Lead Product Designer

Matlen Silver is seeking a contract Lead Product Designer to work onsite in New York, NY with a cross-functional squad operating in a SAFe environment. In this senior role, you will set the design direction and quality bar while staying hands-on through build and QA to help ensure the NYL360 experience matches the designed end-to-end journey across web and/or mobile.

What you’ll do

• Set the design direction and quality bar for a cross-functional squad and its roadmap.
• As a senior individual contributor, shape key areas of the product experience, govern design quality, and deliver prototypes using agentic design tooling and Madi, NYL’s Figma-based enterprise design system.
• Report to the Director of Product Design and partner with Product, Engineering, and Implementation leaders to influence the roadmap, align stakeholders, and mentor design peers within Scaled Agile (SAFe).
• Stay involved through build and QA so what ships reflects what was designed.
• Ensure the NYL360 experience holds together across web and/or mobile, simplifying complex workflows for users.
• Influence the roadmap and drive delivery through SAFe planning and execution.
• Lead co-creation and mentor the team.
• Ship for outcomes, not output.

What you bring

• 10+ years of digital product design experience, including leading design for a product, workstream, or portfolio, with a track record of shipping high-quality, production-ready work across responsive web, apps, portals, and workflow tools.
• Deep craft in high-fidelity UI, design systems, responsive and multi-breakpoint design, and detailed developer handoff, with judgment to set standards others follow.
• Experience owning a live product after launch, iterating through a continuous roadmap and linking enhancements to measurable outcomes.
• Experience leading design in a Scaled Agile (SAFe) environment, contributing to sprint and PI planning with Product, Engineering, and Implementation teams, and staying through QA.
• Experience presenting to and influencing senior and executive stakeholders, clearly articulating and defending design decisions.
• Experience designing complex systems such as dashboards, portals, data-heavy workflows, and form-based experiences.
• Strong interaction design, visual design, and UX writing collaboration skills, including content architecture across journeys.
• Fluency in AI-augmented design workflows (Figma AI, Claude Design, ChatGPT, NotebookLM), including reviewing AI-generated work for quality and compliance and leading adoption of the AI toolset across the team.
• Expertise in Figma (components, variables, auto layout, prototyping, Dev Mode handoff), able to set standards and train others; also proficient with FigJam and Miro and comfortable with Adobe Creative Suite.
• Familiarity with technical architecture concepts (service-oriented architecture, micro-services, data models) and front-end basics (HTML, CSS).
• Strong understanding of accessibility standards, including WCAG 2.1 AA and inclusive design, with ability to define accessibility standards for a product portfolio.
• Executive-level communication skills to align cross-functional leaders and provide engineers and designers with clear, actionable direction.
• Meticulous attention to detail across states, edge cases, and content, with pragmatic judgment about what to ship now versus later.
• Comfort using qualitative and quantitative inputs (usability testing, Qualtrics, Adobe Analytics/GA4) and OKR-based metrics to prioritize and iterate on live features.
• A bachelor’s degree in a relevant field (or equivalent practical experience).

Tools you’ll work with

• Figma, Figma AI, Claude Design, ChatGPT, NotebookLM
• FigJam, Miro, Adobe Creative Suite
• HTML, CSS, WCAG 2.1 AA
• Qualtrics, Adobe Analytics, GA4, OKR

Location and job type

• Location: New York, NY (onsite)
• Job type: Contract

Benefits

• Health, vision, and dental insurance (single and family coverage)
• 401(k) plan (employee contributions only)

Portfolio required

Please include a portfolio or case studies as a document or link with your resume when applying (including any passwords). Please do not use Dropbox or other file-sharing tools we cannot access.