Your OpportunityDirector, Trade User ExperienceAt Schwab, great client experiences start with great people. We are looking for an experienced, collaborative, and adaptable Director, Trade User Experience to lead a significant portfolio of trading work and a multidisciplinary team of designers, content strategists, and design leaders. This is a transformational leadership assignment requiring credible familiarity with financial markets and investing experiences, demonstrated use of AI-enabled design practices, and a record of modernizing complex teams and operating models.
This is a role for a design leader who can move comfortably between a bold vision for the future of trading and the realities of delivery. You will help transform complex market data, trading strategies, portfolio insights, and order workflows into clear, powerful experiences across mobile, web, and desktop. You will set direction, raise the quality of the work, develop leaders, and partner across Experience Design, Product, Engineering, Research, Content, and the business to create tools active and portfolio traders can use with speed and confidence.
You will not simply oversee a design portfolio. You will help shape what comes next for Schwab trading: how real-time information becomes actionable, how sophisticated capabilities remain understandable, how experiences connect across the trading ecosystem, and how emerging technologies are applied responsibly. You will also help grow an inclusive, high-performing design culture equipped to serve expert users in complex and ambiguous problem spaces.
Why this role matters nowMarkets move quickly, and trading clients expect tools that help them monitor conditions, evaluate opportunities, understand portfolio impact, and take action. Mobile experiences, personalization, AI, advanced data visualization, and new interaction models are reshaping those expectations. At the same time, trust, accessibility, clarity, reliability, and control remain essential.
This role will connect those demands into a coherent vision for the trading experience. You will help to define a north star across active trading and portfolio trading journeys, align leaders around the highest-value opportunities, and help teams modernize the experience without sacrificing the depth sophisticated traders expect. Your leadership will influence not only what Schwab builds, but how teams learn from traders and work together to build it. Additionally, you will bring an external perspective on how leading digital organizations are evolving trading experiences, design capabilities, operating models, and emerging technology, while applying sound judgment within a highly regulated environment.
The team you'll leadYou will lead a creative, supportive group of experienced professionals who care deeply about traders, craft, and one another. The team embraces complex, high-information-density experiences, studies the behaviors and strategies of active and portfolio traders, and uses research to challenge assumptions. We challenge ideas and value the people who bring them. We share work early, give direct and constructive feedback, celebrate progress, and step in when a teammate needs help.
Your role is to strengthen that environment. You will create clarity without removing ownership, invite healthy debate without slowing momentum, and give people the coaching, context, and opportunities they need to do the best work of their careers. Success is measured not only by the quality of the portfolio, but also by the leaders you grow and the organization you leave stronger.
What you'll shape- Own the experience vision and design direction across Schwab's trading ecosystem, spanning active trading, portfolio trading, products, journeys, channels, and platforms.
- Assess the current organization, capabilities, workflows, and portfolio, then recommend and implement a scalable team structure that creates clearer accountability, stronger leadership capacity, and greater visibility into talent and work.
- Turn trader needs, trading strategies, business priorities, research, analytics, and market signals into a clear and scalable experience strategy.
- Define future-state concepts and a north-star trading experience that help leaders see possibilities, make choices, and align investment.
- Guide teams in making market data, analysis, order entry, trade management, and portfolio workflows easier to understand and act on without removing the depth expert users need.
- Raise design quality across interaction design, data-dense interfaces, visualization, content, designer-led research, accessibility, and end-to-end trading journeys.
- Shape and evolve experience standards, design systems, shared patterns, and governance so teams can move faster without fragmenting the client experience.
- Identify thoughtful opportunities for AI-enabled experiences, conversational interfaces, and AI-supported design workflows while protecting quality, accessibility, trust, and compliance.
- Connect design decisions to measurable client and business outcomes, creating learning loops that improve the work over time.
How you will lead- Set a compelling direction, make priorities and tradeoffs visible, and help teams move through ambiguity with confidence.
- Build, coach, and develop multidisciplinary teams and design leaders through clear expectations, candid feedback, meaningful ownership, and intentional growth opportunities.
- Create a culture of care, trust, inclusion, accountability, curiosity, and continuous improvement.
- Use critiques, reviews, workshops, and decision forums to strengthen the work, build shared understanding, and resolve blockers.
- Balance long-term transformation with pragmatic, iterative delivery. Know when to push for a bolder answer and when to help teams make progress with discipline.
- Plan for the capabilities, capacity, tools, and partnerships the portfolio needs, including hiring and external support when appropriate.
- Evaluate and modernize the tools and methods used by the design organization, including practical adoption of AI-supported workflows that improve speed, learning, quality, and team effectiveness.
- Model calm, resilient leadership in high-stakes or uncertain situations and help others stay focused on the client and the outcome.
