Sr. Director, UX

About SimpliSafe We’re a high-tech home security company that’s passionate about protecting the life you’ve built and our mission of keeping Every Home Secure. And we’ve created a culture here that cares just as deeply about the career you’re building. Ours is a no ego culture of collaboration and innovation where those seeking their next challenge can find big opportunities and make a huge impact on the lives of all those who we protect. We don’t just want you to work here. We want you to grow and thrive here. We’re embracing a hybrid work model that enables our teams to split their time between office and home. Hybrid for us means we expect our teams to come together in our state-of-the-art office on two core days, typically Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday – working together in person and choosing where they work for the remainder of the week. We all benefit from flexibility and get to use the best of both worlds to get our work done. Why are we hiring? Well, we’re growing and thriving. So, we need smart, talented, and humble people who share our values to join us as we disrupt the home security space and relentlessly pursue our mission of keeping Every Home Secure. Role Overview We are seeking a Senior Director of UX Design, Research & Content Strategy to own experience strategy across our full product portfolio: app, web, hardware interfaces, and the end-to-end customer lifecycle. This is a key leadership role with a hands-on expectation: you will set organizational direction, build and develop the team, and engage directly on the work that matters most. You will sit on CPO’s leadership team for product planning and investment decisions, and you are expected to drive UX, research, and content as a unified business function. You will inherit a team of 12 (designers, researchers, and content strategists) and a function with real capability and momentum. The opportunity is to elevate what exists, not build from zero. SimpliSafe’s UX, research, and content capabilities have grown substantially; this role is the next chapter: moving the function from craft-focused to outcome-accountable, from reactive to proactive, and from team-level to enterprise-level influence. Key Responsibilities Strategy, Execution & Organizational Leadership Own the multi-year UX vision across SimpliSafe's digital and physical products; define how design, research, and content strategy are structured, staffed, and measured as business outcomes (activation, retention, plan upgrade conversion), driving Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). Establish a scalable design system and experience language across App (iOS/Android), web, and hardware interfaces.  Own content strategy as a first-class discipline: ensure that the words, labels, flows, and in-product messaging across the SimpliSafe experience are purposeful and consistent. Set and enforce how UX integrates into the product development process from discovery through post-launch; ensure design and content intent survive the handoff to Engineering. Recruit, develop, and retain high-caliber designers, researchers, and content strategists; build managers who operate with autonomy, freeing you to lead at the organizational and strategic level. Continuously raise the bar: elevate the team’s output, hold individuals to business outcomes, and build a culture where good work is distinguished from great work. You will need to personally produce work on the highest-stakes problems where the team needs a standard set by example. Research as a Business Decision Tool Mature the research function from execution-focused to decision-driving: establish the standard that every study is scoped around an open business question, and build the team’s capability to hold that bar. Build a culture that treats research as a tool for answering open questions, not for validating assumptions or generating stakeholder comfort. Translate business questions into precise research questions before any study is scoped. Drive the discipline of asking: what decision hangs on this answer, and what would we do differently depending on what we learn? AI-Augmented Design & Research Lead adoption of AI tools across design and research workflows to raise quality, compress cycle times, and free the team for higher-judgment work. You must be a practicing user of these tools yourself. Set standards for where AI augmentation is appropriate (generative ideation, design iteration, qual synthesis at scale) and where human judgment is non-negotiable (strategic framing, cross-functional influence). Partner with Engineering and Product Management to ensure that where AI enters customer-facing products, the UX standards for transparency, trust, and error recovery are defined by this function. Cross-Functional Influence Operate as a peer to VP/Director-level leaders across Product, Engineering, Industrial Design, Marketing, and CX. Lead UX in executive reviews and investment decisions; frame experience trade-offs in business terms. Partner with Industrial Design to maintain hardware/software continuity as a coherent end-to-end experience. What We're Looking For Required We don’t expect candidates to have led in every dimension of this role. We’re looking for depth in most areas and the intellectual drive to grow into the rest. 15+ years in UX Design, UX Research, Content Strategy, or a combination; at least 6 years leading multi-disciplinary experience organizations (design + research + content), including org design, hiring, and operating model ownership. Demonstrated track record of UX and content strategy at the executive level in a consumer-facing DTC company, with measurable contribution to business outcomes (conversion, activation, retention, revenue). Proven working depth across design, research, and content strategy disciplines; you must have sufficient depth to raise the quality bar, accelerate the team’s growth, and produce directly on the highest-st