Senior Vice President, Product Design

BNY Mellon · New York, New York · Posted 2026-09-10

Description -----------

The Senior Vice President, Product Design is a strategic design leader, builder, and owner responsible for shaping the experience vision and execution for a broad product area or complex feature set. This role combines deep product design expertise, systems thinking, strong cross-functional leadership, and a high bar for craft to deliver user-centered outcomes at scale.

This leader drives design strategy from discovery through delivery, partnering closely with product, engineering, and business stakeholders. As the first dedicated designer embedded in a team that has historically operated without a broader design bench, this role requires a highly self-directed practitioner who can independently establish standards, create momentum, and elevate the quality of the product experience. They bring a strong builder and owner mindset, taking accountability not only for design deliverables, but also for product quality, user outcomes, and the continued elevation of design craft within the team.

Key Responsibilities

Drive the design strategy and vision for a broad product area or complex feature set, connecting user needs, business priorities, technical constraints, and platform opportunities.
Lead end-to-end design work across discovery, concept development, prototyping, validation, and delivery.
Serve as the primary design leader within the team, independently setting direction, creating structure, and establishing a high standard for design quality and execution.
Elevate design craft through strong visual, interaction, and product design judgment, bringing rigor, polish, consistency, and clarity to the user experience.
Demonstrate a builder mindset by creating scalable patterns, reusable approaches, and practical ways of working that improve product quality, speed, and consistency.
Demonstrate an owner mindset by proactively identifying opportunities and risks, aligning stakeholders, driving decisions, and ensuring follow-through from concept to shipped outcome.
Lead cross-functional workshops, design reviews, and working sessions to build alignment and move teams from ambiguity to clarity.
Partner closely with product managers, engineers, and key stakeholders to define priorities, shape roadmaps, and deliver cohesive experiences.
Define design scope, milestones, priorities, and success measures for initiatives within their area, and contribute to effective planning and execution within agile delivery environments.
Create high-quality design artifacts and prototypes that support alignment, decision-making, validation, and implementation.
Work in modern product development workflows with engineering and product partners, including familiarity with Git-based collaboration, repositories, versioned artifacts, and spec-driven development practices.
Contribute to modern handoff approaches by helping teams move from static documentation toward clearer, shared specifications, living artifacts, and tighter design-engineering collaboration throughout delivery.
Influence cross-functional leadership to prioritize product excellence and invest in improvements that raise experience quality over time.
Use qualitative and quantitative inputs, including research, analytics, experimentation, and stakeholder insight, to inform decisions and continuously improve solutions after launch.

AI Design Fluency

Demonstrate fluency in designing AI-assisted and AI-enabled experiences, including workflows that incorporate generation, automation, recommendations, and conversational interactions where appropriate.
Understand how to design for trust, transparency, usability, and human oversight in AI-enabled experiences, including fallback states, review patterns, and clear user control.
Apply strong judgment to when AI should enhance a workflow and when more traditional interaction patterns are the better solution.
Use AI-enabled tools to accelerate design exploration, synthesis, prototyping, iteration, and workflow efficiency while maintaining high standards of craft and product judgment.
Partner with product and engineering to shape practical, user-centered AI opportunities that deliver meaningful value.
Incorporate responsible design considerations such as accessibility, clarity, privacy, and bias awareness into AI-enabled product experiences.

Tools and Ways of Working

Comfortable working in agile product delivery environments and using modern digital product workflows to support planning, collaboration, and execution.
Experience using contemporary AI-enabled tools such as Devin, Claude, Codex, and similar technologies to accelerate thinking, making, prototyping, and delivery.
Familiarity with Git-based workflows, repositories, and modern collaboration practices that support transparent iteration, versioning, and closer partnership with engineering.
Understanding of spec-driven development and modern handoff practices that improve clarity, reduce translation gaps, and enable more efficient implementation.
Strong capability in storytelling, documentation, and workshop facilitation to support alignment and execution.
Familiarity with research, analytics, and experimentation practices that help teams understand user behavior, validate decisions, and measure impact.

Leadership and Collaboration

Builds strong relationships across cross-functional teams and understands how their work connects to broader organizational goals.
Communicates clearly and confidently, navigating complex situations and differing perspectives with sound judgment and professionalism.
Advocates for a strong point of view while remaining collaborative and able to respectfully disagree and commit to aligned decisions.
Contributes to a culture of accountability, collaboration, curiosity, honesty, and relentless pursuit of better solutions.
Operates with a high degree of independence, requiring limited day-to-day direction while exercising strong judgment on new and complex assignments.
Helps raise awareness of the value of design by modeling strong craft, clear thinking, and a high standard of execution within a team that is continuing to mature its design practice.

Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in psychology, user experience, design, human-computer interaction, or a related discipline, or equivalent work experience required; advanced degree preferred.
10–12 years of related experience required.
Demonstrated experience leading design for complex products, platforms, or workflows with meaningful impact on team and business outcomes.
Strong experience partnering with product and engineering to deliver high-quality digital experiences.
Proven ability to operate as a highly independent design leader in environments with limited design support or infrastructure.
Experience working in modern product development environments that use Git, repositories, and evolving design-to-engineering workflows is strongly preferred.
Experience in the securities or financial services industry is a plus.
Demonstrated AI design fluency and experience designing or contributing to AI-enabled product experiences is strongly preferred.

About BNY Mellon

BNY Mellon is an investment company that provides investment management, investment services, and wealth management services.

Senior Vice President, Product Design

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