Vice President Product, Design

Chicago, IL - USA

Monthly Salary: Not Disclosed

Posted on: Yesterday

Vacancies: 1 Vacancy

Job Summary

Who we are...

Verra Mobility is a global leader in smart mobility. We develop technology-enabled solutions that help the world move safely and easily. We are fostering the development of safe cities working with police departments and municipalities to install over 4000 red-light speed and school bus stop arm safety cameras across North America. We are also creating smart roadways serving the worlds largest commercial fleets and rental car companies to manage tolling transactions and violations for over 8.5 million vehicles. And we are a leading provider of connected systems processing nearly 165 million transactions each year across 50 individual tolling authorities.

Position Overview:

The Vice President of Product Design will lead and scale a worldclass multidisciplinary organization spanning Product Design Research Content Design and Design Operations. This executive owns experience strategy across Verras connectedmobility portfolio translating complex customer and business needs into clear humancentered product experiences that drive adoption trust and measurable role is a key driver of Verra Mobilitys evolution toward a modern Product Operating Modelempowering durable crossfunctional product teams to continuously discover experiment and deliver solutions that solve real customer problems rather than simply executing projects or managing handoffs.

As a senior leader within Verras Product Operating Model this role partners closely with Product Management and Engineering to embed design deeply into product strategy and delivery. The VP will establish scalable design systems researchdriven insights and operating practices that empower durable crossfunctional teams to continuously discover experiment and deliver highquality solutions that solve real customer problems. Success is measured by customer impact speed and quality of delivery and the longterm strength and effectiveness of the design organization.

Key Responsibilities

Design Leadership

Build and scale a high-performing design organization (Product Design UXR Content Design DesignOps) with a clear org model leveling rubric career paths and succession planning.
Create a strategic hiring plan (in-house partner ecosystem) manage budget and establish vendor strategy for surge and specialized needs.
Foster a culture of craft excellence curiosity and accountabilitywith consistent critique coaching and peer development.
Establish a clear engagement model that embeds design and research directly within durable product teamsrather than operating as a shared servicesupported by defined decision rights and expectations.
Coach design leaders and teams to operate with high autonomy and accountability embracing strong opinions loosely held and prioritizing evidence over escalation.

Experience & Product Strategy

Translate company strategy and the 2026 priorities into a cohesive experience vision north-star journeys and an outcome-oriented experience strategy and set of prioritized customer opportunities portfolio roadmap that aligns across Product Engineering and Go-to-Market.
Define how we measure designs impact on customer and business outcomes (adoption retention revenue influence operational efficiency).
Define experience principles and guardrails that enable teams to move quickly while maintaining a cohesive customer experience - ensuring clarity consistency accessibility trust and safety.
Partner with Product and Engineering to translate strategy into outcomes and problems to solve not feature lists empowering teams to determine the right solutions.

Research Insights & Evidence-Based Decisions

Establish a rigorous UXR practice (qualitative quantitative and telemetry) and a research repository that continuously feeds discovery and de-risks decisions.
Champion continuous discovery in empowered product teams (field observation rapid testing experiment design) and ensure insights are valid actionable and durable.
Establish and champion a continuousdiscovery cadence where weekly routines include customer conversations fast prototyping and datadriven experiments replacing long infrequent research cycles.
Enable teams to instrument experiences with meaningful leading indicatorstask success timetovalue error rates trust/confidence signalsso decisions are measured by impact not activity.

Design Systems & Accessibility at Scale

Treat the design system as a productwith a roadmap governance and documented tokens/patterns that accelerate delivery of coherent accessible experiences.
Define standards for accessibility internationalization security and regulatory compliance across web mobile and device interfaces (SaaS/IoT).
Shift governance from topdown approval to scalable enablement offering reusable patterns templates and selfserve tools that preserve quality without slowing teams down.

