VP, User Experience and Design Innovation (Remote Eligible)

About this role

For over 20 years, Smartsheet has empowered teams to manage work seamlessly and scale solutions smarter. Now, in our most ambitious chapter yet, we are uniting human teams with AI agents. By orchestrating the work agents do best, automating manual tasks and uncovering insights at scale, we create the space for people to focus on what truly matters: judgment, creativity, and big thinking. That is magic at work, and it’s what we show up for every day. As VP of User Experience and Design Innovation, you will lead a multi-disciplinary organization spanning UX research, design systems, content and globalization, and AI-driven software delivery, alongside a team of design leaders driving product design across the platform. You have a track record of making the people around you better — you drive quality and efficiency by establishing process, developing talent, and elevating your team to accomplish more than they could without you. You see yourself as a team captain more than a coach. You are an AI-forward leader. You don’t just support AI adoption — you own it. You will define and drive the strategy for bringing AI into every function you lead: accelerating research synthesis, scaling design systems, automating content and localization, and modernizing the software development lifecycle through AI-assisted workflows. Your Organization includes Product Design, User Experience Research, Globalization & Content and Design Systems. You report to our Chief Product and Technology Officer, and may work remotely from anywhere in the US where Smartsheet is a registered employer. You Will: Lead, evolve, and articulate a bold, user-centered vision for the future of design and user experience across Smartsheet’s product portfolio and external systems. Own and scale research, design, design systems, content, localization, and AI-first design strategy across all product lines and geographies. Build, mentor, and grow a team of senior functional and design leaders; scale and evolve the org in alignment with company growth. Develop career paths and programs tailored to individual team member professional development. Set organizational strategy around design maturity, AI adoption, design systems adoption, and cross-functional design-led decision-making across product, engineering, and business teams. Build, evolve, and scale UX processes, standards, and tools, owning the AI agenda for the org by identifying and driving high-impact opportunities to embed AI into research, design systems, content/localization, and the software development lifecycle. Work closely with executive leadership, product, engineering, and go-to-market teams to define strategy and ensure design and AI-forward thinking are embedded in critical business decisions. Establish and own key metrics tying design and AI initiatives to user satisfaction, adoption, retention, revenue outcomes, and delivery velocity; regularly review and communicate progress. Translate business goals into innovative, creative, and engaging product experiences. Own content strategy and localization approaches across all product lines. You Have: 15+ years of experience in a highly cross-functional role running strategic projects from idea through implementation. 15+ years leading and building UX, design, research, or content organizations, including experience as a manager of managers with P&L responsibility. A track record of building and scaling high-performing, multi-disciplinary teams (research, design, design systems, content, localization, engineering-adjacent functions). Demonstrated experience driving AI adoption within a design, research, content, or software delivery organization not just using AI tools individually, but setting org-wide AI strategy. Deep expertise in research methodologies, design strategy, content strategy, and localization best practices for global B2B SaaS platforms. Experience leading enterprise SaaS products with complex user workflows, multi-stakeholder environments, and