Senior Lead, UX Design, Kyndryl Vital US

Job description

Who We Are At Kyndryl, we design, build, manage and modernize the mission-critical technology systems that the world depends on every day. So why work at Kyndryl? We are always moving forward – always pushing ourselves to go further in our efforts to build a more equitable, inclusive world for our employees, our customers and our communities. The Role This role requires you to be onsite 5x a week at our Frisco, TX location. Are you a seasoned UX designer who looks past the screen to how work really gets done, and who wants to shape how people and AI agents work together in the world’s critical systems? Then you’ll love working at Kyndryl Vital. At Kyndryl Vital, we are looking for creative, curious, empathic systems thinkers who want to tackle wicked problems with some of the best technical colleagues in the world. Kyndryl Vital is a global network of designers, engineers, writers, researchers, and strategists. We are bound together by a desire to help our customers make sense of complexity and co-create intelligent and adaptive experience ecosystems that resonate with their users and transform their businesses. We believe the next evolution of experience will emerge from the artful blending of behavioral insight and business intelligence into elegantly simple, deeply human moments. We are fortunate to work with the world’s best IT experts to ensure that we can not only imagine a great experience, but that we can build it, deliver it, optimize it, and sustain it. The Role A UX Designer uses the process of understanding and empathizing with user needs, locating “pain points” and possibilities, and finding solutions that meet or exceed those needs. This role translates requirements into hypotheses, explores them with users through research methods and facilitation, and turns insights into tangible experiences. As Senior Lead, UX Design at Kyndryl Vital US, you will lead design direction on complex client engagements, from immersion and discovery through co-creation and delivery. You will own the structure behind the experience: how information is organized, how work moves between people and systems, and where that work breaks down today. You will work directly with senior client stakeholders, bring the perspectives of design, engineering, data, and consulting teams together into one coherent solution, and say the hard thing when a client’s assumptions don’t hold up. You will mentor designers, lead small teams, and raise the quality of work across the studio, including its visual craft An increasing share of our work involves designing how people work with AI, including agentic systems that plan, act, and hand work back to humans. You will map how work is really done, including the undocumented knowledge experienced people rely on, and build journeys and service blueprints that span human and AI actors. You will help define decision rights: what an agent can do on its own, what it can only recommend, and who can step in. You will design human-in-the-loop hand-off moments and interaction patterns for systems that are non-deterministic, handling latency, ambiguity, uncertainty, and error states in ways that keep users informed and in control. You will help establish the baseline a solution is measured against, so its value can be proven rather than assumed, and you will bring a clear point of view on where automation serves people and where it doesn’t. What sets this role apart is systems thinking. The strongest candidates are often service designers or information architects at heart: people who see how information, decisions, and work connect across an organization, and who learn new disciplines quickly and ship with them. This is not an AI-only role. Our clients run the world’s critical systems, and your work will also include information architecture, service design, dashboards and enterprise applications, and client-facing workshops and presentations. Kyndryl currently does not require employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, however, if you are hired to work at a client, customer, or partner location, you may be required to show proof of vaccination to align with their respective COVID-19 vaccination policies.  Those who believe they are eligible may apply for a medical or religious accommodation prior to the start of employment. Who You Are Your Future at Kyndryl Every position at Kyndryl offers a way forward to grow your career. We have opportunities that you won’t find anywhere else, including hands-on experience, learning opportunities, and the chance to certify in all four major platforms. Whether you want to broaden your knowledge base or narrow your scope and specialize in a specific sector, you can find your opportunity here Required Technical and Professional Expertise Human-Centered Design: You have a deep grounding in human-centered design methods and mindset, with a portfolio of enterprise, consulting, or innovation-studio work. Information Architecture: You organize complex information and workflows so people can find, understand, and act on them, including taxonomies, information hierarchies, content flows, and navigation, for systems with many users and data sources. Service Design and Systems Mapping: You build journey maps and service blueprints for complex, multi-actor systems that make every handoff, decision, and failure point visible. You look past the process map to incentives, second-order effects, and where the workflow actually breaks. Designing for AI: You have hands-on experience designing AI-driven or agentic product experiences, including human/AI interaction flows, human-in-the-loop patterns, decisions about what agents do on their own and what they hand to people, and interfaces for non-deterministic behavior. You can show this work and explain your decisions. Cross-Practice Integration: You have owned a deliverable that brought together the work of two or more practices, such as design, engineering, data, or consulting, and you can describe the friction you resolved between them. Client Leadership: You lead client-facing work on your own, including delivering messages clients don’t want to hear and holding your position. When a client’s systems or constraints push back on your plan, you change your approach without losing sight of the outcome. Design Research: You plan and conduct generative and evaluative research, including interviews with the people who handle the hardest cases, and you separate validated needs from requests and assumptions. Co-Creation and Storytelling: You design and lead workshops that align cross-functional client stakeholders, and you communicate design decisions and their rationale clearly to executives and delivery teams. Visual Design and Craft: You have strong visual design craft, including typography, layout, color, hierarchy, and data visualization, and you produce polished, high-fidelity interfaces and client-ready presentations. You set the visual quality bar for your team, build and evolve design systems, and give other designers specific feedback on their craft. Your portfolio shows this craft. Prototyping: You create context-appropriate prototypes from low to high fidelity and choose the right fidelity for the question at hand. Learning Velocity: You have picked up a new discipline on the job in the last two years and shipped work with it. Responsible Design: You design for accessibility, inclusion, transparency, and human control, and you apply AI-powered design and research tools in your own work while maintaining quality, judgment, and craft. Mentorship: You coach other designers, give direct feedback, and help teams raise their standard of work. Preferred Professional and Technical Expertise 8–10 years of experience in experience design, service design, information architecture, or a related field Credibility in two or more industries or business functions, such as public sector, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, or IT operations Experienc