Delivery Excellence & Portfolio Governance

Implement lightweight teamowned delivery practices that support continuous delivery - clear intent rapid iteration measurable outcomes and defined quality bars - while maintaining predictable design workflows (briefs milestones QA handoff) that balance craft with delivery velocity.
Run portfolio-level design reviews to ensure cross-product coherence reduce design/tech debt and make trade-offs transparent and deliberate.
Ensure discovery and delivery are tightly connected - teams should validate assumptions before building and refine solutions through iterative releases reducing bigbatch handoffs and phasegate cycles.

Product Operating Model Enablement

Embed the Product Trio model (Product Design Engineering) at the team level fostering shared ownership of outcomes clear decision rights and empowered judgment.
Improve organizational decision quality by standardizing discovery practicesopportunity framing prototype testing assumption mapping and experiment designand coaching leaders to ask better questions rather than request additional artifacts.
Partner with Product and Engineering leadership to shift away from projectmodel behaviors (heavy upfront requirements downstream design outputbased commitments) toward true outcomebased accountability.

Cross-Functional Executive Partnership

Operate as an equal partner to Product and Engineering in vision roadmapping and prioritization; shape scope to protect experience quality while hitting timelines.
Collaborate with Marketing CX and Sales to ensure end-to-end journey consistency and equip field teams with clear narratives and artifacts (demos playbooks).
Reinforce an outcomesfocused culture by valuing learning customer impact and smart decisionmakingnot excessive artifacts or cosmetic perfection.

The ideal candidate will bring the following capabilities:

Customer Focus: Keeps the customers voice central via research testing and telemetry - driving measurable improvements in adoption efficiency and satisfaction.
Strategic Mindset: Shapes a north-star experience vision aligned to business strategy and evolving user/technology trends in the connected-mobility ecosystem.
Product Operating Model Transformation: Demonstrated success institutionalizing a modern Product Operating Model with empowered cross-functional teams clear decision rights discovery-first practices accountability and transparency.
Executive Decision Quality: Makes timely evidence-based calls using data research and prototypes; ensures ownership and alignment across functions.
Accountability: Sets high standards for craft and delivery; defines outcomes and builds a culture of ownership clarity and reliable follow-through.
Talent & Team Leadership: Scales and mentors a diverse org; strengthens cross-functional partnership; fosters a high-performance growth-oriented environment.
Innovation: Drives experimentation and prototyping; converts learningsuccessful or notinto repeatable patterns and systems.
Executive Communication & Influence: Tells a compelling story with clarity and empathy; aligns executives and teams around journeys rationale and trade-offs.
Coaching & Empowerment: Demonstrated ability to coach leaders and teams toward empowered evidencebased decisionmakingreducing reliance on centralized approvals while improving both quality and speed.
Systems Thinking: Skilled at designing the overall system of workincluding team interfaces governance mechanisms metrics and incentivesso that healthy product behaviors become the natural default.

Qualifications

10 years in Product/UX Design with 5 years leading and scaling design teams; prior experience owning a multi-disciplinary design organization strongly preferred.
Bachelors degree in Design Business or a related field of study; advanced degree preferred.
Track record building design practices in B2B SaaS and/or IoT/platform environments in highly regulated environments; mobility telematics or operations-intensive domains a plus.
Demonstrated success in design systems ownership UX research leadership and evidence-based decision-making.
Portfolio of shipped platform products showing simplification of complex domains and measurable impact on trust usability and adoption.
Strong partner to Product & Engineering; fluency with experimentation analytics and business metrics.
Demonstrated success working in empowered product team environments (continuous discovery continuous delivery) with comfort operating through outcomes constraints and decision principles rather than detailed plans.
Experience defining and using experience metrics (e.g. task success time-to-value error rates trust signals) to guide strategy and investment decisions.

Verra Mobility Values

An ideal candidate for this role naturally works in alignment with the Verra Mobility Core Values:

Own It. We focus on high performance and drive toward breakthrough outcomes. Our employees ensure accountability optimize and align work focus on the customer and cultivate innovation.
Do Whats Right. We champion integrity and good character. Our team members model ethical behavior demonstrate good judgment and are courageous.
Choose Courage Over Comfort. We lean into the conversations decisions and actions that move the business forward even when they feel uncomfortable. We challenge assumptions address issues early and prioritize progress over ease.
Win Together. We believe in growing and inspiring people together. We seek people who collaborate value differences think and act globally foster an engaging work environment and recognize and develop others.

