Director of Design - Digital Ordering

As the Director of Product Design for Digital Ordering at Byte, you will lead the strategic design vision, execution, and team behind Yum!’s global guest-facing digital commerce experiences that also touch internal operator tools. This role requires a systems-minded design leader who can connect customer experiences, digital channels, and the underlying operational systems that power them—bridging e-commerce and internal platforms through a unified design strategy.

You’ll collaborate closely with the Head of Design for Byte by Yum! and peer design leaders to co-build and scale the broader Byte experience strategy—translating that shared vision into actionable design outcomes within Digital Ordering and the design system team. You’ll oversee the design of web, app, kiosk, and cross-channel ordering experiences, as well as the evolution of Yum!’s enterprise design systems. Your leadership will define how design scales across brands, platforms, and regions—ensuring both craft excellence and systemic consistency across the Byte ecosystem.

This role is both visionary and operational: setting long-term design direction within your area of ownership while building the people, systems, and rituals that make world-class experience delivery repeatable at scale.

Responsibilities
What You’ll Be Doing
Design Leadership & Vision
- Define and champion the end-to-end design strategy for Yum!’s digital ordering ecosystem across brands and channels (web, app, kiosk, and emerging touchpoints).
- Craft a north-star customer experience vision that connects guest journeys with the operational systems that support them.
- Lead multi-platform design across the entire lifecycle—from discovery through scaled delivery—balancing speed, craft, and innovation.
- Represent Digital Ordering design in leadership forums, shaping roadmap direction, investment, and cross-brand experience priorities.

Team & Organizational Leadership
- Lead, mentor, and grow a multi-disciplinary team of designers in digital ordering channels for products, and design system specialists with clear accountability for strengthening the foundational work and expanding the strategy of our design systems.
- Build structures that balance embedded product ownership with centralized design system governance.
- Create scalable operating models for cross-brand collaboration, design reviews, and continuous learning.
- Champion a healthy, high-bar design culture grounded in clarity, rigor, and belonging.

Design Systems & UX Consistency
- Oversee the strategy and expansion of Yum!’s design systems enabling speed, quality, and brand flexibility across global markets.
- Partner with engineering to define and evolve design token architecture, semantic naming conventions, and accessibility standards.
- Establish a roadmap for component governance, documentation, contribution models, and automated QA across brands.
- Evolve cross-platform coherence between consumer-facing and operator-facing systems, ensuring OneByte functions as a single, living ecosystem.

Systems Thinking & Cross-Functional Influence
- Collaborate with Product, Engineering, Data Science, and Brand Marketing to translate user needs and business goals into cohesive, measurable experiences.
- Drive alignment across digital channels and internal systems—connecting menu architecture, personalization, loyalty, and payments through unified experience models.
- Serve as a trusted voice at the intersection of UX, platform architecture, and business strategy, bringing clarity to ambiguous, cross-domain challenges.
- Build organizational empathy for customers through storytelling, data, and design rationale.

Operational Excellence & Impact
- Help define and drive design operating rhythms, including critiques, planning cadences, and executive reviews.
- Create design metrics dashboards tied to conversion, adoption, and system usage.
- Champion accessibility, internationalization, and performance as core quality dimensions.
- Establish partnership rituals with Brand, Product, and Engineering to ensure design remains a strategic, measurable driver of success.

Qualifications
What You’ll Need
- 12+ years in UX / Product Design, with 5+ years in design leadership roles overseeing large-scale, multi-platform ecosystems (e.g., e-commerce, payments, loyalty, ordering, or platform design).
- Deep experience designing for complex, multi-surface systems—especially across customer and internal-facing platforms.
- Proven ability to connect design strategy to measurable outcomes (conversion, retention, NPS, design velocity).
- Demonstrated leadership of design systems at enterprise scale, including:
- Component architecture and system evolution across platforms (web, mobile, kiosk).
- Design token architecture, semantic theming, and multi-brand scalability.
- Governance models for contribution, maintenance, and documentation.
- Accessibility and performance optimization within system foundations.
- Collaboration frameworks between design, engineering, and brand.
- Experience leading global teams across multiple brands, cultures, and technical stacks.
- Exceptional storytelling and influence skills—able to align executives, engineers, and brand stakeholders through clarity and evidence.
- Comfort operating in complex, matrixed environments, with the ability to balance standardization and brand individuality.
- Passion for building experiences that drive both emotional connection and business performance.

Bonus Experience
- Preferred Education (bonus):
Advanced degree in Human–Computer Interaction, Design Strategy, Human Factors, Information Design, or related discipline. MBA or other advanced degree in a complementary field (e.g., Technical Communication, Computer Science, or Business Strategy) is a plus.
- Experience integrating design systems with front-end frameworks (React, Angular, Flutter).
- Familiarity with content and commerce platforms (Adobe Experience Manager, Shopify Plus, custom CMS or menu management).
- Knowledge of user research and experimentation tooling (UserTesting, Amplitude, Figma analytics).
- Background in multi-brand or franchise ecosystems, where scalability and local adaptability coexist.