Senior Manager, Global Uxui Experience Design - Design Ops

Universal Orlando Resort believes in-person collaboration is key to our success. Many of our Team Members work in a hybrid capacity, contributing from the workplace a minimum of three days per week. There are also roles that require being on-site full time. Limited remote opportunities may be available within specific departments. You'll learn more about this during the recruitment process.
JOB SUMMARY:

The Global UXUI Experience Design team is focused on driving guest and team member experience strategies to evolve and enhance the guest experience across Universal Destinations & Experiences (UDX). Our mission is to amplify the multi-sensory, immersive resort destination experience and connect the customer journey through compelling, consistent, and seamless experience design solutions. Experience, innovation and creativity are central to our company's core and this critical role will be focused on evolving our program's design practices by optimizing current workflows and processes to deliver high quality design solutions at scale with a multi-disciplined Global UXUI Experience Design team.
This role will play a critical role driving operational efficiency and efficacy focused on process standardization, resource planning, developing performance behaviors and cultural drivers to ensure consistency of approach and workflow alignment with Universal Destinations & Experiences business strategies and Global Experience Principles.
MAJOR RESPONSIBILITIES:

Elevate Global UXUI Experience Design Program
Improve and reinforce effective, consistent design process and project workflow management practices in alignment of UDX business strategies across multiple workstreams.
Manage and standardize the end-to-end experience design processes and tools across Digital &Technology Value Stream as well as Global Marketing Commercial Scrum team models.
Ensure continuity of the Global UXUI Experience Design with implementation of consistent end-to-end design processes, development and execution of Global UXUI Experience Design program roadmap.
Ensure that all tools and processes meet Legal, License Partner and Security standards.
Report, measure and ensure key performance indicators (KPIs) are met and exceeded, based on the experience designs delivered.
Ensures smooth handoff of deliverables from creative and respective Technology, Digital, Marketing and Brand Creative teams and/or vendors.

Department Culture, Leadership & Collaboration
Strong people leader and vocal champion focused on achieving operational excellence and superior guest experience advancements with a high-performing experience design team to achieve and exceed goals and objectives.
Team communication, planning, briefing, and ensure high quality concerning design projects and activities
Promote a positive and inclusive design culture within the company and create a strategy for how the team will collaborate with other teams across the organization.
Ensure new employees are integrated into the Global UXUI Experience Design team through orientation and resource training to ensure consistency in our design practices.
Amplify the team's innovative experience design execution through experience design award entries.
Enable operational initiatives to promote cultures of continuous learning and growth

Budget, Partner & Vendor Management
Manage initial and ongoing relationships with vendors and outside service providers as it relates to Experience Design and UX Research implementation.
Ensure consistent, cross-functional communication across the Global UXUI Experience Design team to include Global Product Management, TMO, Technology, Digital Experience & eCommerce, Business Operations, Marketing, Creative, Revenue Operations, Legal, License Partners and Finance relative to key business decisions and customer engagement
Engage and provide relationship management with Marketing & Sales, Digital & Technology, Universal Creative and Product & Experience and Destination partners as a key stakeholder, ensuring quality and timeliness of deliver, integration with other projects and overall cost management.
Manage time tracking, financial responsibilities relative to budget allocation of Global UXUI Experience Design team.

Global Design System Governance
Elevate and evangelize the Global Design System, ensuring Design System Governance across all design workstreams and ensure User Research practices are infused across all design activities.
Amplify value by working cross functionally to socialize and communicate the value of GDS with other teams and functions.
Accountable for staying within agreed upon program or project budget and informing all parties of any changes to scope, assumptions and issues that arise.
Identify and proactively resolve any deliverables that might fall behind schedule or result in change orders.
Create relevance and value by leveraging resources, tools (templates, playbooks, and weekly reports) to capture and drive value.
Understands and actively participates in Environmental, Health & Safety responsibilities by following established UO policy, procedures, training and team member involvement activities.
Performs other duties as assigned.

EDUCATION:

Bachelor's degree required.
Undergraduate degree (preferred) in User Experience, Product Design, Program Management, Experience Design, Marketing Technology, UX Research, Human Centered Interaction and/or Interaction Design.

EXPERIENCE:

7+ years of experience in large-scale program planning and implementation of product design, UX design and design system management.
Strong understanding of project management methodology including the ability to create and monitor project plans, budget management, and demonstrated ability to manage complex projects, especially those with multiple designers, developers and project owners.
Must be proactive with strong analytical, problem-solving skills and ability to make complex decisions in potentially ambiguous situations.
Demonstrated ability to communicate at all levels within an organization, with an emphasis on senior level management, combined with the ability to collaborate with both technical and non-technical team members at all levels.
Strong experience with Agile methodology for workload planning, scheduling, execution and prioritization of overflow.
Working knowledge and/or previous experience with the following a plus: JIRA, Confluence, Figma, Tridion, Workfront.
Excellent analytical, written, and oral communication skills, and be able to explain complex concepts both concisely and simply. Able to interpret data and trends, diagnose problems, and recommend effective action plans to resolve issues is critical.
Strong background in stakeholder and partner management along with cross-functional collaboration.
Experience in user experience design team leadership and large-scale program planning and implementation.
Positive attitude, flexibility, professional demeanor with intellectual curiosity and a strong willingness to learn.

Preferred:
Familiarity with usability testing programs using User Zoom, Adobe Analytics and and other data analysis tools.
Senior-level executive presence to inspire trust and confidence in direct reports and stakeholders.
Familiarity with defining taxonomies and content strategy for development of components to be used in design systems and Content Management Systems (CMS).

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