Principal Experience Designer

Job Title: Principal Experience Designer

Location: South San Francisco United States

Job Description:

Laboratory & Sciences

58 USD - 96 USD/hour

Job Description

The Principal Experience Designer leads strategy and delivery within a Customer Experience Suite, ensuring that UX, UI, and CX design strategies accelerate progress toward exceptional customer experiences and measurable business impact. This role serves as a sr individual contributor and subject matter expert, applying deep experience design expertise to digital products and capabilities while mentoring junior designers. The position shapes a digital-forward experience design vision, integrates advanced technologies and omnichannel engagement, and helps redefine how patients, healthcare professionals, and internal teams experience digital solutions in a highly regulated environment.

Responsibilities

• Shape a digital-forward experience design vision and standards by leveraging knowledge of industry and competitive trends and aligning them with strategic product suite and business priorities.
• Partner with sr experience design leadership to drive the overall experience design vision and product standards, ensuring alignment with sr enterprise business stakeholder priorities, technical team capabilities, and process opportunities.
• Develop innovation workstreams that drive experimentation and new product features within a product-oriented model and team, fostering continuous improvement and innovation.
• Define target users in collaboration with analytics partners, deeply understand user research, prioritize key features and functionalities, and set clear performance objectives that balance business requirements with an exceptional end-user experience.
• Take accountability for key experience design initiatives in partnership with sr experience design leadership, contributing to product strategic planning, digital-forward operational execution, delivery milestones, and business outcomes with measurable impact through adoption and sustained engagement.
• Evangelize the role and value of UX, UI, and CX design in achieving enterprise objectives by communicating design value propositions, strategies, and roadmaps to sr leaders and stakeholders across the organization.
• Partner with leadership to drive prioritization, manage stakeholders across the enterprise, and resolve conflicts to align and advance product roadmaps and enhancements.
• Collaborate with UX/UI analysts and informatics teams to align business outcomes with technical feasibility, ensuring that products deliver both business value and strong technical performance.
• Partner with business product owners and customer experience suite leadership to align roadmaps and initiatives that meet patient, professional, and internal customer needs.
• Collaborate with global product managers to drive effective cross-regional collaboration, shared learnings, and operational efficiencies.
• Take accountability for delivering business-relevant products that meet stakeholder needs by collecting, aligning, and implementing feedback while ensuring alignment with broader business objectives.
• Define business cases and support budgetary and funding needs for experience design initiatives, articulating value and expected impact.
• Drive the definition of business requirements for product usage and system health, leveraging internal and industry standards to ensure robust performance and reliability.
• Partner with measurement and optimization business product owners to inform ongoing CX and UX advancements and operations, using insights to refine and evolve experiences.
• Comply with all applicable laws, regulations, and internal policies that govern activities in a highly regulated environment.
• Mentor and coach junior experience design team members, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, accountability, and an exemplary employee experience.
• Cultivate an environment that emphasizes design craft, quality, and consistency, including the use and evolution of design systems.
• Build and manage a design system to ensure consistent, scalable, and high-quality user experiences across digital products.
• Leverage advanced knowledge of workflow tools, automation systems, and compliance frameworks to design and implement efficient, compliant digital experiences.

Essential Skills

• Bachelor’s degree in business, technology, operations, science, marketing, or a related field.
• 10 years of professional experience, including at least 7 years in experience design, product design, UX design, or a closely related field.
• Proven ability to own and manage the full product lifecycle, including visioning, roadmap creation, execution, and impact measurement for specific products or features.
• Strong stakeholder alignment skills to drive effective cross-functional collaboration across business, technical, and compliance teams.
• Demonstrated mentorship and guidance abilities, with experience coaching and supporting talent indirectly.
• Excellent communication skills to drive change, influence stakeholders, and clearly evangelize the product and experience design vision.
• Experience working in an agile setting or bringing agile best-practice mentorship to teams and processes.
• Experience collaborating with legal, compliance, and privacy teams to ensure adherence to governance and regulatory standards, and to help influence and evolve those standards where appropriate.
• Ability to innovate and foster experimentation to enhance product capabilities and user experiences.
• Proven ability to adapt and navigate ambiguous or evolving environments while maintaining focus on outcomes.
• Strong problem-solving and strategic thinking skills, with the ability to balance short-term execution needs and long-term vision.
• Hands-on experience in UX design, product design, and digital experience design, including defining user journeys and interaction patterns.
• Advanced knowledge of workflow tools, automation systems, and compliance frameworks relevant to digital products and customer experiences.
• Experience building and managing a design system to ensure consistent and scalable design across products.
• Demonstrated capability in design, UX design, marketing strategy, and product design as core skill areas.

