Director, Experience Design, PDMS - Canada

We’re hiring a Director of Experience Design within our Product Design and Manufacturing Solutions (PDMS) organization. This person will lead experience design across Autodesk’s core manufacturing, design, and data management tools, supporting engineers and other manufacturing professionals across design, manufacturing, and operations workflows.  This role will focus primarily on continuously shipped cloud and SaaS-based solutions, and it will focus on the convergence of solutions in the Autodesk Fusion Platform. 
 

This is a critical leadership role reporting to the Senior Director of Experience Design focusing on Data and Process Manufacturing, PDMS.  You will lead and grow a high-performing team of designers within a 100+ global Experience Design organization driving transformation toward modern, future-shaping, AI-first experiences that advance both customer productivity and usability. You will partner closely with Product Engineering and Development, AI and Machine Learning, and Business leaders to shape the strategy and future of Autodesk’s Manufacturing platform and experiences. 

This leader will be play a key role in evolving our products and services from best-in-class applications into AI-first, agentic, and deeply integrated experiences aligned with Autodesk’s Manufacturing Industry Cloud vision - both elevating the tools millions rely upon today and re-imagining how manufacturing companies evolve over time.  

The ideal candidate will be a true agent of change, thrives in fast-paced environments, inspires cross-functional teams, and excels at translating complex technical challenges into actionable value for our customers.  You will champion innovation, rapid prototyping, continuous improvement, and quality of outcomes, while helping develop and execute the experience vision, strategy, and operating model across the full product development lifecycle - from concept through design and make and operations. 
 

This role is supporting our R&D center-of-excellence in Toronto, ON, Canada. We support a hybrid work environment, with flexible working hours, and the role can be based within an hour drive to Toronto. Travel requirements are approximately 10%. 
 

Responsibilities 

Vision & Strategy 

• Execute and champion a multi-year user experience design vision for Autodesk’s manufacturing solutions, grounded in real customer workflows and outcomes 

• Shape how AI-first and agentic experiences fundamentally change how customers treat manufacturing processes —moving from feature-centric software to intelligent, proactive, and integrated systems 

• Establish a clear north-star for unification, modernization, and experience cohesion across products, solutions and platforms 

• Partner with executive leadership to align experience strategy with Autodesk’s Manufacturing Industry Cloud and broader business strategy 
   

AI-First & Agentic Experiences 

• Shape and drive the adoption of agentic-AI, generative-AI, and AI capabilities with Autodesk’s manufacturing solutions 

• Lead the evolution of manufacturing design and make solutions into agent-powered experiences, including copilots, assistants, automation, and proactive workflows 

• Partner with AI/ML teams to integrate emerging agentic frameworks (reasoning, tool use, memory, orchestration) into real-world manufacturing workflows 

• Ensure experiences remain cohesive, trustworthy, transparent, and human-centered, even as autonomy increases 

• Coach teams on AI-augmented workflows both for Autodesk and our customers; AI isn’t just what teams build – it’s how they work 
   

Design Systems, Platforms & Foundation 

• Drive experience consistency and scalability through design systems, shared patterns, critical user journeys, and foundational UX capabilities 

• Ensure manufacturing design tools work as part of a cohesive ecosystem, not isolated products—across desktop, cloud, and connected services 

• Balance innovation with craft, usability, performance, and technical constraints in complex, mature products 

• Support the development and use of our Weave design system and demand thoughtful design for multiple form-factors and devices, with an eye for accessibility 
   

Leadership & Organizational Excellence 

• Build, lead, and inspire a high-performing global team of user experience professionals with broad skillsets, including research and content design; develop a level of proficiency across these skillsets within each employee 

• Advocate for and demonstrate how agentic experiences can be utilized to optimize performance and broaden skillsets; lean into innovative solutions and methodologies 

• Coach and develop senior design managers; establish clear charters, expectations, and growth paths, especially those focusing on role transformation through AI. 

• Foster a culture of customer empathy, experimentation, quality, and accountability at scale; encourage regular use of our own solutions and a culture of critique 

• Ensure operational excellence—clear prioritization, healthy team structures, sound decision-making, and strong execution rhythms 
   

Cross-Functional Partnership & Influence 

• Serve as a trusted advisor to senior leaders across Product, Engineering, and Data Science professionals 

• Advocate relentlessly for customer-centered decision-making while balancing business and technical realities 

• Represent the voice of user experience design in executive forums and strategic planning 
   

Minimum Qualifications 

• 12+ years of professional experience in user experience (UX), product design, or experience design, with 5+ years leading large, multi-layered teams or portfolios 

• Proven experience leading design at scale across complex, multi-product ecosystems 

• Demonstrated success driving large-scale experience unification and modernization efforts 

• Experience building or evolving AI-assisted or agentic product experiences 

• Deep expertise in human-centered design, research, design systems, and design operations – including the incorporation of AI tools as a core competency 

• Strong executive communication skills—able to distill complexity and influence at all levels of the organization and present a clear point-of-view to senior leadership 

• Experience working in highly collaborative Agile/Scrum environments 
   

Preferred Qualifications 

• Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree in interaction design, HCI, or a related field 

• Experience designing professional tools for manufacturing industries, CAD modeling or highly technical enterprise domains 

• Experience designing multi-platform ecosystems (desktop, cloud, services); preference for experience in SaaS-based software systems with AI capabilities