Top Design Director Jobs in Chicago, IL

Design polished digital product experiences across desktop and mobile, translating user journeys and product requirements into flows, interfaces, and prototypes. Build and document scalable design systems, collaborate with cross-functional teams and clients, support implementation quality, and present design decisions. Design Director engagements additionally provide creative leadership, mentorship, and client guidance.

Leads Hilton Lifestyle hotel developments across North America from pre-signing through opening. Oversees architecture, design, construction, renovations, conversions, and adaptive reuse while balancing brand vision, operational performance, commercial priorities, and guest experience. Reviews design and construction documents, conducts site inspections, manages risks, coordinates owners and consultants, drives decisions, and maintains project reporting. The role requires hospitality development expertise, strong project leadership, and travel of 40–50%.

Leads the design of procedural game worlds, combining terrain, creatures, resources, buildings, encounters, and points of interest into cohesive player experiences. Establishes standards for pacing, density, traversal, sightlines, and world composition; partners with Tools, Art, UX, and Engineering on generation frameworks and prototypes; guides systems from concept through live operation; and builds and mentors a high-performing world and level design team.

Leads instructional design strategy, quality standards, and a distributed designer team while advising customers on Curie implementation. Responsibilities include faculty training, instructional design scoping, proposal support, product testing, accessibility compliance, vendor coordination, and project delivery. The role partners with product and project management leaders to improve Curie, develop scalable approaches, and ensure high-quality online and hybrid course development.

Lead global finished-goods network strategy for McCain's Snacking business, owning make-vs-buy, footprint, and distribution decisions. Build and lead a new team, develop portfolio segmentation and governance, embed regulatory/trade requirements, run network modeling and scenario analyses, and align cross-functional and regional stakeholders to optimize cost-to-serve, capacity, and resilience.

Leads BILL’s multidisciplinary design organization and owns the company’s visual brand across campaigns, web, video, events, product marketing, and templates. Establishes creative vision, brand systems, AI-enabled workflows, video production capabilities, team processes, budgets, and agency partnerships. The role hires and develops designers, presents creative to senior leaders, manages capacity and prioritization, and partners with marketing, web, and product design teams to deliver distinctive, high-quality work at scale.

Leads enterprise Design Execution for mission-critical data center projects from design handoff through construction, commissioning, turnover, and operational readiness. Manages engineering teams, consultants, contractors, governance, technical standards, field issue resolution, infrastructure upgrades, and lifecycle improvements. Provides leadership for electrical and mechanical systems, coordinates cross-functional stakeholders, monitors project performance, and translates field lessons into future design standards. Requires substantial mission-critical engineering, team leadership, project management, and data center infrastructure experience.

Leads workflow strategy, process design, governance, documentation, standardization, and continuous improvement across Client Service & Delivery. Establishes process ownership, decision rights, KPIs, governance routines, and adoption plans; analyzes operational data to identify root causes and improvement opportunities. Facilitates workshops, develops training and executive materials, partners with analytics and technology teams, coaches stakeholders, and drives measurable operational outcomes across domestic and offshore teams.

Leads creative vision and execution for omnichannel experiential design across physical, digital, retail, event, and customer-facing environments. Oversees concepts, environmental graphics, signage, digital screen content, activations, and brand experiences from strategy through production. Guides creative teams, partners with senior stakeholders and external agencies, ensures brand consistency, and balances craft with budgets, timelines, and operational constraints. Requires expertise in visual storytelling, retail communications, digital content, emerging creative technologies, and team leadership.

Leads global ASIC physical design engineering teams and directs end-to-end physical implementation from RTL to GDSII. Owns methodology development, PPA optimization, low-power design, advanced-node tape-outs, physical verification, risk management, budgets, and schedules. Collaborates with architecture, RTL, DFT, CAD, package, and test teams to achieve first-pass silicon success. Manages EDA vendors and IP providers while mentoring distributed teams across the USA, India, and Italy.