How you will partner and influence- Act as a trusted design partner to senior leaders across Experience Design, Product, Engineering, Research, Content, Risk, Legal, Marketing, and the business.
- Influence product strategy, roadmaps, and investment by bringing together client insight, design judgment, business context, technical realities, and measurable outcomes.
- Build support for experience strategies through clear storytelling, prototypes, evidence, and a strong point of view.
- Create alignment across teams and portfolios by clarifying shared principles, dependencies, decisions, and paths forward.
- Represent the client and the design organization in executive conversations while making complex experience issues understandable and actionable.
- Champion a connected view of the trading experience across research, discovery, analysis, order placement, monitoring, portfolio management, and adjacent Schwab journeys.
You'll thrive in this role if...- You are energized by building both exceptional experiences and exceptional teams.
- You can see the system, the journey, and the interaction detail, and know where leadership attention will have the greatest impact.
- You bring a strong point of view without making yourself the center of every decision.
- You are not satisfied with maintaining the status quo. You bring informed convictions, remain open to new evidence, and help teams imagine and deliver a materially better future.
- You enjoy turning ambiguity into direction and helping diverse teams move toward a shared outcome.
- You can make the case for design in the language of clients, business outcomes, risk, and technology.
- You believe high standards and a supportive culture reinforce one another.
- You are curious about emerging technology and thoughtful about when it genuinely improves the client or employee experience.
- You want your leadership to help people feel more informed and confident about their financial lives.
What success looks like- Teams understand the experience vision and can connect daily decisions to it.
- Active and portfolio traders encounter clearer, more consistent, and more connected journeys across channels while retaining the depth and control their strategies require.
- Design has meaningful influence on strategy, priorities, and measurable outcomes.
- Leaders and teams make better decisions using research, analytics, prototypes, and shared experience principles.
- People grow, future leaders emerge, and the team is known for both strong craft and strong partnership.
- The organization adopts modern design practices and AI-enabled workflows responsibly, with quality and trust intact.
What you haveRequired qualifications- 12+ years of experience creating digital products and solutions across web and mobile channels.
- 10+ years of experience leading multidisciplinary experience professionals, including designers and other experience disciplines. Experience should include leading across multiple disciplines and developing both individual contributors and people leaders.
- 3+ years of experience working directly with executive leaders.
- Bachelor's degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- A record of leading complex portfolios and translating experience strategy into high-quality, shipped outcomes.
- Experience developing design leaders, building healthy teams, and creating clear expectations for performance and growth.
- Strong design judgment across research, interaction, visual design, content, accessibility, systems, and end-to-end journeys.
- Ability to influence senior partners through clear communication, storytelling, prototypes, evidence, and design rationale.
- Strong ability to balance design thinking and discovery with pragmatic, rapid, and iterative delivery.
- Experience using research, analytics, and outcome measures to guide priorities and improve experiences over time.
- Ability to create a safe, engaging, and accountable environment where people can do strong work and have fun along the way.
- Ability to lead teams designing high-information-density, real-time, or expert-user experiences where clarity, speed, precision, and control are critical.
- Demonstrated experience leading the design of trading, brokerage, investing, wealth management, market-data, or similarly complex financial products, with the ability to engage credibly on investing concepts, market information, transaction workflows, and sophisticated client needs.
- A record of modernizing a design organization, operating model, or digital product portfolio, including clarifying team structure, improving leadership capacity, establishing scalable practices, and increasing the visibility and impact of design work.
- Demonstrated experience using AI-enabled tools to improve design strategy, research, prototyping, content, workflow efficiency, or product experiences, while protecting client trust, accessibility, quality, privacy, risk, and compliance expectations.
- Demonstrated ability to establish an aspirational future-state vision, challenge established approaches constructively and inspire multidisciplinary teams and senior leaders to pursue meaningful transformation.
- Experience with trading, brokerage, investing platforms, financial services, or another highly regulated industry.
- Experience integrating trading, brokerage, market data, research, portfolio, and adjacent product journeys into coherent experiences.
- Experience leading design systems, experience standards, or shared design practices at organizational scale.
- Experience scaling a design organization, evolving an operating model, or leading significant transformation.
- Experience applying AI-powered tools or workflows to research, strategy, design, prototyping, content, or delivery.
- 7+ years of experience working in a complex, cross-functional organization.
How we workWe believe in the value of in-office collaboration and intend for the selected candidate to work on site in the specified location. Our time together is used intentionally to build relationships, solve difficult problems, share ideas, coach one another, and strengthen the quality of the work.
Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis without employer sponsorship.
Make an impact with usAt Schwab, you will have the opportunity to help transform financial experiences while growing alongside people who care about clients, craft, and each other. Bring your perspective, your curiosity, and your willingness to challenge what is possible.
