Lead Experience Designer

Our Purpose Planday from Xero is a leading digital solution that uncomplicates everyday scheduling and workforce management by making it easier for businesses and shift workers around the world to communicate, collaborate, and get work done. Powered by a community of local industry experts, Planday provides a best-in-class digital platform that is easy to use, accurate, secure, and compliant with local needs and standards. From payroll and accounting to POS and reporting, its open API and tech ecosystem is scalable to fit shifting business needs and to build an engaged, flexible workforce. Founded in 2004, Planday is headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark and supports over 400,000 users across Europe, Australia and the US. Planday was acquired by Xero in 2021. How you’ll make an impact You set the standard for experience design across major product pillars, mandating a culture of radical prototyping and evidence-based decision-making. You are the primary owner of the Experience, ensuring that every solution is inclusive, human-centered, and scalable. You operationalize "AI-First" workflows to ensure high-velocity deployment and serve as the bridge between high-level strategy and frontline execution. What you’ll do XD Strategy: Sets the Directive. You define the human-first evidence-based experience strategy that governs multiple product areas, ensuring all solutions are direct levers for business impact. Prototyping, experimentation & Insights: Governs the Standard. You oversee the methodology for evidence-based design-led processes, ensuring every solution is de-risked. XD Craftsmanship: Architects the Journey. You set the standard for E2E journeys, ensuring tone of voice and accessibility are baked into the system by default. XD Ops, AI & Automation: Standardizes the Engine. You direct the use of machine-ready component libraries and AI-First workflows to maximize deployment velocity across the organization. Collaboration & Partnerships: Strategic Negotiator. You lead deep collaboration within other teams and senior leadership to ensure user evidence dictates technical and product priorities. Impactful Leadership: Strategic Authority. You evangelize a design-led mindset at the leadership level, serving as a role model for breakthrough innovation through prototyping. Success looks like XD Strategy: Cohesion at Scale. You have unified the experience strategy across all pillars, resulting in an increase in cross-product journey continuity. Quality Governance: Zero-Waste Mandate. No major initiative is funded within your pillars without a validated, evidence-based pack from a radical prototype. XD Craftsmanship: Institutional Source of Truth. Your journey standards and inclusion artifacts are the mandated "source of truth" for all designers and developers. XD Ops: Scaled Opportunity Engine. You have successfully automated at least 50% of the UI asset pipeline, allowing designers to focus 100% of their time on high-context strategy. Collaboration: Strategic Consensus. You have successfully aligned Product and Engineering leaders around a singular, evidence-based experience vision. Impactful Leadership: Evidence-Led Power Shift. You have transformed the organizational culture so that "breakthrough innovation" is a repeatable outcome of your team’s prototyping rhythm. What you’ll bring with you Directive Leadership: You have a history of setting the experience mandate for major product pillars, ensuring all work aligns with a unified, high-quality standard. Governance of Evidence: You are an expert at overseeing experimentation methodologies, ensuring that no major initiative proceeds without validated proof from a prototype. Architectural Vision: You possess the ability to architect complex, end-to-end service journeys that remain cohesive across dozens of touchpoints and user types. Workflow Standardization: You have led the transition to "AI-First" production environments, successfully standardizing how an organization deploys mac