Principal UX Designer in Durham, North Carolina at Aspida Financial Services LLC

Company Description:

Aspida is a tech-driven, nimble insurance carrier. Backed by Ares Management Corporation, a leading global alternative asset manager, we offer simple and secure retirement solutions and annuity products with speed and precision. More than that, we’re in the business of protecting dreams; those of our partners, our producers, and especially our clients. Our suite of products, available through our elegant and intuitive digital platform, focuses on secure, stable retirement solutions with attractive features and downside protection. A subsidiary of Ares Management Corporation (NYSE: ARES) acts as the dedicated investment manager, capital solutions and corporate development partner to Aspida. For more information, please visit www.aspida.com or follow them on LinkedIn.

Who We Are:

Sometimes, a group of people come together and create something amazing. They don’t let egos get in the way. They don’t settle for the status quo, and they don’t complain when things get tough. Instead, they see a common vision for the future and each person makes an unspoken commitment to building that future together. That’s the culture, the moxie, and the story of Aspida.

Our business focuses on annuities and life insurance. At first, it might not sound flashy, but that’s why we’re doing things differently than everyone else in our industry. We’re dedicated to developing data-driven tech solutions, providing amazing customer experiences, and applying an entrepreneurial spirit to everything we do. Our work ethic is built on three main tenets: Get $#!+ Done, Do It with Moxie, and Have Fun. If this sounds like the place for you, read on, and then apply at aspida.com/careers.

What We Are Looking For:

The Principal UX Designer is a hybrid role for a senior designer who leads high-impact, ambiguous design strategy as a hands-on individual contributor while also managing and developing a team of designers who own both design and research for their product areas. There is no separate research-only role on this team today — each designer conducts their own user research, usability testing, and validation alongside their design work. This role exists for organizations that need both deep design craft at the portfolio level and day-to-day people leadership in a single seat, while ensuring that research embedded in the design workflow stays rigorous and consistent rather than ad hoc. The Principal Design Manager shapes experience architecture and major design patterns across product lines, while owning staffing, coaching, performance, and quality — including research quality — for the team they manage. This role reports to the Sr. Director of Digital Product is required to be onsite at our Durham office 3 days a week.

What You Will Do:

Design Leadership (Individual Contribution)

• Lead ambiguous, high-impact design strategy across product lines
• Shape experience architecture and define major design patterns used across the design system
• Drive design system maturity and consistency across product areas
• Influence executive-level product and experience decisions through strategic design thinking
• Lead complex, portfolio-level journey design where the problem space is not yet well defined

People Leadership (Management)

• Manage designers, including staffing, performance input, coaching, and career development
• Own design quality and delivery alignment across the team's work
• Create and maintain standards for design reviews, design QA, and design process
• Balance team workload across craft development, delivery commitments, and team health
• Act as the primary people manager and escalation point for the design team

Research Leadership (Management)

• Coach designers on research methods, study design, and synthesis, since each designer conducts their own user research as part of their design work
• Set priorities for research and validation efforts in partnership with Product, ensuring designers' limited research time is focused on the highest-impact questions
• Own research quality and rigor across the team, including consistency of methods, synthesis standards, and the shared research repository
• Ensure research findings are consistently integrated into design and product decisions rather than lost once a designer moves on to the next task
• Build and mature lightweight research operations — templates, consent and ethics standards, participant recruiting processes — that designers can use without it competing with their design workload
• Balance each designer's time between design execution and research responsibilities, and flag when the team's research needs have outgrown what designers can absorb alongside design work

AI-Enabled Design Leadership

• Define and drive the team's strategy for adopting AI tools and workflows across prototyping, research, and front-end design
• Evaluate and introduce AI-assisted prototyping tools to accelerate concept iteration and reduce time from idea to testable design
• Guide designers in using AI to support research work — for example, accelerating synthesis, surfacing patterns across sessions, or drafting discussion guides — while maintaining research rigor and data privacy standards
• Champion AI-assisted front-end development workflows (e.g., design-to-code tools) that shorten design-to-build handoff and let the team validate real, working experiences faster
• Set guidelines for responsible AI use on the team, including when AI output requires human review, and how customer and research data can and cannot be used with AI tools
• Stay current on the AI tooling landscape and bring forward recommendations as new capabilities mature

What We Provide:

• Salaried, DOE
• Long-Term Incentive Plan
• Full-Time
• Full Benefits Package Available

What We Believe:

Not sure if you meet every qualification? We still encourage you to apply! We value inclusivity, welcoming candidates from diverse backgrounds, including non-traditional paths. Unique experiences enrich our team, and the willingness to dream big makes you an exceptional candidate!

At Aspida Financial Services, LLC, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment and are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As such, Aspida does not and will not discriminate in employment and personnel practices on the basis of race, sex, age, handicap, religion, national origin or any other basis prohibited by applicable law. Hiring, transferring and promotion practices are performed without regard to the above listed items.

What We Require:

• 15+ years of experience in product design, including demonstrated strategic design leadership at the portfolio or multi-product level
• Prior experience managing, coaching, or formally mentoring other designers
• Proven ability to shape design systems, patterns, and standards used across multiple teams or product lines
• Strong executive communication skills, with experience influencing product and business decisions at a senior level
• Demonstrated ability to balance hands-on design work with people-management responsibilities
• Strong working knowledge of research methods, ethics, and synthesis practices, with the ability to coach designers who conduct their own research
• Familiarity with AI-assisted tools across prototyping, research synthesis, and design-to-code workflows, and the judgment to evaluate which are worth adopting
• Experience with Figma, Storybook, Claude Design, Pendo, Lyssna or equivalent tools

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience building or maturing a design team from the ground up
• Experience operating as a design manager and senior IC simultaneously, or transitioning between the two
• Familiarity with design operations, design review processes, and design QA standards
• Experience partnering with Product, Research, and Engineering leadership on roadmap and experience strategy
• Comfort operating in ambiguity, with the judgment to know when to lead through direct design work versus through the team
• Experience building or maturing lightweight research practices within a design team, including research operations, repositories, and research standards
• Background as a hands-on designer-researcher, with firsthand experience balancing design execution and research within the same role
• Hands-on experience with AI-powered prototyping tools, AI-assisted research/synthesis tools, or design-to-code platforms
• Experience leading a team through adoption of new tools or workflows, including change management and training