Design Researcher Jobs in Washington (NOW HIRING)

We’re currently seeking a Product Design Director Individual Contributor (IC) to join our Customer Acquisitions and Management team, part of the Experience Design organization. In this role, you’ll lead design execution and elevate craft excellence across high-impact programs. The role involves navigating organizational complexity across multiple lines of business and managing matrixed stakeholders to deliver best-in-class customer experiences to core revenue-driving products.

The Experience Design team at Capital One is at the forefront of enriching our customers’ digital and physical experiences and we are passionate about creating memorable, meaningful product experiences that build the Capital One brand with humanity and drive business advantage and innovation. We champion a thriving environment of collaboration, authenticity and healthy critique, in which we honor diversity of thought, create a culture of belonging, and elevate one another. If you’re a creative innovator who embraces an environment where you can experiment, learn, and change banking for good, we’d love to hear from you.

As a Product Design Director IC on the Customer Acquisitions and Management, you’ll leverage your exceptional design skills to lead high-impact programs within revenue-generating products, navigating organizational complexity and delivering best-in-class customer experiences. You’ll define and drive design strategy that informs the higher-level vision of the organization and align to business objectives. You’ll collaborate deeply with our research teams and Product and Tech leadership and apply your expertise to elevating the quality and maturity of the design practice at Capital One.

Here are some of the expected competencies for this role:

Product Design Expertise: Leverage established expertise and leadership in product design to elevate the quality and maturity of the design practice at Capital One. Leveraging a variety of skills across interaction, visual and service design; in collaboration with cross-functional partners, help to oversee and optimize the use of appropriate tools, platforms, frameworks and design systems and develop artifacts that may include vision stories, journey maps, blueprints, high-fidelity designs and prototypes.

Mentorship: Provide guidance, direction and mentorship to other design roles, such as product design, content design, research, operations, service design and motion design, and lead complex projects, directing the work of junior designers.

Strategic Influence: Shape product direction and outcomes by leveraging deep product design expertise, user insights, and an understanding of the business. You'll drive alignment with cross functional senior leaders, ensuring user needs are central to our overall strategy and enabling bold, innovative solutions to complex problems.

Human-Centered: Champion voices of both customers and partners, modeling the mindset that business and customer outcomes are not distinct but complementary, ultimately resulting in experiences that exceed baseline customer needs and expectations.

Business-Focused: Demonstrate expert knowledge of products, processes, our customers, competitors and industry market trends, applying relevant insights to shape how Design should engage and solve business challenges.

Problem-Solving: Brings innovative solutions, thoroughly explores the solution space, clearly articulates constraints and balances facts, priorities, technical limitations and data to inform decision making.

Collaboration: Connect the dots across teams, portfolios, platforms and LOBs, bringing together partners and processes in ways that drive more coherent experiences, accelerate delivery and elevate the value of design.

Communication: Present work across levels and job functions, modeling a strategic human-centered approach that integrates design frameworks, data and research insights to make the complex accessible, influence senior stakeholders and achieve impactful results.

The ideal candidate has a strong portfolio demonstrating your leadership, process, results and impact.

• At least 8 years of experience in a product design role

• 10+ years of experience in a product design role
• Has experience in a design toolkit that spans product design, service design, and content design
• Experience leading high-impact, highly complex projects from strategy through delivery to market
• Experience partnering with product managers, engineers, marketing, and analytics leaders across multiple business lines to shape strategy, OKRs, roadmaps, and operating models
• Experience working within an design system
• Proficiency with web and mobile technologies and platforms, navigating technology considerations and constraints to drive sound product and experience decisions
• Expertise with design and prototyping tools such as Figma
• Proficiency in business case development, grounding product and user experience decisions to business value
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills
• Exceptional interpersonal skills and relationship building across complex organizations

At this time, Capital One will not sponsor a new applicant for employment authorization for this position.

The minimum and maximum full-time annual salaries for this role are listed below, by location. Please note that this salary information is solely for candidates hired to perform work within one of these locations, and refers to the amount Capital One is willing to pay at the time of this posting. Salaries for part-time roles will be prorated based upon the agreed upon number of hours to be regularly worked.

McLean, VA: $230,400 - $263,000 for Director, Design
New York, NY: $251,400 - $286,900 for Director, Design

This role is also eligible to earn performance based incentive compensation, which may include cash bonus(es) and/or long term incentives (LTI). Incentives could be discretionary or non discretionary depending on the plan.

Capital One offers a comprehensive, competitive, and inclusive set of health, financial and other benefits that support your total well-being. Learn more at the Capital One Careers website. Eligibility varies based on full or part-time status, exempt or non-exempt status, and management level.

Capital One is an equal opportunity employer (EOE, including disability/vet) committed to non-discrimination in compliance with applicable federal, state, and local laws. Capital One promotes a drug-free workplace. Capital One will consider for employment qualified applicants with a criminal history in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable laws regarding criminal background inquiries, including, to the extent applicable, Article 23-A of the New York Correction Law; San Francisco, California Police Code Article 49, Sections 4901-4920; New York City’s Fair Chance Act; Philadelphia’s Fair Criminal Records Screening Act; and other applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations regarding criminal background inquiries.

Capital One does not provide, endorse nor guarantee and is not liable for third-party products, services, educational tools or other information available through this site.

Capital One Financial is made up of several different entities. Please note that any position posted in Canada is for Capital One Canada, any position posted in the United Kingdom is for Capital One Europe and any position posted in the Philippines is for Capital One Philippines Service Corp. (COPSSC).