Design & Creative - Executive & VP
VP UX, Design & Research
VP Level
Independently auditedSets company direction and answers for it to the board. Owns the function across the company, including its plan, its budget, and its leaders.
Audited package
Built, independently audited role package. Everything on this page is written for this seat.
Your Stack (Swappable)
This role works against whatever tools you already run. We list the tool categories the role operates in, never a named vendor, so you are never asked to replace a system that works.
- Design & Prototyping
- Version Control & Code Review
- Product Analytics
- QA & Testing
- Performance & Engagement
Deliverables
- Strategy and operating plans
- Board and executive narrative
- Investment and trade-off recommendations
- Organisational design proposals
Responsibilities
- Set the multi-year design and research vision and the functional strategy, and align org design, investment, systems, and executive commitments behind it
- Translate that strategy into the operating model - the design-system roadmap, the research operating model, review and critique standards, and team operating norms - with accountable leaders, investment ranges, and milestones
- Design the org and lead the leadership layer: hire, structure, and develop directors and heads, set the manager-of-managers standard, and run succession so the function does not depend on any one leader
- Own the function's headcount and budget, and make the final trade-offs on where design and research capacity goes when priorities, staffing, risk, and timing cannot all be satisfied
- Govern the design system and research repository as company infrastructure - ownership, quality, controls, and lifecycle - so decisions across teams and regions use consistent criteria
- Set executive targets for design quality, research coverage, and speed of design delivery, and use the evidence to reallocate investment or reset priorities when it changes
- Partner as a peer with the product, engineering, and research executives on cross-functional outcomes, decision rights, and the trade-offs required to meet company commitments
- Carry design into company strategy and the executive and board narrative - connecting design quality and research to product direction, brand, and business results with an explicit decision ask
The essence of this seat
The VP UX, Design & Research owns the design and UX-research function as a whole - across multiple product lines and design orgs - at the executive table.
Signature move
Start from the outcome the function must move, not the org chart or the tool. The first move on any strategy, org, or investment question is to name the company outcome design is accountable for - the vision, the structure, and the budget all derive from what design must accomplish, so decide what the function is for before you reshape it
What good looks like
a vision framed as a company-outcome bet, not aesthetics; a real operating model (design system as product, ResearchOps, critique standards), org / investment shifts, and reallocatable thresholds behind it; a clear decision ask; and the instinct that a vision the VP must personally execute is a bottleneck, not a strategy
Decision rights
- - the multi-year design and research vision and functional strategy
- - the design operating model, review / critique standards, and craft bar
- - the org design and the leadership-layer hires and development within your approved budget
- - the allocation of your headcount and budget across the function
- - the design-system and research-repository governance model
Working vocabulary
What this role does
The VP UX, Design & Research owns the design and UX-research function as a whole - across multiple product lines and design orgs - at the executive table. This is the most senior design seat: it sets the multi-year design vision and the operating model that lets many teams ship a coherent experience, designs the org and leads the leadership layer (directors and heads, not individual designers), owns the function's headcount and budget, governs the design system and research repository as company-wide infrastructure, and carries design's voice into company strategy alongside the product, engineering, and research executives. It is accountable for design quality, research coverage, and speed of design delivery at company scale, and for the function's ability to keep making good design decisions without the VP in the room. This is not a Design Director, who owns the craft and creative direction of one area (product, brand, or creative) but not the whole function's strategy, budget, and org. It is not a Head of Design, who owns the function in a company that has no design VP - a real function-owner, but at a lower altitude and smaller scale, usually without a seat at the executive table or an org of design orgs beneath them. And it is not the CPO or product executive: that peer owns product strategy and business outcomes; this seat owns design and research as a function, its craft and its vision, and partners as an equal at the exec table rather than owning the product roadmap. What separates great from average at this altitude is building a design function that compounds without the VP touching the work: a vision the leadership layer can execute against, an operating model and design system that make quality the default rather than a heroic per-project fight, a bench of design leaders strong enough that the VP hires and grows leaders rather than reviewing pixels, and an executive presence that turns design into a lever on company direction instead of a service desk. A mediocre VP is the org's most senior individual contributor, hoards the creative call, and reports activity; a great one sets direction, builds the leaders, and is measured on what the whole function ships and influences.
Best-fit customer
organisations that need experienced judgement applied to company strategy, operating performance, and enterprise accountability
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