Additional Skills & Qualifications

• Advanced degree or equivalent experience, such as an MBA or related graduate-level qualification.
• Experience in healthcare, pharmaceutical, or other highly regulated industries.
• Proven success in managing complex projects that require both strategic planning and detailed operational execution.
• Experience working within or alongside customer engagement, marketing, medical affairs, public affairs, and access-focused teams.
• Familiarity with omnichannel engagement strategies, end-to-end content management, and digital engagement technologies.
• Experience driving or contributing to innovation workstreams that explore new product concepts, features, and digital capabilities.
• Comfort presenting portfolios and case studies to sr stakeholders, demonstrating impact, process, and outcomes.
• Ability to cultivate a strong design culture focused on craft, quality, and continuous improvement.

Work Environment

The role operates in a hybrid working model that combines on-site and remote work, with three days spent on-site and two days working remotely each week. You will collaborate closely with cross-functional teams in a digital-first environment that emphasizes advanced technologies, AI, omnichannel engagement, and end-to-end content management. The organization fosters a culture of inclusivity, integrity, creativity, and innovation, with a strong focus on improving patient outcomes and delivering meaningful customer experiences. Work involves regular interaction with legal, compliance, and privacy functions due to the highly regulated nature of the industry. The interview process typically includes three video-based rounds: an initial 30-minute conversation with the hiring leader, a 45-minute panel interview with a portfolio presentation, and a final 45-minute video interview. The environment encourages experimentation, collaboration, and accountability, supported by workflow tools, automation systems, and design systems to deliver consistent, compliant, and high-quality digital experiences.

Job Type & Location

This is a Contract position based out of South San Francisco, CA.

Pay and Benefits

The pay range for this position is $58.00 - $96.00/hr.

Eligibility requirements apply to some benefits and may depend on your job classification and length of employment. Benefits are subject to change and may be subject to specific elections, plan, or program terms. If eligible, the benefits available for this temporary role may include the following:
• Medical, dental & vision
• Critical Illness, Accident, and Hospital
• 401(k) Retirement Plan – Pre-tax and Roth post-tax contributions available
• Life Insurance (Voluntary Life & AD&D for the employee and dependents)
• Short and long-term disability
• Health Spending Account (HSA)
• Transportation benefits
• Employee Assistance Program
• Time Off/Leave (PTO, Vacation or Sick Leave)

Workplace Type

This is a hybrid position in South San Francisco,CA.

About Actalent

Actalent is a global leader in engineering and sciences services and talent solutions. We help visionary companies advance their engineering and science initiatives through access to specialized experts who drive scale, innovation and speed to market. With a network of almost 20,000 consultants and 5,000 clients across the U.S., Canada, Asia and Europe, Actalent serves many of the Fortune 500. We are proud to be an Engineering News-Record (ENR) Top 500 Design Firm for our engineering design services and a ClearlyRated Best of Staffing® winner for both client and talent service.

The company is an equal opportunity employer and will consider all applications without regard to race, sex, age, color, religion, national origin, veteran status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information or any characteristic protected by law.

If you would like to request a reasonable accommodation, such as the modification or adjustment of the job application process or interviewing process due to a disability. 

San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance: Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, for all positions located in the city and county of San Francisco, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Massachusetts Lie Detector: It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI): We may use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support parts of our hiring process, including sourcing, screening, and evaluating candidates. AI helps assess applications and qualifications, but final decisions are made by our hiring team. By applying, you acknowledge and agree that your application may be reviewed using AI tools.