Director, Product Design

About Us!

Raptor was founded in 2002 with the mission to protect every child, every school, every day. Today, Raptor is a school safety partner for 60,000 schools in 55 countries, providing SaaS and mobile technology as well as comprehensive training and consultation solutions across the entire school safety life cycle, ranging from crisis prevention and preparation to emergency response and recovery. Raptor's globally integrated product portfolio supports a school's foundation of safety and wellbeing, including Emergency Management, Campus Movement, Student Wellbeing and Safety Training and Compliance.

About the Role

Reporting to the VP, Product & Design, the Director, Product Design is a critical member of the EPD organization accountable for the quality and strategic impact of design across Raptor's 9 product portfolio. This leader manages and develops a team of Product Designers, establishes how design works at Raptor — rituals, systems, standards, and best practices — and partners closely with Engineering and Product Management, while also engaging directly with customers, stakeholders, and industry experts to inform design direction and deliver cohesive, high-quality user experiences at a predictable cadence.

This role is about leading a team to ship great design consistently, scaling and continuously improving the design system, and ensuring design is a trusted and respected partner across the organization — collaborating closely across disciplines and staying relentlessly focused on delivering value to school safety customers.

Key Responsibilities

People Leadership

• Lead, coach, and develop a mid-sized team of Product Designers located across the US and UK; set clear expectations and manage performance through Raptor's High Performance Culture program, with a strong expectation of consistent, point-in-time feedback on a regular basis
• Establish "what good looks like" for design craft: UX quality, design systems contribution, cross-functional collaboration, and delivery discipline
• Build and maintain a high-performing team through hiring, onboarding, and capability development
• Own the design team's budget, headcount planning, and resource allocation; make informed investment decisions that balance team capacity, designer development, and product priorities — ensuring designers get meaningful breadth of opportunity across web, mobile, systems, and visual design. While allocation is informed by and aligned to Raptor's GTM and product suite structure, designers are resourced to own cohesive user experiences, which may intentionally span products or suites rather than mapping to org lines one-to-one
• Support designer growth through active investment in career development, personal development planning, and relevant training opportunities — ensuring designers have a clear path forward and the resources to get there

Design Systems & Quality

• Own and evolve Raptor's design system, ensuring it scales to support both product and cross-functional use cases (including marketing)
• Drive consistency across Raptor's product suite — unified patterns, navigation, onboarding, and interaction standards
• Define how design quality and team impact are measured; establish and monitor relevant KPIs and metrics
• Ensure Raptor products meet high accessibility standards and compliance requirements
• Raise the bar for UX quality across the platform; flag and address incoherence, unnecessary complexity, or under-designed experiences

Cross-Functional Leadership & External Engagement

• Partner with Engineering and Product Management leadership to drive alignment on scope, sequencing, design readiness, and delivery commitments
• Ensure design is embedded in the product process from problem framing through launch; designers are strategic product thinkers and creative problem solvers
• Collaborate closely with Engineering and Product teams across the full delivery cycle, ensuring design contributes to consistent, high-quality outcomes for school safety customers
• Surface and resolve cross-team dependency risks early; drive crisp decisions and appropriate escalation
• Partner with Product Marketing to align product positioning with user experience, and support go-to-market launches with the right design artifacts and storytelling
• Engage directly with customers and prospects to gather feedback, validate design decisions, and ensure Raptor's products reflect real user needs
• Build relationships with industry experts, design community leaders, and key stakeholders to stay current on best practices and bring outside perspective into the team

AI-Powered Design Practice

• Champion the adoption of AI-based design tools, workflows, and processes across the design team, ensuring Raptor stays at the forefront of modern design practice
• Lead the design team's participation in Raptor's AI-PDLC (AI Product Development Lifecycle) — a framework for using AI natively throughout the entire project lifecycle, with tools and pro