Manager, User Experience Design

Journey with us! Combine your career goals and sense of adventure by joining our exciting team of employees. Royal Caribbean Group is pleased to offer a competitive compensation & benefits package, and excellent career development opportunities, each offering unique ways to explore the world.

Position Summary:

This role will own multiple tracks of work, manage and lead teams of designers, serve as a champion of guest experience, design thinking and an advocate of continual improvement & best practices to both our digital organization as well as across broader corporate and marketing teams. Youll work closely with our rapidly growing digital product team, setting the tone for excellence in scalable design delivery, coaching & mentoring designers, and solving unique problems large and small for guests of Royal Caribbean, Celebrity and Azamara cruises in the digital ecosystem.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Provides leadership over a subset of design teams within the digital organization, defining strategy for guest experience and functionally executing product design and delivery across multiple brands under Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd.
• Demonstrates a deep understanding of user experience in relationship to design systems, user testing and human behavior, with a proven track record of digital product delivery for mobile app and web.
• Be the expert for design and guest experience, owning and driving end to end product design for at least one critical product vertical in our digital org, responsible for multiple tracks of work within that vertical.
• Set and uphold remarkably high expectations for design rigor, maturity & sophistication, scalable process, delivery, and quality in all aspects of guest and crew-facing digital experiences for owned tracks.
• Chart out holistic connections between business verticals, threading them together into functionally beautiful design systems, rich with purpose and soul.
• Articulate business value and a compelling point of view with design solutions and rationale.
• Formulate both high-level and detailed design feedback, facilitate communication between agencies and stakeholders, concept and execute one-off patterns and explorations, and other duties as required.
• Become a champion of design and a steward of process, design thinking, and breaking down barriers between disciplines and organizations, clearing the runway for design, product and engineering to build & ship world class digital products.
• Break down complicated business problems with product teams, and help bundle key ideas and recommendations together into a compelling narrative.
• Pick up a marker and jump in to help teams, stakeholders and leadership translate ideas and business needs into tangible artifacts.
• Chase down big ideas, research conceptual features and innovations in the digital space with a sense of purpose and usability, and bring them to product teams to align, prioritize and implement.
• Stay in lock step with product leadership to align priorities and resourcing with roadmaps and organizational goals.
• Push product designers and teams to be more efficient, reliable and highly scalable by creating and supporting connected pattern libraries, toolkits and style guides.
• Directly manage career development for a fast-growing team of designers and help set career goals, own and drive critical performance evaluations.
• Own and manage relationships with agencies, freelancers and vendors to support our product teams and in-flight projects.
• Research and experiment with current and forward-thinking design philosophy, tools and methodologies to try and stay ahead of the curve in the relentless pursuit of quality, efficiency and scale.
• Keep a finger on the pulse of local, regional and national design and technology communities through active participation in industry meet-ups, hackathons, and educational events.
• Build strong relationships with educational institutions to form a solid pipeline of new design talent into the organization.
• Own and drive an internship and mentoring program to attract new talent and support digital organizational goals.
• Maintain the highest bar of quality across platforms and work streams, ensuring excellence in product design and usability for everything that gets in the hands of guests, crew and employees.
• Advocate for inclusive design and accessibility, because good design is for everyone.
• Actively mentor designers of all skill levels, teaching them the subtle ways of the Force and nudging them along towards greatness.

Qualifications, Knowledge & Skills:

• Degree in Design, Human-Centered Engineering, Anthropology, Business Management or Fine Art preferred, but not mandatory
• Minimum 2yrs experience managing direct reports required, managing designers or engineers preferred
• 8+ yrs experience in design, advertising, and/or software delivery environments
• Project management experience desired, prior experience managing budgets over $750k-$1mil highly desired
• List specific knowledge and skills necessary to perform this job related to the Essential Duties and Responsibilities identified above. Experience leading strategic initiatives within enterprise-level organizations (5000 employees or more, highly desired)
• Blend of agency and in-house, corporate or enterprise experience highly desired
• Experience with modern project management tools required, software development tools highly preferred: JIRA, Asana, Gantt charts, database mgmt, or similar
• Experience with modern product design tools required: Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite, Experience Design or similar
• Experience with basic or robust prototyping tools required: InVision, Marvel, Principle, Framer, Craft or similar
• Experience with design system tools highly desired
• You have an eagle eye for visual detail, and you fuss over micro interactions
• Proven in the digital space with a track record including leadership and management over real, shipped digital products from end to end that are well designed in form as well as function, that real people use
• Ability to distill complex processes into simple, clear direction for designers and senior partners alike
• Obsessive attention to detail, excellent written communication & documentation skills
• Anticipates issues at a macro and micro level simultaneously
• You can bundle up both big ideas and micro details into a neat little package, presenting them to stakeholders, leadership and executives with clarity and vision
• You create an emotional connection between our brand and our guests by making beautiful and thoughtfully crafted experiences with delightful interactions
• You get technology and speak digital fluently; you understand how all the pieces fit together in a software development life cycle and how design thinking and systems can help every step of the way
• You are ambitiously curious, always learning, good enough is never enough, and you drive towards constant, relentless improvement both in the work and yourself
• Youve got next-level charisma and energy, bringing a magnetic attitude, inspiration and enthusiasm to our team and partners; you nurture creative and engineering talent

We know theres a lot to consider. As you go through the application process, our recruiters will be glad to provide guidance, and more relevant details to answer any additional questions.

Thank you again for your interest in Royal Caribbean Group. Well hope to see you onboard soon.