Product Design Director - Risk Design

Product Design Director - Risk Design

At Capital One, we’re building a leading information-based technology company. Still founder-led by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Richard Fairbank, Capital One is on a mission to help our customers succeed by bringing ingenuity, simplicity, and humanity to banking. We measure our efforts by the success our customers enjoy and the advocacy they exhibit. We’re succeeding because they’re succeeding.

Guided by our shared values, we thrive in an environment where collaboration and openness are valued. We believe that innovation is powered by perspective and that teamwork and respect for each other lead to superior results. We elevate each other and obsess about doing the right thing. Our associates serve with humility and a deep respect for their responsibility in helping our customers achieve their goals and realize their dreams. Together, we’re on a quest to change banking for good.

We’re currently seeking a Product Design Director to lead our Anti-Money Laundering and Compliance & Ethics teams. These teams sit within our larger Risk and Audit Design portfolio, which is part of Capital One’s Experience Design organization.

These teams are leading, and are responsible for, our innovative experiences that power our AML and Compliance platforms, keeping Capital One and our customers safeguarded in a well managed and effective manner. As a People Leader, you will lead the AIML and Compliance & Ethics portfolios, which consists in total of 10 - 12 product designers. Your ability to navigate complexity, delegate, and empower your teams will be vital to success in this role. Familiarity with AI tools and application of them in improving workflows and efficiency is expected.

The Experience Design team at Capital One is at the forefront of enriching our customers’ digital and physical experiences and we are passionate about creating memorable, meaningful product experiences that build the Capital One brand with humanity and drive business advantage and innovation. We champion a thriving environment of collaboration, authenticity and healthy critique, in which we honor diversity of thought, create a culture of belonging, and elevate one another. If you’re a creative innovator who embraces an environment where you can experiment, learn, and change banking for good, we’d love to hear from you.

Role Expectations

As a Director of Anti-Money Laundering and Compliance & Ethics teams, you’ll lead a talented, cross-disciplinary team of designers and collaborate deeply with our research teams and Product and Tech leadership. You’ll be responsible for leading high-impact, highly complex projects and defining and driving design strategy that informs the higher-level vision of the organization and aligns to business objectives.

If you're energized by design problems where precision, trust, and clarity aren't nice-to-haves but the whole point — where your work directly shapes how investigators catch financial crime and how the company upholds its ethical commitments — this is a rare seat at that table.

Some of the qualities we are looking for to help meet role expectations are:

Regulatory/compliance design literacy — experience designing within highly regulated environments (financial services, healthcare, or similar), where every flow has audit trail, disclosure, or policy implications.

Complex workflow simplification — ability to take dense, rule-heavy processes (investigation queues, case management, escalation paths) and design them into clear, low-error user experiences

Cross-functional fluency with risk/legal/compliance stakeholders — comfortable translating between design and non-design partners like investigators, compliance officers, or auditors who think in terms of controls and risk, not UX heuristics

Data-dense interface design — experience designing for users who need to scan, triage, and act on large volumes of structured data quickly (alerts, transaction review, case files)

Here are some of the expected competencies for this role:

Product Design Expertise: Leverage established expertise and leadership in product design to elevate the quality and maturity of the design practice at Capital One. Leveraging a variety of skills across interaction, visual and service design; in collaboration with cross-functional partners, help to oversee and optimize the use of appropriate tools, platforms, frameworks and design systems and enable your team to develop artifacts that may include vision stories, journey maps, blueprints, high-fidelity designs and prototypes

Leadership: Create conditions for a positive and inclusive team environment and set a vision for an inclusive, collaborative culture that makes your team feel valued and heard

Human-Centered: Champion voices of both customers and partners, modeling the mindset that business and customer outcomes are not distinct but complementary, ultimately resulting in experiences that exceed baseline customer needs and expectations

Business-Focused: Demonstrate expert knowledge of products, processes, our customers, competitors and industry market trends, applying relevant insights to shape how Design should engage and solve business challenges

Problem-Solving: Share insights around technical advances and data capabilities that could influence outcomes, while helping larger teams navigate technical limitations and boundaries in service of bold technological solutions, data destinations and efficiency

Collaboration: Connect the dots across teams, portfolios, platforms and LOBs, bringing together partners and processes in ways that drive more coherent experiences, accelerate delivery and elevate the value of design

Communication: Present work across levels and job functions, modeling a strategic human-centered approach that integrates design frameworks, data and research insights to make the complex accessible, influence senior stakeholders and achieve impactful results

The ideal candidate has a strong portfolio demonstrating your leadership, process, results and impact.

