Principal UI & UX Designer - Payroll

Company Overview

With 80,000 customers across 150 countries, UKG is the largest U.S.-based private software company in the world. And we're only getting started. Ready to bring your bold ideas and collaborative mindset to an organization that still has so much more to build and achieve? Read on.At UKG, you get more than just a job. You get to work with purpose. Our team of U Krewers are on a mission to inspire every organization to become a great place to work through our award-winning HR technology built for all.

Here, we know that you're more than your work. That's why our benefits help you thrive personally and professionally, from wellness programs and tuition reimbursement to U Choose - a customizable expense reimbursement program that can be used for more than 200+ needs that best suit you and your family, from student loan repayment, to childcare, to pet insurance. Our inclusive culture, active and engaged employee resource groups, and caring leaders value every voice and support you in doing the best work of your career. If you're passionate about our purpose - people -then we can't wait to support whatever gives you purpose. We're united by purpose, inspired by you.

About the role:

We are looking for a Principal UX Designer with deep curiosity, strong systems thinking, and a passion for shaping intuitive, compliant, and scalable user experiences in the domain of employee pay and payroll administration. In this role, you will conceptualize complex user journeys across web and mobile platforms, transforming them into detailed workflows, wireframes, and interactive prototypes. You'll work closely with our Design Systems and AI strategy teams to advance our UX vision and evolve platform-wide design patterns that address the unique challenges of HR and payroll software-such as regulatory compliance, data privacy, auditability, and localization.

As a senior member of the team, you will help influence company-wide product strategy while mentoring peers through both leadership and example. You'll focus on empowering HR professionals, payroll administrators, and employees with experiences that are accurate, efficient, and accessible. You will bridge UX and engineering to deliver impactful solutions that consider legal frameworks, pay cycles, tax complexity, and sensitive financial data. Strong communication skills and domain awareness will be essential as you present concepts to stakeholders, align with cross-functional teams, and ensure we build trusted and transformative payroll and payment products.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Design Leadership & Vision: Set and drive the UX vision for payroll products, ensuring alignment with business goals, regulatory requirements, and evolving user needs. Serve as a thought leader and trusted partner to product, engineering, and business stakeholders, influencing product strategy at the highest levels. Champion user-centered design principles and embed design thinking across the organization to shape long-term roadmaps and innovation priorities.

Information Architecture & Service Design Thinking : Define and evolve the information architecture and service design for complex payroll ecosystems. Establish logical content structures and scalable navigation systems that unify experiences across multiple platforms and contexts. Apply systems thinking to connect atomic-level data interactions with end-to-end service journeys, ensuring intuitive and resilient user experiences.

AI-Driven Innovation & Scalable Design Systems: Lead the exploration and integration of Generative AI to transform workflows, enhance usability, and improve accessibility at scale. Drive the evolution of dynamic design systems that enable consistency, quality, and efficiency across global product teams, while balancing flexibility for localization and domain-specific needs.

End-to-End Product Design Leadership: Own the design process from strategy to execution. Translate research and insights into visionary concepts, detailed interaction models, and refined prototypes. Guide teams through testing, iteration, and implementation, ensuring delivery of experiences that meet the highest standards of quality, usability, and accessibility.

Program Leadership & Cross-Functional Collaboration: Shape priorities and drive execution across multiple, complex programs with competing demands. Align design outcomes with business strategy and technical feasibility by collaborating with senior product and engineering leaders. Ensure design solutions are scalable, sustainable, and aligned with enterprise goals.

User Research & Data-Informed Decision Making: Oversee and influence research agendas that uncover deep user insights, inform product direction, and validate design decisions. Leverage qualitative and quantitative data to shape strategy, define success metrics, and demonstrate the measurable impact of UX on business outcomes.

Process Innovation & Continuous Improvement: Define, scale, and refine design processes to improve efficiency, foster innovation, and ensure product teams can deliver consistently. Champion adoption of emerging practices and AI-driven methodologies to evolve how design shapes product development at UKG.

Mentorship, Talent Growth & Design Culture: Act as a design leader and mentor, fostering professional growth across the design organization. Recruit, develop, and inspire top design talent. Model and cultivate a culture of excellence, collaboration, and continuous learning, ensuring the UX discipline continues to advance in maturity and influence.

• Mastery of design and prototyping tools (e.g., Figma, Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite, InVision, Adobe XD). Familiarity with front-end technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) is often a plus, as is experience with Agile methodologies and tools (JIRA, Confluence)
• Proven track record of systems thinking-designing beyond individual screens to shape complex, multi-platform ecosystems.
• Deep familiarity with emerging technologies, including AI, with the ability to evaluate, adopt, and integrate them effectively.
• 10+ years of experience designing enterprise applications, with a significant portion in leadership or Senior+ level roles.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Computer Science, Graphic Design, Information Sciences, Psychology, or a related field.
• Exceptional communication skills, capable of articulating complex design concepts clearly to diverse audiences, from executives to peers.
• Persuasive storytelling and presentation abilities to influence decision-making and build alignment at the executive level.
• Proven ability to define and enforce design standards, patterns, and best practices at scale.
• Skilled at setting direction across delivery platforms (responsive browser, native mobile apps, embedded systems, etc.).
• Strong record of advocating for customer value and balancing it with business and technical priorities.
• A portfolio that demonstrates not only outstanding design craft, but also thought leadership, strategic influence, and measurable impact on products and organizations.

• Domain-Driven UX Expertise: Leverage in-depth experience in areas such as payroll administration, employee compensation, tax compliance, and time tracking-as well as related domains like banking, billing, and financial systems-to drive user-centered design that aligns with regulatory requirements, business operations, and end-user needs.
• Empathy for Payroll Personas: Champion user needs by developing a nuanced understanding of payroll administrators, HR professionals, and employees navigating pay-related tools under time pressure and legal compliance demands.
• Localized & Global Pay Design Considerations: Support product localization efforts by designing experiences that adapt to regional payroll laws, pay frequencies, currencies, and tax rules across global markets.