Leads Nokia’s Analog/RF/Mixed-Signal ASIC development organization, overseeing product definition, architecture, circuit design, foundry engagement, layout, tape-out, silicon bring-up, testing, qualification, and productization. Builds and mentors technical teams, establishes design methodologies, selects circuit topologies, develops product roadmaps, and collaborates with verification, CAD, product, packaging, and test engineering partners to deliver high-performance SiGe ASIC solutions.

Leads FinQuery’s product design team while remaining hands-on in complex B2B SaaS and AI-enabled workflow design. Sets design direction, coaches designers, conducts customer research and usability testing, evolves the design system with Engineering, and partners with Product and accounting experts. The role focuses on accessible, trustworthy experiences involving automation, human review, permissions, data structures, and measurable improvements in task completion, efficiency, accuracy, and adoption.

Lead the design and development of user-centered fitness applications, collaborating with multiple teams to enhance user experience and managing design projects.

Lead the design of user experiences for a health-focused tech company, managing a team and collaborating on product development and research.

Lead Rewards Network’s internal design team and external creative partners while owning brand stewardship, design systems, campaign execution, digital experiences, content production, and creative operations. Develop differentiated co-branded experiences across marketing, product, sales, service, and events. Mentor designers and copywriters, manage vendors and freelancers, collaborate cross-functionally, and present creative strategies and program status to executives and partners.

Owns the end-to-end design function for remote, campus-scale industrial and utility infrastructure projects. Responsibilities include site selection, master planning, utility and phasing strategy, reference designs, design standards, consultant procurement and oversight, design reviews, risk management, permitting support, and construction-phase design decisions. Requires broad multidisciplinary expertise, mission-critical infrastructure experience, and substantial travel to remote construction and supplier sites.

Lead the vision and strategy for Cengage’s web experience ecosystem, including UX/UI, ecommerce, conversion, and customer journey design. Manage and mentor a high-performing design team while partnering with Product, Marketing, Analytics, and Engineering. Use research, behavioral data, experimentation, and business insights to optimize digital experiences, improve conversion, advance accessibility, and drive continuous innovation across discovery, purchase, onboarding, and engagement.

Leads UX architecture and product design direction across a B2B scientific intelligence platform. Responsibilities include user research, information architecture, prototyping, design systems, usability improvements, product strategy, and cross-functional collaboration with Product, Engineering, Science, and Commercial teams. The role also establishes design processes and recruits, manages, and mentors a growing product design organization.

Leads and mentors UX designers, researchers, and product managers; integrates user-centered design into product development; drives innovative experiences; conducts user research; establishes UX standards; evaluates initiative effectiveness; and promotes collaboration, inclusion, and continuous improvement.

Lead visual interface for enterprise platform engagements: translate UX foundations into production-ready UI, architect and govern design systems, ensure accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA), manage and mentor UI designers, partner with engineering/product, and present design rationale to senior stakeholders.

Leading and mentoring a design team, engaging with customers, defining design strategies, and collaborating with cross-functional partners to enhance product experiences.

Lead the Registry design org end-to-end: set UX vision, KPIs, and quality standards; ship cross-platform web and mobile experiences; embed AI-native workflows; prototype and contribute production-quality interfaces; run generative and evaluative research; scale design systems; partner with PMs, engineers, and analytics; and hire, develop, and manage a high-performing team of product designers.

Leads Highland’s engineering and design function for EV charging, battery energy storage, and edge compute sites. Oversees engineering standards, design packages, QA/QC, utility interconnection, AHJ permitting, consultant management, project schedules, budgets, and construction readiness. Builds and scales internal teams and external engineering capacity while improving design velocity through standardized processes, automation, and tooling. Partners with development, construction, procurement, origination, and fleet operations on technical due diligence, feasibility, estimating, and risk.

Leads product design strategy and a team of designers for Vanta’s risk management products. Defines enterprise-grade, AI-powered workflows, dashboards, and risk experiences; conducts customer research; partners with Product, Engineering, Research, Content, Design Systems, and Go-to-Market teams; establishes design quality standards; influences product strategy; and develops scalable design processes and patterns.

The Regional Design Director oversees design quality and creativity across a geographic area, nurturing a community of designers, and engaging in strategic growth initiatives while promoting the firm's ethos externally.