With your explicit consent which you provided as part of the application process we will retain candidate personal data solely for the business purpose for which it was no event will we retain such data more than two (2) years following the closure of the recruitment process relating to the role for which you applied or in the event other related job opportunities arise within the company. Verra Mobility Applicant Privacy Notice

Verra Mobility is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race color religion sex national origin sexual orientation gender identity disability or protected veteran status.

Required Experience:

Exec

Who we are...Verra Mobility is a global leader in smart mobility. We develop technology-enabled solutions that help the world move safely and easily. We are fostering the development of safe cities working with police departments and municipalities to install over 4000 red-light speed and school bus...

Who we are...

Position Overview:

Key Responsibilities

Design Leadership

Build and scale a high-performing design organization (Product Design UXR Content Design DesignOps) with a clear org model leveling rubric career paths and succession planning.
Create a strategic hiring plan (in-house partner ecosystem) manage budget and establish vendor strategy for surge and specialized needs.
Foster a culture of craft excellence curiosity and accountabilitywith consistent critique coaching and peer development.
Establish a clear engagement model that embeds design and research directly within durable product teamsrather than operating as a shared servicesupported by defined decision rights and expectations.
Coach design leaders and teams to operate with high autonomy and accountability embracing strong opinions loosely held and prioritizing evidence over escalation.

Experience & Product Strategy

Translate company strategy and the 2026 priorities into a cohesive experience vision north-star journeys and an outcome-oriented experience strategy and set of prioritized customer opportunities portfolio roadmap that aligns across Product Engineering and Go-to-Market.
Define how we measure designs impact on customer and business outcomes (adoption retention revenue influence operational efficiency).
Define experience principles and guardrails that enable teams to move quickly while maintaining a cohesive customer experience - ensuring clarity consistency accessibility trust and safety.
Partner with Product and Engineering to translate strategy into outcomes and problems to solve not feature lists empowering teams to determine the right solutions.

Research Insights & Evidence-Based Decisions

Establish a rigorous UXR practice (qualitative quantitative and telemetry) and a research repository that continuously feeds discovery and de-risks decisions.
Champion continuous discovery in empowered product teams (field observation rapid testing experiment design) and ensure insights are valid actionable and durable.
Establish and champion a continuousdiscovery cadence where weekly routines include customer conversations fast prototyping and datadriven experiments replacing long infrequent research cycles.
Enable teams to instrument experiences with meaningful leading indicatorstask success timetovalue error rates trust/confidence signalsso decisions are measured by impact not activity.

Design Systems & Accessibility at Scale

Treat the design system as a productwith a roadmap governance and documented tokens/patterns that accelerate delivery of coherent accessible experiences.
Define standards for accessibility internationalization security and regulatory compliance across web mobile and device interfaces (SaaS/IoT).
Shift governance from topdown approval to scalable enablement offering reusable patterns templates and selfserve tools that preserve quality without slowing teams down.

Delivery Excellence & Portfolio Governance

Implement lightweight teamowned delivery practices that support continuous delivery - clear intent rapid iteration measurable outcomes and defined quality bars - while maintaining predictable design workflows (briefs milestones QA handoff) that balance craft with delivery velocity.
Run portfolio-level design reviews to ensure cross-product coherence reduce design/tech debt and make trade-offs transparent and deliberate.
Ensure discovery and delivery are tightly connected - teams should validate assumptions before building and refine solutions through iterative releases reducing bigbatch handoffs and phasegate cycles.

Product Operating Model Enablement

Embed the Product Trio model (Product Design Engineering) at the team level fostering shared ownership of outcomes clear decision rights and empowered judgment.
Improve organizational decision quality by standardizing discovery practicesopportunity framing prototype testing assumption mapping and experiment designand coaching leaders to ask better questions rather than request additional artifacts.
Partner with Product and Engineering leadership to shift away from projectmodel behaviors (heavy upfront requirements downstream design outputbased commitments) toward true outcomebased accountability.

