Design Lead, Director – Payments

As the Design Lead for WEX Payments, you will define the strategic design vision, end-to-end experience and design architecture for one of WEX’s most innovative and rapidly evolving businesses. You’ll lead a team that sits at the heart of digital transformation, driving intuitive, AI-enhanced payments experiences for finance leaders, AP teams, and platform partners.

This is a role for an innovative thinker, a design strategist, and a trusted executive partner. You will bring clarity to complexity, guide teams through fast-moving problem spaces, and serve as a champion for human-centered design in the digital payments ecosystem.

 What You’ll Do

Lead Strategic Design Vision

• Define and evangelize a North Star experience for virtual card and B2B payments platforms—spanning partner, payer, and recipient journeys.
   
• Establish scalable design principles and quality standards that align with business goals and customer needs.
   
• Navigate ambiguous, complex domains—bringing clarity to problem spaces and helping define insights-driven products and services.
   
• Lead collaborative visioning sessions and workshops with executives and stakeholders to align product, platform, and customer experience strategies.
   

Drive Design Excellence and Execution

• Orchestrate cohesive experiences across end-to-end payment workflows, channels, and partner touchpoints.
   
• Pioneer an AI-first design approach that identifies and leverages data to drive new, smart payment products and services.
   
• Partner with engineering, product, and enterprise architecture teams to ensure seamless delivery from design vision to production.
   
• Champion inclusive and compliant design, ensuring accessibility and usability across global audiences and regulatory environments.
   

Inspire and Elevate Talent

• Lead, mentor, and scale a team of senior experience and service designers across the Payments business.
   
• Cultivate a high-performing, collaborative culture that emphasizes curiosity, experimentation, and bold thinking.
   
• Foster cross-functional alignment with Fuel and Benefits design teams to share patterns, standards, and innovation practices.
   
• Be a catalyst for design leadership maturity—coaching design leaders and advocating for design’s impact enterprise-wide.
   

Influence Through Insight & Storytelling

• Translate complex payments workflows, technical architectures, and strategic concepts into clear, actionable design narratives.
   
• Create compelling experience maps, prototypes, and visual frameworks that shape priorities and inform executive decision-making.
   
• Promote a culture of experimentation by aligning rapid prototyping with business strategy, customer risk, and go-to-market outcomes.
   

What We’re Looking For

Core Expertise

• Strategic Design Leadership: Proven ability to set and scale design strategy across platforms, lines of business, and global teams.
   
• Experience Architecture: Deep skill in orchestrating user experiences across complex ecosystems, interfaces, and partners.
   
• Executive Facilitation: Confidence and fluency in leading workshops that clarify ambiguity and shape vision.
   
• AI & Data-Centric Design: Expertise in designing intelligent, responsive user experiences powered by automation and data.
   
• Enterprise-Grade Storytelling: Adept at crafting data-informed narratives that drive influence at the C-suite and board level.
   
• Cross-Functional Partnership: Trusted collaborator across product, engineering, operations, compliance, and go-to-market teams.
   

Preferred Qualifications

• 10+ years in UX, service design, or product design leadership roles, with experience in enterprise-scale platforms
   
• 5+ years leading, growing and representing high-performing design teams
   
• Experience presenting design and creative experiences to senior executive audiences, including ability to manage conflicting feedback and driving to alignment.
   
• Background in fintech, B2B payments, commercial banking, or financial operations software is highly desirable
   
• Demonstrated success designing compliant, secure experiences in regulated environments (e.g., PCI, GDPR)
   

Why WEX

• Join a purpose-driven team creating financial tools that power real business impact
   
• Influence the design of next generation payment products
   
• Be part of a design-led organization that informs product, technology, and business strategy
   
• Lead high-visibility initiatives that help businesses simplify payments, reduce risk, and unlock growth

The base pay range represents the anticipated low and high end of the pay range for this position. Actual pay rates will vary and will be based on various factors, such as your qualifications, skills, competencies, and proficiency for the role. Base pay is one component of WEX's total compensation package. Most sales positions are eligible for commission under the terms of an applicable plan. Non-sales roles are typically eligible for a quarterly or annual bonus based on their role and applicable plan. WEX's comprehensive and market competitive benefits are designed to support your personal and professional well-being. Benefits include health, dental and vision insurances, retirement savings plan, paid time off, health savings account, flexible spending accounts, life insurance, disability insurance, tuition reimbursement, and more. For more information, check out the "About Us" section.Pay Range: $158,000.00 - $210,000.00