Basic Qualifications:

• At least 8 years of experience in product design role

• At least 3 years of experience leading design teams

Preferred Qualifications:

• At least 10 years of experience in product design role

• At least 5 years of experience leading design teams

• Experience in a design toolkit that spans product design, service design, design strategy and content design

• Experience leading product design teams operating across UX and UI, strategy, content and research from strategy through delivery to market

• Experience partnering with product managers, engineers, marketing and analytics leaders across multiple business lines to shape strategy, OKRs, roadmaps and operating models

• Experience working within a design system

• Proficiency with web and mobile technologies and platforms, navigating technology considerations and constraints to drive sound product and experience decisions

• Expertise with design and prototyping tools such as Figma

• Experience managing an interdisciplinary design team

• Proficiency in business case development, grounding product and user experience decisions to business value

• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills

• Exceptional interpersonal skills and relationship building across complex organizations

• Exceptional people management and development skills

At this time, Capital One will not sponsor a new applicant for employment authorization for this position

The minimum and maximum full-time annual salaries for this role are listed below, by location. Please note that this salary information is solely for candidates hired to perform work within one of these locations, and refers to the amount Capital One is willing to pay at the time of this posting. Salaries for part-time roles will be prorated based upon the agreed upon number of hours to be regularly worked.

McLean, VA: $230,400 - $263,000 for Director, Design

New York, NY: $251,400 - $286,900 for Director, Design

Richmond, VA: $209,500 - $239,100 for Director, Design

Candidates hired to work in other locations will be subject to the pay range associated with that location, and the actual annualized salary amount offered to any candidate at the time of hire will be reflected solely in the candidate’s offer letter.

This role is also eligible to earn performance based incentive compensation, which may include cash bonus(es) and/or long term incentives (LTI). Incentives could be discretionary or non discretionary depending on the plan.

Capital One offers a comprehensive, competitive, and inclusive set of health, financial and other benefits that support your total well-being. Learn more at the Capital One Careers website. Eligibility varies based on full or part-time status, exempt or non-exempt status, and management level.

This role is expected to accept applications for a minimum of 5 business days.

No agencies please. Capital One is an equal opportunity employer (EOE, including disability/vet) committed to non-discrimination in compliance with applicable federal, state, and local laws. Capital One promotes a drug-free workplace. Capital One will consider for employment qualified applicants with a criminal history in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable laws regarding criminal background inquiries, including, to the extent applicable, Article 23-A of the New York Correction Law; San Francisco, California Police Code Article 49, Sections 4901-4920; New York City’s Fair Chance Act; Philadelphia’s Fair Criminal Records Screening Act; and other applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations regarding criminal background inquiries.

If you have visited our website in search of information on employment opportunities or to apply for a position, and you require an accommodation, please contact Capital One Recruiting at 1-800-304-9102 or via email at RecruitingAccommodation@capitalone.com. All information you provide will be kept confidential and will be used only to the extent required to provide needed reasonable accommodations.

For technical support or questions about Capital One's recruiting process, please send an email to Careers@capitalone.com

Capital One does not provide, endorse nor guarantee and is not liable for third-party products, services, educational tools or other information available through this site.

Capital One Financial is made up of several different entities. Please note that any position posted in Canada is for Capital One Canada, any position posted in the United Kingdom is for Capital One Europe and any position posted in the Philippines is for Capital One Philippines Service Corp. (COPSSC).