Senior Product Designer

A career in IBM Software means you’ll be part of a team that transforms our customers’ challenges into industry-leading solutions. We are an infinitely curious team, always seeking new possibilities and dedicated to creating the world’s leading AI-powered, cloud-native software solutions. Our renowned legacy creates endless global opportunities for our network of IBMers. We are a team of deep product experts, ensuring exceptional client experiences, with a focus on delivery, excellence and obsession over customer outcomes. This position involves contributing to HashiCorp’s offerings, now part of IBM, which empower organizations to automate and secure multi-cloud and hybrid environments. You will join a team managing the lifecycle of infrastructure and security, enhancing IBM’s cloud solutions to ensure enterprises achieve efficiency, security and scalability in their cloud journey.

About Infrastructure Lifecycle Management (ILM) & Terraform

IBM’s Infrastructure Lifecycle Management (ILM) Design Team builds the Infrastructure Cloud, enabling modern enterprises to take a unified approach across the build, deploy, and manage phases of their infrastructure journey. Our design team creates workflows that dramatically ease the complexity and operational overhead of multi-cloud environments, allowing practitioners and platform teams to focus on high-value innovation rather than repetitive manual tasks. Guided by our core principles of Kindness, Humility, and Reflection, we design with the user at heart and our 'beauty works better' ethos in hand.

At the core of ILM is Terraform, the industry-standard Infrastructure as Code (IaC) platform that empowers organizations to provision and manage any cloud, on-premises, or edge infrastructure.

You will influence platform and business strategy by linking design initiatives directly to leading usage metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs), implementing scalable design frameworks, and driving executive alignment across Product Management, Engineering, and Field leadership. You can expect to:

• Oversee Strategic Research & User Understanding: Lead research initiatives across interconnected products, synthesizing generative insights and telemetry analytics to define comprehensive, user-centered experience strategies that shape platform direction.

• Pioneer AI Innovation at Scale: Drive cross-disciplinary adoption of AI-powered design workflows and lead the architectural definition of next-generation AI capabilities embedded directly into Terraform and ILM developer experiences.

• Architect Multi-Product Workflows: Solve high-impact product areas spanning Web, CLI, VCS, and APIs that bridge across multiple squad boundaries, turning intricate multi-cloud infrastructure patterns into intuitive, unified developer journeys.

• Influence Business & Platform Strategy: Partner with product and engineering leaders to establish product roadmaps, implement scalable prioritization frameworks, and measure business impact using leading revenue and adoption indicators.

• Lead Design Systems & Technical Rigor: Drive comprehensive adoption and evolution of design systems (Helios and Carbon), setting accessibility standards (WCAG 2.2 AA) and ensuring technical excellence across graphical and terminal interfaces.

• Cultivate Talent & Community Leadership: Lead Communities of Practice (CoPs), mentor senior and early-career designers, facilitate high-impact design thinking workshops, and foster a culture of open reflection, psychological safety, and bold experimentation.

• 10+ years of professional enterprise Product Design experience, with at least 5–7+ years specifically dedicated to developer experience (DevEx), cloud infrastructure, developer platforms (IDPs), DevOps tooling, or highly technical enterprise SaaS.

• Multi-interface architectural mastery: Proven track record architecting cohesive user journeys that span across disparate touchpoints: graphical web consoles (GUI), terminal/command-line tools (CLI), version control systems (GitOps/VCS), and programmatic APIs.

• Recognized AI design leadership: Demonstrated expertise in pioneering AI-augmented product features (e.g., generative configuration, automated drift analysis, contextual AI copilots) and driving team-wide adoption of AI tools and methodologies in the design process.

• Cross-product & platform scope: Experience defining design strategy and scalable UX frameworks across multiple interconnected squads and product lines (e.g., tying provisioning to image governance and developer self-service).

• Executive storytelling & strategic alignment: Exceptional ability to translate complex technical constraints and customer telemetry into compelling strategic narratives that influence Product Directors, VP-level engineering leaders, and go-to-market executives.

• Strategic trade-off & outcome management: Track record of linking design investments directly to leading business metrics (product adoption, expansion, task completion rate, retention) and making courageous prioritization decisions.

• Mentorship & Community of Practice (CoP) leadership: Proven history of leading design critique, establishing design standards, mentoring senior/lead designers, and fostering a psychologically safe, high-trust team culture.

• Hands-on Infrastructure as Code (IaC) knowledge: Working knowledge or hands-on experience with Terraform (.tf syntax, state files, providers), Packer, Kubernetes, or container orchestration.

• Design system architecture & contribution: Experience contributing to or defining core architectures for multi-product design systems (e.g., Carbon, Helios), including design tokens, dark mode/theming, and developer handoff tooling.

• Code-level prototyping & technical fluency: Ability to build high-fidelity interactive prototypes with code or script automated design workflows.

• Industry presence & thought leadership: Public speaking, published articles, patents, or active contributions to the DevEx, open-source, or enterprise design communities.

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you’ll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you’ll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

IBM’s greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we’re also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it’s time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

IBM offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits program. Eligible employees may have access to:

- Healthcare benefits including medical & prescription drug coverage, dental, vision, and mental health & well being

- Financial programs such as 401(k), cash balance pension plan, the IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan, financial counseling, life insurance, short & long- term disability coverage, and opportunities for performance based salary incentive programs

- Generous paid time off including 12 holidays, minimum 56 hours sick time, 120 hours vacation, 12 weeks parental bonding leave in accordance with IBM Policy, and other Paid Care Leave programs. IBM also offers paid family leave benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law

- Training and educational resources on our personalized, AI-driven learning platform where IBMers can grow skills and obtain industry-recognized certifications to achieve their career goals

- Diverse and inclusive employee resource groups, giving & volunteer opportunities, and discounts on retail products, services & experiences

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.

This position was posted on the date cited in the key job details section and is anticipated to remain posted for 21 days from this date or less if not needed to fill the role.

IBM will not be providing visa sponsorship for this position now or in the future. Therefore, in order to be considered for this position, you must have the ability to work without a need for current or future visa sponsorship.

The compensation range and benefits for this position are based on a full-time schedule for a full calendar year. The salary will vary depending on your job-related skills, experience and location. Pay increment and frequency of pay will be in accordance with employment classification and applicable laws. For part time roles, your compensation and benefits will be adjusted to reflect your hours. Benefits may be pro-rated for those who start working during the calendar year.