Experience Design Manager, Internal Experiences at Justworks

Who We Are At Justworks, you’ll enjoy a welcoming and casual environment, great benefits, wellness program offerings, company retreats, and the ability to interact with and learn from leaders in the startup community. We work hard and care about our most prized asset - our people. We’re helping businesses get off the ground by enabling them to focus on running their business. We solve HR issues. We’re data-driven and never stop iterating. If you’d like to work in a supportive, entrepreneurial environment, are interested in building something meaningful and having fun while doing it, we’d love to hear from you. We're united by shared goals and shared motivations at Justworks. These are best summed up in our company values, which are reflected in our product and in our team. Our Values If this sounds like you, you’ll fit right in. Who You Are You are a thoughtful, experienced design leader with a passion for crafting impactful user experiences. A designer to the core, you understand that experience goes beyond interface, and that design value lies in the resulting decisions. You design integrated systems, from digital products to operational workflows and organizational structures. You excel at finding hidden insights and patterns across organizational siloes, using design practice to translate thinking into conceptual models that align and spur action. Relationships are key; you are exceptionally collaborative, an outstanding communicator, presenter, and facilitator. You thrive on complex challenges with diverse stakeholders, synthesizing competing inputs into actionable design direction, and guiding junior designers to simple, elegant solutions. A collaborative systems thinker, you ensure experiences are user-centered, resilient, and aligned with business needs. As a designer, you are strategic, leveraging data and insights to inform and track team progress toward business goals, collaborating enthusiastically with partners and leadership. As a manager, you are an empathetic listener, giving and receiving honest, thoughtful feedback. You set high standards, fostering a growth mindset, creating psychological safety, and making space for reflection and proactive learning. As a leader, you are a strong communicator and storyteller, adapting your approach and forming strong partnerships across the organization by finding common ground. About the Role Justworks is seeking an Experience Design Manager to lead the Internal Experiences Design team. This team is responsible for the user experiences that bridge our product and our service together. You will manage a team of 4 Product Designers focused on delivering seamless, scalable, and compliant experiences. This role requires deep collaboration with peers in Engineering, Product Management, Data and Compliance, as well as close partnership with stakeholders in Operations, Customer Success, Sales, Finance, and Underwriting. You will contribute to design work as a player-coach, while also growing your team’s capabilities and influence. You’ll help ensure that Justworks’ financial tools reduce friction, support smart decision-making, and deliver reliable, compliant outcomes for small businesses and their teams. Your Success Profile What You Will Work On • Lead and mentor a team of 4 Experience Designers, guiding both their craft and career development. • Collaborate with Product and Engineering leaders to define product direction, strategy, and roadmaps. • Align your team’s efforts to business goals, regulatory requirements, and Justworks' customers. • Build strong, collaborative working relationships across divisions, levels and functions; partner with peers in Experience Design as well as leaders across Engineering, Product Management, Marketing, Operations, Support, and Sales to ensure end-to-end service delivery. • Advocate for Justworks users and champion operational simplicity across all touchpoints; balancing UX concerns with business goals, technological constraints, and broader company strategy. • Partner with Experience Design leadership to scale design practices, foster cross-domain cohesion, and support a thriving team culture. • Support hiring and talent development with an emphasis on equity, diversity, and inclusion. • Contribute to team rituals, learning opportunities, and community-building efforts across Experience Design. How You Will Do Your Work As an Expereince Design Manager at Justworks, success is measured by how results are achieved as much as by the outcomes themselves. Your approach will be grounded in: • Customer Focus: Deep empathy for financial administrators and employees, designing with trust, clarity, and precision. • Strategic Systems Thinking: Connecting payroll, tax, time, and payments into coherent, efficient workflows. • Collaboration & Facilitation: Leading teams through discovery, alignment, and delivery in cross-functional settings. • Craft & Quality: Ensuring work meets high standards for usability, compliance, and visual design excellence. • Adaptability: Leading through ambiguity and evolving priorities, with resilience and composure. As a Justworks people manager, you will also: • Build an effective & diverse team: Builds a strong-identity team that applies their diverse skills and perspectives to achieve common goals. • Develop talent: Develops people to meet both their career goals and the organization’s goals through effective performance management, candid feedback and coaching conversations. • Cultivate innovation: Inspires creativity and curiosity, pushes beyond comfort zone, prioritizes learning & development for self and team. • Direct work: Provides direction, delegating and removing obstacles to get work done. • Ensure accountability: Hold yourself and others accountable to meet commitments. In addition, all Justworkers focus on aligning their behaviors to our core values known as COGIS. It stands for: • Camaraderie - Day to day you can be seen working together toward a higher purpose. You like to have fun. You’re an active listener, treat people respectfully, and have a strong desire to know and help others. • Openness - Your default is to be open. You're willing to share information, understand other perspectives, and consider new possibilities. You’re curious, ask open questions, and are receptive to thoughts and feedback from others. • Grit - You demonstrate grit by having the courage to commit and persevere. You’re committed, earnest, and dive in to get the job done well with a positive attitude. • Integrity - Simply put, do what you say and say what you'll do. You’re honest and forthright, have a strong moral compass, and strive to match your words with your actions while leading by example. • Simplicity - Be like Einstein: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Qualifications • You have 7+ years of applicable experience designing services and software experiences, with some experience in B2B SaaS, fintech, or regulated domains (e.g. HR, payroll, tax). • 2+ years managing or directing the work of designers, with a proven ability to coach and develop talent. • Demonstrated experience co-leading cross-functional teams through ambiguity to deliver user-centered outcomes. • Strong portfolio of work that includes design leadership on complex operational workflows; and the ability to present your work in the form of case studies articulating the design problem, your leadership, and the eventual business impact. • Attention to detail, and a refined sense of craft in interface design, interaction, and systems thinking. • Deep understanding of how qualitative and quantitative research can inform design decisions. • Fluency in design tools including Figma • Commitment to accessibility, inclusion, and scalable design systems. The base wage range for this position based in our New York City Office is targeted at $190,000.00 to $209,000.00 per year. #LI-Hybrid #LI-AJ1 Actual compensation is based on multiple factors that are unique to each candidate, including and not limited to skill set, level of relevant experience, and specific work location. Salary ranges for positions based in other locations may differ based on the cost of labor in that location. For more information about Justworks’ Total Reward Philosophy, including all of the perks and benefits we are proud to offer our team members, please visit Total Rewards @ Justworks. Diversity At Justworks Justworks is committed to maintaining a workplace where diversity of identity, culture, and life experience is the norm and is celebrated authentically and respected consistently. Diversity in our work, our people, and our product drives creativity and innovation, entrepreneurial leadership and integrity, competitiveness, and collaboration throughout our business and in the market. We depend on our differences to make our team stronger, our workplace more dynamic, and our product accessible to all of our customers. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer open to all qualified applicants regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital or familial status, disability, pregnancy, gender identity or expression, veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status. Justworks is fully dedicated to providing necessary support to candidates with disabilities who may require reasonable accommodations. We also provide reasonable accommodations to employees based on their sincerely held religious beliefs, as well as for other covered reasons consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws. If you're in need of a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at [Upgrade to PRO to see contact]. Your comfort and success matter to us, and we're here to ensure an inclusive experience. Our DEIB Report