User Experience Strategist, Specialist

Job Description:

Vanguard's Financial Advisor Services division is looking for a highly motivated senior UX professional to direct the client user experience strategy and craft integrated UX product designs for Vanguard Investor Choice. Collaborate across the enterprise and externally with intermediary clients to design a seamless client proxy voting experience, removing friction and serving clients through research-driven UX enhancements.

The candidate will expertly lead UX strategy and design for this initiative, partnering with UX research and influencing senior internal and external client stakeholders to design integrated solutions within a complex implementation ecosystem. This individual contributor, hybrid disciplinary role is a great opportunity for directing UX strategy and design for a dynamic professional investor audience while partnering across a large enterprise initiative.

• Partner with a cross-functional team, across the enterprise, and with intermediary clients to define, design, and execute world-class end-to-end advisor and intermediary experiences for Vanguard Investor Choice.
• Simultaneously be collaborative and embody an ownership mindset to design and execute on the full scope of the design thinking process.
• Form internal and external stakeholder relationships to ensure alignment of business and client needs.
• Possibility for limited travel domestically as needed to collaborate with external client and business stakeholders.
• Balance business and client needs to uncover innovative solutions.
• Employ narrative storytelling techniques in developing materials for presentation to stakeholders and leadership.
• Lead stakeholders and clients in documenting the intersection of people, processes, and products through the creation of service journeys, user task flows and service blueprints for both current and future state.
• Design and maintain user-centered, empathy-driven design artifacts (personas, archetypes, mindsets) based on user research, that are detailed and specific enough to guide design decisions.
• Utilize human-centered design methods to plan, facilitate, and synthesize outcomes from design thinking workshops.
• Define and solution for complex problems by applying qualitative and quantitative research, conceptualization, interaction design, and visual design principles to execution.
• Partner with UX researchers to conduct and synthesize research and data insights to improve the end-to-end user experience. Analyze data and client feedback to make critical design decisions.
• Leverage internally-approved generative AI tools to gain efficiency for routine and repetitive UX tasks, enabling the candidate to focus on higher-value strategic and creative efforts.
• Develop and leverage a professional network to foster collaboration across the enterprise, to support business initiatives, and to improve the ability of the department in resolving issues.
• Stay resilient and provide positive energy in the face of ambiguity.

• Undergraduate degree or equivalent combination of training and experience in a creative or technical field.
• Minimum five years of industry/field experience.
• Expert in all areas of user experience design (service design, interaction design, visual design, user research application, design thinking).
• Deep investment and financial services acumen. Knowledge and experience with professional buyers and the intermediated client audience preferred.
• A high degree of creativity, empathy, passion, and problem-solving ability.
• Experience with product design methodologies, including double- or triple-diamond and lean UX.
• Proven experience solving complex communication problems and designing world-class experiences for large-scale programs.
• Expert communication skills (storytelling, visualization) and the ability to get buy-in on those ideas within a large organization.
• Proven experience in using data (both quantitative and qualitative) analysis techniques to inform design.
• Demonstrated stakeholder management skills, with a proven track record of extracting inputs from a wide variety of experts and functions.
• Embody a continuous learning mindset.

• Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays on Vanguard's Malvern campus.
• Mondays and Fridays remote.