About the job

Cisco’s Workforce Experience Design team is on a mission to create the best work experience, leading with human-centered design, to create an engaged and productive environment for all Cisconians. We strive to enable every employee to be at their best every day, from removing the barriers to collaboration to discovering new connections and communities. We are a global leader in technology, networking, and innovation, and we believe that helping our customers and partners begins with helping ourselves!

As a UX/Product Design Lead, you’ll be defining key initiatives and roadmaps for our new design team and ensuring execution through best-in-class practices. As an individual contributor, you will help manage the portfolio of solutions we provide to Cisconians; prioritizing delivery of capabilities and experiences that resolve problems, fulfill employee needs, and enable success. You will collaborate and consult with leadership and stakeholders, offering guidance and suggestions, and challenging proposed solutions that fail to align with our core mission and values. You will ensure the design work for prioritized solutions is effective and staffed efficiently in addition to supporting leadership in investigation, communications, and approaches. You will ensure design team excellence through implementing initiatives based upon team needs, metrics planning and review, training and mentoring, building community, interceding as needed on key projects, and demonstrating practice excellence. You’ll mentor and lead other designers in their craft, and help the team continuously learn and grow!

What You’ll Do:

• Partner with leaders at the strategic level to create design artifacts that help align and center teams around complex challenges that help uncover user needs
• Own and consult on business direction based upon research driven insights around employee needs and in alignment with leadership and stakeholder priorities
• Own the collection and reporting on UX metrics that ensure design decisions evaluated and evidence based
• Drive the importance of thinking and communicating ideas in terms of systems and service design, connecting the dots from various platforms and touchpoints to create seamless experiences across people, products, processes, and partners
• Mentor and coach members of the team, and provide guidance on best practices and thought leadership around various methodologies
• Facilitate workshops and bring different disciplines together to align around a solution to a problem
• Leverage user research and data to identify and prioritize problems, friction and opportunities for maximum design impact
• Demonstrate skill and creativity for selecting the right mix of research, design, and visualization methods to remove obstacles or create alignment around a strategic goal
• Adapt state-of-the-art design practices and frameworks in the industry and develop our own cutting-edge approaches through experimentation and iteration
• Monitor the impact our design practices on the workforce to identify places for improvement and act on them
• Organize design community education events and facilitate team collaboration

Who You’ll Work With:

• A remote, cross-functional team of designers – from research to visual design to content design
• Leaders across the company to understand product experiences and align on strategy
• The Workforce Experience leadership team to help get a sense of the strategy and big picture
• UX Design Management to ensure designers you work with are successful

Who You Are:

• A degree in HCI, Graphic Design, Interaction Design, a related field, or equivalent industry
• A minimum of 10 years of experience as a UX or UI designer, preferably as a product designer at a large enterprise
• 5 years in leading design teams, implementing design initiatives, mentoring designers, and setting design strategy
• A portfolio of past UX work experience, deliverables, and entrepreneurial innovation
• Deep understanding and experience bringing complex products from conception to reality, through every stage of the UX process
• A fast worker; somebody who doesn’t let ambiguity slow them down
• The ability to clearly and convincingly articulate the need for design and design decisions to diverse stakeholders and leadership
• Demonstrated experience with different techniques and methods of UX design, including sketching, storyboarding, system mapping, prototyping at various fidelities, and working with design systems. You have the ability to move seamlessly between methods depending on the situation and timeline.
• Excellent time-management, multi-tasking skills; and the ability to quickly prioritize tasks
• Ability to conceive of and drive new initiatives and programs
• Excellent interpersonal skills

Why Cisco

#WeAreCisco, where each person is unique, but we bring our talents to work as a team and make a difference powering an inclusive future for all.

We embrace digital, and help our customers implement change in their digital businesses. Some may think we’re “old” (36 years strong) and only about hardware, but we’re also a software company. And a security company. We even invented an intuitive network that adapts, predicts, learns and protects. No other company can do what we do – you can’t put us in a box!

But “Digital Transformation” is an empty buzz phrase without a culture that allows for innovation, creativity, and yes, even failure (if you learn from it.)

Day to day, we focus on the give and take. We give our best, give our egos a break, and give of ourselves (because giving back is built into our DNA.) We take accountability, bold steps, and take difference to heart. Because without diversity of thought and a dedication to equality for all, there is no moving forward.

So, you have colorful hair? Don’t care. Tattoos? Show off your ink. Like polka dots? That’s cool. Pop culture geek? Many of us are. Passion for technology and world changing? Be you, with us!