Cross-Functional Executive Partnership

Operate as an equal partner to Product and Engineering in vision roadmapping and prioritization; shape scope to protect experience quality while hitting timelines.
Collaborate with Marketing CX and Sales to ensure end-to-end journey consistency and equip field teams with clear narratives and artifacts (demos playbooks).
Reinforce an outcomesfocused culture by valuing learning customer impact and smart decisionmakingnot excessive artifacts or cosmetic perfection.

The ideal candidate will bring the following capabilities:

Customer Focus: Keeps the customers voice central via research testing and telemetry - driving measurable improvements in adoption efficiency and satisfaction.
Strategic Mindset: Shapes a north-star experience vision aligned to business strategy and evolving user/technology trends in the connected-mobility ecosystem.
Product Operating Model Transformation: Demonstrated success institutionalizing a modern Product Operating Model with empowered cross-functional teams clear decision rights discovery-first practices accountability and transparency.
Executive Decision Quality: Makes timely evidence-based calls using data research and prototypes; ensures ownership and alignment across functions.
Accountability: Sets high standards for craft and delivery; defines outcomes and builds a culture of ownership clarity and reliable follow-through.
Talent & Team Leadership: Scales and mentors a diverse org; strengthens cross-functional partnership; fosters a high-performance growth-oriented environment.
Innovation: Drives experimentation and prototyping; converts learningsuccessful or notinto repeatable patterns and systems.
Executive Communication & Influence: Tells a compelling story with clarity and empathy; aligns executives and teams around journeys rationale and trade-offs.
Coaching & Empowerment: Demonstrated ability to coach leaders and teams toward empowered evidencebased decisionmakingreducing reliance on centralized approvals while improving both quality and speed.
Systems Thinking: Skilled at designing the overall system of workincluding team interfaces governance mechanisms metrics and incentivesso that healthy product behaviors become the natural default.

Qualifications

10 years in Product/UX Design with 5 years leading and scaling design teams; prior experience owning a multi-disciplinary design organization strongly preferred.
Bachelors degree in Design Business or a related field of study; advanced degree preferred.
Track record building design practices in B2B SaaS and/or IoT/platform environments in highly regulated environments; mobility telematics or operations-intensive domains a plus.
Demonstrated success in design systems ownership UX research leadership and evidence-based decision-making.
Portfolio of shipped platform products showing simplification of complex domains and measurable impact on trust usability and adoption.
Strong partner to Product & Engineering; fluency with experimentation analytics and business metrics.
Demonstrated success working in empowered product team environments (continuous discovery continuous delivery) with comfort operating through outcomes constraints and decision principles rather than detailed plans.
Experience defining and using experience metrics (e.g. task success time-to-value error rates trust signals) to guide strategy and investment decisions.

Verra Mobility Values

An ideal candidate for this role naturally works in alignment with the Verra Mobility Core Values:

Own It. We focus on high performance and drive toward breakthrough outcomes. Our employees ensure accountability optimize and align work focus on the customer and cultivate innovation.
Do Whats Right. We champion integrity and good character. Our team members model ethical behavior demonstrate good judgment and are courageous.
Choose Courage Over Comfort. We lean into the conversations decisions and actions that move the business forward even when they feel uncomfortable. We challenge assumptions address issues early and prioritize progress over ease.
Win Together. We believe in growing and inspiring people together. We seek people who collaborate value differences think and act globally foster an engaging work environment and recognize and develop others.

Required Experience:

Exec

Key Skills

Change Management
Financial Services
Growing Experience
Managed Care
Management Experience
Analysis Skills
Senior Leadership
Performance Management
Process Management
Leadership Experience
negotiation
Analytics

Apply Now

About Company

Verra Mobility

Verra Mobility is a global leader in safe mobility technologies, offering smart transportation solutions to help communities move safely and efficiently.

View Profile View Profile

AI AutoApply

Apply to 100+ jobs with one click