Manager, UX Product Design

About Phaedon

Phaedon is a leading loyalty partner for organizations across travel, hospitality, and retail, helping brands humanize loyalty by transforming customer interactions into meaningful, lasting relationships. Through innovative technology, strategic expertise, and advanced analytics, Phaedon delivers end-to-end loyalty solutions that generate measurable business outcomes. Its award-winning Tally™ platform enables organizations to scale loyalty with precision, deepen customer engagement, and strengthen connection at every stage of the relationship. Trusted by leading and growth-focused brands, Phaedon helps clients turn loyalty into a sustained driver of growth and long-term competitive advantage. Learn more at wearephaedon.com.

About the Role:

The Manager, UX Product Design is a highly impactful and hands-on UX leader responsible for defining, executing, and advancing the overall user experience strategy across our core platform. As the first dedicated UX hire on Phaedon’s Tally product, this role will establish scalable design processes, influence product strategy, and help shape the future growth of product UX within the organization. This person plays a critical role in shaping the company’s product strategy and ensuring that UX is a key consideration in all business decisions.

Location:

This role is based out of our office in the Designer’s Guild building in the heart of Minneapolis' North Loop neighborhood. We embrace a hybrid model with three in-office days per week to ensure a mix of collaboration and flexibility to support our employees' success.

Essential Duties/Responsibilities:

Ownership & Vision:

• Define and communicate the product UX vision and strategy, ensuring alignment with the company’s business goals and overall product strategy.
• Lead the product UX initiatives, set long-term goals, and provide direction and inspiration to ensure that all projects contribute to the broader company objectives.
• Establish and maintain a user-centered culture within the organization, advocating UX principles at all levels of decision-making.

Strategic Planning & Execution:

• Build and operationalize a scalable UX design process tailored for a product and engineering organization new to UX practices, establishing repeatable workflows, feedback loops, and design standards fostering organizational maturity.
• Develop and oversee the execution of a comprehensive UX roadmap that aligns with product development cycles and company milestones.
• Collaborate with other department heads (e.g., product, engineering, marketing) to integrate UX into the overall business strategy.
• Drive cross-functional initiatives that improve the overall user experience across all touchpoints, ensuring a cohesive and consistent experience.

Innovation & Continuous Improvement:

• Stay ahead of industry trends, emerging technologies, and best practices in UX, and ensure the team continually evolves and innovates.
• Drive the exploration and implementation of new tools, methodologies, and processes that enhance the product UX design and research capabilities.
• Lead retrospectives and post-project reviews to identify areas for improvement and implement lessons learned.

Stakeholder Management & Communication:

• Serve as the primary advocate for product UX within the organization, effectively communicating the value of UX to senior leadership and stakeholders.
• Present UX strategies, research findings, and project outcomes to executive leadership, providing insights that influence high-level decisions.
• Work closely with product management, engineering, and other teams to ensure that UX initiatives are aligned with business priorities and timelines.

Resource Management & Optimization:

• Identify opportunities for cost savings and efficiency improvements without compromising the quality of UX deliverables.
• Secure necessary resources, including tools, software, and training, to support the product and development team’s ongoing development and success.

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree AND 5 years of experience in UX design, with experience overseeing multiple initiatives and complex projects.
• Expertise in design tools such as Figma, with a deep understanding of design systems and best practices.
• Competency in using Claude or other AI tools for UX and UI research and optimization
• A portfolio that demonstrates strategic UX leadership, innovation, and the successful management of large-scale projects.
• Demonstrated experience building or maturing UX practices within a scaling organization, including establishing processes, workflows, and design standards from the ground up.
• Proven ability to influence product strategy and executive decision-making through user insights, research, and data-informed design recommendations.
• Experience leading end-to-end UX initiatives across discovery, prototyping, testing, implementation, and iteration.
• Experience partnering closely with Product Management and Engineering teams in agile product development environments.
• Strong systems thinking and problem-solving skills with the ability to navigate ambiguity and drive alignment across teams.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience serving as the first UX hire or leading UX transformation efforts within a startup or high-growth technology company.
• Experience working in marketing technology, customer engagement platforms or adjacent SaaS industries.
• Experience working in highly collaborative, cross-functional environments with evolving priorities and rapid iteration cycles.
• Experience integrating AI-assisted experiences, conversational interfaces, or intelligent workflow design into digital products.

Please note that we are not offering sponsorship of employment visas for this role. To be considered for this opportunity, candidates must be legally authorized to work in the U.S. without sponsorship for employment visa status (e.g., H1B status, 0-1, TN, CPT, OPT, etc.).

What we Offer:

We value our employees and demonstrate this through our comprehensive benefits offering including medical/dental/vision coverage, comprehensive paid time off, paid holidays, paid parental leave, retirement savings plans, and more.

Pay Range:

The pay range for this position is estimated to be: $97,000 - $142,000 per year

There are multiple factors that are considered in determining final pay for a position, including, but not limited to, relevant work experience, skills, certifications and competencies that align to the specified role, geographic location, education and certifications as well as contract provisions regarding labor categories that are specific to the position.

Phaedon is an equal opportunity employer, and all employment decisions shall be made without regard to age, race, creed, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, disability status, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, citizenship status or any other basis as protected by federal, state, or local law. Reasonable Accommodations are available, including, but not limited to, for disabled veterans, individuals with disabilities, and individuals with sincerely held religious beliefs, in all phases of the application and employment process.

The statements contained in this job description reflect general details as necessary to describe the principal functions of this job, the level of knowledge and skill typically required and the scope of responsibility. It should not be considered an all-inclusive listing of work requirements. Individuals may perform other duties as assigned, including work in other functional areas to cover absences, to equalize peak work periods, or to otherwise balance organizational workload.