Director, UI/UX Design & Research (Circuit - AI Platform)

Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.

Meet the Team

The AI Platforms and Enablement team is the engine behind Cisco’s internal AI transformation. Our mission is to build and scale CIRCUIT, Cisco’s universal enterprise AI platform designed to collapse information silos and amplify productivity through intelligent, agentic experiences. 

CIRCUIT is more than a platform, it is the foundation for how Cisco will reimagine work through secure, scalable AI. Our team combines platform development with enterprise enablement, ensuring that business units can adopt AI capabilities, integrate proprietary data, and transform legacy workflows into intelligent, autonomous experiences. 

The team operates through an Eight-Pillar CIRCUIT model spanning Platform Engineering, Solutions Engineering, Process Engineering, Product Management, UX Design, Technical Program Management, Innovation & Advanced Architecture, and Strategy & Operations. Within this model, UX Design serves as the Human-Centricity Engine, ensuring every interaction with AI is intuitive, accessible, and effective.

We are looking for a design leader who can define and scale the user experience vision for CIRCUIT, build a strong research practice, and ensure that every agent, workflow, and interface is grounded in deep user understanding and measurable outcomes.

Your Impact

As the Director of UX and Research, you will be the voice of the user across Cisco’s enterprise AI platform.

• You will lead the UX vision, design systems, and research practices that shape how users engage with CIRCUIT and its growing ecosystem of AI agents, workflows, and AI‑powered products. This role goes beyond delivering polished interfaces—you will act as a strategic partner to Product, Engineering, and Process Engineering to influence which experiences are built, how they evolve, and how they drive meaningful behavior change across the enterprise.

• You will define and drive the end‑to‑end UX strategy for CIRCUIT, ensuring experiences across chat, dynamic UI, agents, workflows, desktop, mobile, and embedded surfaces are intuitive, consistent, accessible, and aligned with the long‑term product vision. In close partnership with Product Management and Platform Engineering, you will establish and scale A2UI standards, defining the design principles, patterns, and systems required to support effective conversational, agentic, and multimodal interactions between users and AI agents.

• You will build and scale a strong UX research function that informs roadmap decisions with actionable qualitative and quantitative insight. You will lead research across diverse internal user groups and business functions to uncover high‑value use cases, workflow pain points, unmet needs, adoption barriers, and trust gaps. You will embed research and discovery deeply into product development, creating a culture of continuous “product sensing” that leverages user insight, telemetry, market trends, competitive analysis, and workflow observation to proactively identify opportunities and shape roadmap priorities.

• You will partner with Process Engineering and Solutions Engineering to reimagine manual and fragmented workflows as AI‑enabled, human‑in‑the‑loop experiences. You will design the interaction models, feedback mechanisms, and trust signals that allow users to confidently adopt agent‑driven automation while maintaining transparency, control, and usability.

• You will develop and evolve scalable design systems and experience frameworks that ensure consistency across CIRCUIT products, agents, tools, workflows, and enterprise integrations. You will champion a data‑informed design culture, using telemetry, usage patterns, NPS, task completion metrics, and behavioral insights to prioritize design investments, validate outcomes, and continuously improve experience quality.

• You will lead the UX Design pillar within the AI Platforms and Enablement organization and build, mentor, and scale a high‑performing UX and UXR team. Through clear direction, coaching, and hands‑on leadership, you will foster an environment that encourages innovation, design excellence, and strong cross‑functional collaboration, directly impacting adoption, usability, trust, and overall success of the CIRCUIT platform.

Minimum Qualifications 

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Human Factors, Psychology, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. 

• 10+ years of experience in UX design, product design, user research, or related fields.

• 5+ years of experience leading and developing design and/or research teams 

• Proven experience defining and driving UX strategy for complex digital products or platforms.

• Strong expertise in design thinking, user research, journey mapping, prototyping, usability testing, and end-to-end experience design.

• Experience working in highly cross-functional environments with Product Management, Engineering, and program leadership.

Preferred Qualifications 

• Experience designing AI-driven products, agentic workflows, conversational interfaces, or enterprise AI platforms.

• Experience establishing or scaling design systems across interconnected product ecosystems.

• Experience designing human-in-the-loop workflows and trust-centered AI experiences.

• Experience supporting organizational change through workflow redesign and adoption of new digital tools. 

• Familiarity with enterprise software, developer platforms, productivity tools, or internal employee-facing experiences. 

• Experience building or scaling a UX and research organization in a fast-moving, high-growth environment.

• Strong understanding of how to use product telemetry, behavioral analytics, and research findings to drive prioritization and continuous improvement.

• Demonstrated ability to translate ambiguous, technical capabilities into intuitive user experiences.

Why Cisco? 

At Cisco, we’re revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era – and beyond. We’ve been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint.

Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you’ll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere. 

We are Cisco, and our power starts with you. 

Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada:

Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location, market conditions, job-related skillset, experience, qualifications, education, certifications, and/or training. The full salary range for certain locations is listed below. For locations not listed below, the recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.

U.S. employees are offered benefits, subject to Cisco’s plan eligibility rules, which include medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, paid parental leave, short and long-term disability coverage, and basic life insurance. Please see the Cisco careers site to discover more benefits and perks.  Employees may be eligible to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment with Cisco for defined periods of time.

U.S. employees are eligible for paid time away as described below, subject to Cisco’s policies:

• 10 paid holidays per full calendar year, plus 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees

• 1 paid day off for employee’s birthday, paid year-end holiday shutdown, and 4 paid days off for personal wellness determined by Cisco

• Non-exempt employees receive 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees

• Exempt employees participate in Cisco’s flexible vacation time off program, which has no defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use (subject to availability and some business limitations)

• 80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter, and up to 80 hours of unused sick time carried forward from one calendar year to the next

• Additional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family members

• Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer

For non-sales roles, employees are also eligible to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco’s policies.

Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components, subject to the applicable Cisco plan. For quota-based incentive pay, Cisco typically pays as follows:

• .75% of incentive target for each 1% of revenue attainment up to 50% of quota;

• 1.5% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 50% and 75%;

• 1% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 75% and 100%; and

• Once performance exceeds 100% attainment, incentive rates are at or above 1% for each 1% of attainment with no cap on incentive compensation.

For non-quota-based sales performance elements such as strategic sales objectives, Cisco may pay 0% up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.

The applicable full salary ranges for this position, by specific state, are listed below:

New York City Metro Area:

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

* For quota-based sales roles on Cisco’s sales plan, the ranges provided in this posting include base pay and sales target incentive compensation combined.

Employees in Illinois, whether exempt or non-exempt, will participate in a unique time off program to meet local requirements.