Articulate complex design decisions, strategic tradeoffs, and technical considerations with clarity and conviction, shaping a truly collaborative, data-informed, and AI-aware design culture.
• Mentor and guide less experienced designers, fostering their growth and upholding design excellence within the team.

Architect Scalability & Efficiency

• Architect and oversee the development of highly scalable, maintainable, and efficient design solutions that optimize team processes and maximize product impact, actively seeking opportunities for automation within design workflows and the product's self-serve capabilities.
• Champion design decisions that lead to self-service efficiencies and reduced support needs.

Drive Innovation & Future-Proofing

• Identify, evaluate, and integrate innovative visual trends and cutting-edge techniques, including advanced applications of AI, generative design, and novel interaction paradigms, to continuously elevate and future-proof the quality and impact of our product experiences.
• Lead complex user research initiatives and collaborate strategically with researchers to uncover deep insights that challenge assumptions and inform breakthrough design decisions, especially concerning AI ethics, trust, and advanced feature adoption.
• Conceptualize, develop, and refine high-fidelity prototypes for comprehensive evaluative research and visionary ideal-state experiences, driving iterative improvement and exploring transformative applications of AI/automation.

About you:

• A bachelor's degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Graphic Design, or a related field, and/or the equivalent of 5-9+ years of experience in UX/Product Design, with a significant portion in a senior capacity.
• An exceptional portfolio showcasing leadership in solving complex user problems, strategic thinking, influence on product direction, and measurable impact on launched products or significant features across various touchpoints.
• Expert proficiency in industry-standard design tools, with the ability to leverage them for advanced prototyping and complex system design.
• Proficient in leveraging and evaluating research tools to independently drive insights.
• Proven ability to independently plan, conduct, and synthesize a variety of user research and testing methods (e.g., ethnographic studies, a/b testing, advanced usability testing), translating insights into actionable design strategies.
• Experience identifying research needs and collaborating with dedicated researchers.
• Outstanding communication and presentation skills, with a proven ability to lead and influence cross-functional teams and stakeholders, including senior leadership.
• Skilled at mediating discussions, facilitating workshops, and driving consensus.
• Mastery of user-centered design principles, usability, accessibility, and inclusive design, applied to complex, ambiguous, and strategic product challenges.
• Ability to strategically articulate and persuasively defend complex design decisions, trade-offs, and their impact on business goals and technical feasibility to diverse audiences.
• Extensive experience working within, significantly contributing to, and evolving comprehensive design systems, including defining new patterns, governance, and advocating for adoption across teams.
• Demonstrated experience leveraging AI tools and technologies to improve workflows, enhance decision-making, or drive innovation.
• Experience with the fintech, legaltech or SaaS products.
• This position is preferably based in Austin, Texas.

Why 8am: 

At 8am, our culture is shaped by the people who bring it to life every day. Together, we build a company rooted in continuous learning, genuine community, holistic wellness, and meaningful engagement—values that empower us as individuals and unite us as a team. Our culture is grounded in our core values: Work Smart, Win Fast; Outshine Ordinary, and We Find a Way. These values drive how we serve our customers and work with each other in a collaborative, inspiring, and empowering environment, every day.

Here’s how we support our 8Team:

• Health Insurance Coverage: We offer our 8Team a variety of medical, dental, and vision plans, designed to fit your needs, including a 100% company-paid HDHP plan for employees.
• Financial perks: We offer a competitive compensation and benefits package including annual bonuses, equity options and 401(k) or RRSP if in Canada, with a company match for all team members.
• Time for what matters: Flexible Time Off, paid holidays, and a parental leave program for our new parents.
• Wellness: Wellness stipends, mental health support, and one-on-one nutrition coaching.
• Learning and Development: Continuous learning through 8am.edu, leadership programs, professional development funds, and individually focused talent development.
• Giving back to the communities around us: Participate in our charitable matching gift program, paid time off for volunteer service, and company-sponsored volunteer events (both local and virtually).
• Engagement: Virtual and in-person team-building events, quarterly award recognition through our Rise & Shine Award of Excellence Program, and our peer-to-peer appreciation platform.

At 8am, we don’t just offer benefits - we create an environment where people can thrive, grow, and make a real impact every day.

Diversity, equity & inclusion at 8am:

At 8am, we recognize that innovation occurs with a strong team of people who are diverse in background, personality, talent and ideas. Experience comes in many forms and ensuring a diverse and inclusive workplace where we continue to learn from each other is an integral part of our culture. We are committed to creating a welcoming and transparent environment for all that embraces those differences through education, equal access to opportunities and information, inclusionary programs, and community outreach. 

Security advisory:

Our hiring teams at 8am are dedicated to recruiting top talent that share our passion for serving the professional services industry through innovative financial technology.  As such, our Talent Acquisition Team only follows legitimate hiring practices.  We will always communicate with our candidates using emails with the 8am domain and will never ask for sensitive/personal data during the application process.  All interviews take place over phone call, Zoom/Google Meet or in person.  All offers are communicated verbally by our Talent Acquisition Specialists with a written offer letter as a follow up.