Ahold Delhaize USA, a division of global food retailer Ahold Delhaize, is part of the U.S. family of brands, which includes five leading omnichannel grocery brands - Food Lion, Giant Food, The GIANT Company, Hannaford and Stop & Shop. Our associates support the brands with a wide range of services, including Finance, Legal, Sustainability, Commercial, Digital and E-commerce, Technology and more.

Primary Purpose
We are seeking a thoughtful and hands-on Senior Manager of Experience Design to join the AD USA Experience Design leadership team. The Experience Design team has an effective partnership with Product Management and Development teams. We collaborate with engineers, product owners, brand clients and executives throughout the product development lifecycle. This role combines leadership responsibilities with hands-on design work, ensuring your product portfolio delivers on desired outcomes and at a high standard of quality.

As a design leader, you're invested in your team and the work, and you take care to provide the context, space and optimal conditions for your team to succeed. You thrive in collaborative environments and relationship building with cross-functional partners, while sharing accountability and outcomes. You have a high standard for design quality and your humility, transparency and backbone inspires your team to reach and elevate those standards.

Our flexible/ hybrid work schedule includes 3 in-person days at one of our core locations and 2 remote days. Our core office locations include Chicago, IL, or Quincy, MA,.
Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis.

Duties and Responsibilities
* Lead, coach, develop, and inspire a team of high performing experience designers
* Nurture and support team health, engagement, and career development
* Resource planning & allocation; take on design initiatives when appropriate
* Advocate for the customer and champion a user-centered design approach throughout teams and the product development lifecycle
* Set a design vision and strategy for your area of focus that aligns customer needs with business goals and technical feasibility
* Set and uphold design quality standards across your team
* Actively participate in the design process from concept to execution to optimization, ensuring products are desirable and designs are intuitive, accessible, and meet ADUSA design team standards
* Take on design tasks and initiatives as needed by creating design artifacts including flows, prototypes, and high-fidelity designs
* Facilitate design critiques in an effective and engaging manner with clear takeaways and next steps
* Systems thinker - ability to think across channels and touchpoints, and throughout the technical, backend and backstage systems necessary to orchestrate an experience
* Steward a culture of data and research informed decision-making
* Organize and facilitate workshops in an effective, engaging and collaborative manner
* Contribute to our product roadmap, OKR's, optimization plans, and identify opportunities to continuously improve the customer experience
* Solve complex problems - whether it stems from an initiative, process, technical, people or team challenge
* Partner with product and tech leads as well as design and research leadership peers
* Cultivate your internal network across the company including stakeholders from marketing, merchandising, retail media, and fulfillment
* Monitor industry trends, emerging technologies, and competitors to identify opportunities for value creation, innovation and differentiation

Qualifications
* Proven experience (8+ years) in experience design, product design, or a related role with at least 3 years leading design teams
* Bachelor's degree in design, HCI, a related field, or professional experience in the field; Master's degree preferred.
* Proficiency in design tools such as Figma, etc., and understanding of front-end development technologies.
* Solid understanding of advanced user centered design methods and principles, design best practices, and design research methodologies
* Excellent communication skills with the ability to articulate design concepts and rationale to stakeholders at all levels.

Preferred Qualifications
* Strong presentation and storytelling skills
* Strong stakeholder management skills
* Ability to resolve and diffuse conflicts
* Evangelize the design practice, amplify the value of design with stakeholders in your area of focus
* Establish and maintain essential elements of the design organization practice - including but not limited to design standards and principles, training & development, recruiting & onboarding

#LI-KK1 #LI-Hybrid

At Ahold Delhaize USA, we provide services to one of the largest portfolios of grocery companies in the nation, and we're actively seeking top talent. Our team shares a common motivation to drive change, take ownership and enable our brands to better care for their customers. We thrive on supporting great local grocery brands and their strategies.

We offer an experience where our associates are valued; Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging are infused in our business and our employees are representative of the communities that we serve. We believe in total wellness, which encompasses a blend of physical, financial and emotional wellness.

We believe in collaboration, curiosity, and continuous learning in all that we think, create and do. While building a culture where personal and professional growth are just as important as business growth, we invest in our people, empowering them to learn, grow and deliver at all levels of the business.