About the Job:
LaunchDarkly is hiring a UX leader to own design for the Foundation pillar, the part of the product that determines how new developers discover, try, and adopt LaunchDarkly. Foundation owns the self-serve motion: trial experience, onboarding, activation, packaging comprehension, and the paths that move a developer from "I'm testing this" to "I'm building on this."
As the UX Pillar Lead for Foundation, you will sit in the product triad alongside Product Management and Engineering. You'll manage a team of 5 to 7 UX designers working across Foundation and related surfaces.
Foundation's activation challenge is concrete. Roughly 90% of developers who try LaunchDarkly never connect an SDK, and under 1% engage with the features that differentiate us: guarded releases, experimentation, observability. The team is executing against a detailed, evidence-based strategy to fix that. Your job is to own the design quality and provide the design leadership that makes it work, because you understand developer experience implicitly.
The Foundation’s near-term strategy is not waiting to be discovered. The activation problem is specific, the evidence is clear, and the triad has momentum. This role is for someone who wants to lead execution against a well-defined direction, not build an org from scratch or define the problem set at the outset.
Responsibilities:
Design quality and planning
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Lead UX strategy and design quality for the Foundation pillar: the trial experience, activation flows, onboarding, and packaging surfaces that determine whether a developer stays.
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Hold the Foundation pillar to the UX quality bar across all surfaces. When something ships from Foundation, it should meet the established standards.
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Maintain current design capacity planning: scoped, estimated, and sequenced work that gives the teams accurate visibility into what UX can deliver and when.
Triad partnership
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Sit in the Foundation triad as a co-owner of product direction alongside PM and Engineering. Bring user evidence, design perspective, and experience strategy to prioritization, not just execution.
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Advocate for users in roadmap conversations. Ask "have we talked to users about this?" before the team commits, not after.
People development
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Manage and develop a team of 5–7 UX designers, including Staff and Senior ICs. Provide specific, actionable feedback that builds capability on the wider team.
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Run and participate in UX critique. Give direct, specific feedback and build critique culture within the design team, and within the wider organization.
Org and cross-pillar work
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Lead cross-pillar design coordination for surfaces that span Foundation, Experimentation, Guardian, and AgentControl. Identify and resolve experience seams before they ship.
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Partner with the Head of UX on hiring, org planning, and quality standards for the broader UX function.
About You:
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You believe design leadership is a craft, not a title. You've thought carefully about what good management looks like, and your direct reports can describe specific ways they've grown under you.
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You hold a high bar on quality and don't fold on it when timelines tighten. You can make the case for quality in terms your PM and engineering partners find compelling.
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You're energized by activation UX: the space between a developer signing up and building something real. That's some of the most interesting and high-leverage product design work out there.
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Your engineering and PM counterparts would describe you as a peer, not a vendor. You show up to triad conversations with a perspective, you bring evidence, and you commit once a call is made.
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Foundation's problems are real, specific, and evidence-backed. You want problems with clear evidence behind them, not vague mandates.
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You understand how developers experience products from the inside. You've used SDKs, worked on design systems, or built alongside engineers long enough to know where the friction lives. That perspective helps you design paths that actually get developers to value.
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You think in systems. You see how the trial experience connects to activation and retention, and you're as interested in the seams between surfaces as you are in any individual screen.
Qualifications:
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10–12+ years of experience in product design, UX, or a closely adjacent discipline (design engineering, developer experience, or frontend engineering) where design quality and user outcomes were central to the work.
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Track record managing and developing a team: direct reports who have grown, taken on more scope, or been promoted under your management. Experience leading UX designers directly is the strongest signal; engineering leadership with deep design practice and domain fluency is also considered.
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Experience as the UX voice in a product triad, co-owning roadmap direction with PM and Engineering rather than waiting for requirements.
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History of defining and enforcing a quality bar on a team's work, not just contributing to quality as an IC.
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Domain fit: experience designing for or leading designers on developer tools, self-serve B2B SaaS, or products with an engineering user base.
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Strong communication: can present design strategy to leadership, advocate for users under pressure, and give feedback that makes the work better rather than just noting issues.
Pay:
Target pay ranges based on Geographic Zones* for Level M4:
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Zone 1: San Francisco/Bay Area or New York City Metropolitan Area: $240,600 - $330,700**
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Zone 2: Boston, DC, Irvine, LA, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Santa Rosa, Seattle: $216,500 - $297,600**
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Zone 3: All other US locations: $204,500 - $281,100**
- Inclusive of 15% Bonus Target
LaunchDarkly operates from a place of high trust and transparency; we are happy to state the pay range for our open roles to best align with your needs. Exact compensation may vary based on skills, experience, and location.
*Within the United States, our geographic pay zones are defined by counties surrounding major metropolitan areas.
**Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), health, vision, and dental insurance, and mental health benefits in addition to salary.
About LaunchDarkly:
Modern software delivery was supposed to be the foundation for a thriving digital business but reality has proven otherwise. Slow, inefficient development cycles, costly outages, and fragmented customer experiences are preventing developers from building their best software. The LaunchDarkly platform helps developers innovate on new features faster while protecting them with a safety valve to instantly rewind when things go wrong. Developers can target product experiences to any customer segment and maximize the business impact of every feature. And by gradually rolling out new application components, they escape nightmare "big-bang" technology migrations.
The LaunchDarkly platform was built to guide engineers to the next frontier of DevOps by:
- Improving the velocity and stability of software releases, without the fear of end customer outages
- Delivering targeted experiences by easily personalizing features to customer cohorts
- Maximizing the business impact of every feature through the ability to experiment and optimize
- Coordinating the release and optimization of software to provide consistent experiences across mobile platforms and device types
- Improving the effectiveness and productivity of engineering teams, by providing insights into engineering cadence and stability
At LaunchDarkly, we believe in the power of teams. We're building a team that is humble, open, collaborative, respectful and kind. We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. LD invites any applicant to review our written Affirmative Action Plan. To do so, contact People Ops at hr@launchdarkly.com.
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