Lead Product Designer

Career Area:
Technology, Digital and Data

Job Description:

Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc.

When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do – but also about each other. We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here – we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live. Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it.

Job Summary:

At Caterpillar, User Experience extends beyond the display. We design how people interact with machines, digital products, and connected ecosystems to create experiences that are intuitive, integrated, and trusted.

We're seeking a Lead Product Designer who thrives on simplifying complexity and shaping how experiences are created across a broad portfolio of products and customer journeys.

This role partners closely with Product, Engineering, Research, and business leadership to define experience vision, influence product strategy, and guide the delivery of solutions that help customers accomplish their work safely, efficiently, and confidently.

Success in this role requires strong systems thinking, strategic perspective, and the ability to lead through influence. The ideal candidate excels at connecting customer needs, business objectives, and technical realities while helping teams navigate ambiguity and align around a shared vision. They think beyond individual features and products, understanding how interconnected systems, workflows, platforms, and touchpoints contribute to the overall customer experience.

You'll have the opportunity to influence experiences from early concept through production, establish direction across multiple products and platforms, and help shape the future of design within Caterpillar's digital ecosystem.

What You'll Do:

- Define and communicate experience vision across products, platforms, and customer journeys.
- Drive strategic design initiatives that influence product direction and support long-term business objectives.
- Partner with Product, Engineering, Research, and business leaders to identify opportunities, define priorities, and align teams around customer outcomes.
- Guide discovery efforts and help teams translate customer insights, business goals, and technical constraints into experience strategies and product requirements.
- Drive systems-level thinking across products, platforms, and customer journeys to ensure experiences are cohesive, scalable, and aligned with broader customer and business objectives.
- Identify experience dependencies, opportunities, and gaps across multiple products and workflows to create integrated solutions rather than isolated features.
- Shape end-to-end customer experiences across machine, application, and connected ecosystems.
- Provide design leadership across multiple products, teams, or domains to ensure cohesive, scalable, and high-quality customer experiences.
- Facilitate strategic workshops and alignment sessions that help teams navigate ambiguity and make informed decisions.
- Establish and evolve design standards, frameworks, processes, and best practices that improve consistency and quality across the organization.
- Leverage customer research, usability findings, analytics, and business metrics to evaluate and improve experience effectiveness.
- Influence the evolution of design systems, accessibility standards, interaction patterns, and DesignOps practices.
- Mentor and coach Product Designers through design critiques, knowledge sharing, and professional development activities.
- Champion Human Centered Design and Product Design excellence throughout the product development lifecycle.
- Collaborate closely with Engineering and Product teams to ensure design intent is successfully implemented and customer outcomes are achieved.

What You Will Have

Creativity: Knowledge of the approaches, tools, and techniques for promoting creative, original thinking and ability to apply it to a variety of business situations.

Decision Making and Critical Thinking: Knowledge of the decision-making process and associated tools and techniques; ability to accurately analyze situations and reach productive decisions based on informed judgment.

Computer Software Industry: Knowledge of computer software industry; ability to understand future products, vendors, technologies, issues, and trends and directions.

Web Software Design: Knowledge of web software design; ability to design, develop, maintain and enhance web-based or web-enabled software.

Human-Centered Design (HCD): Knowledge of Human-Centered Design model, principle, and concepts; ability to understand the perspective of people who experience a problem, their needs, and provide them with a solution which truly meets their needs effectively.

User Experience Design: Knowledge of user experience design tools, techniques and approaches; ability to design applications that are valued, positively perceived and used by clients.

User Interface Design: Knowledge of user-centered design principles and human-computer interaction; ability to design and develop intuitive, visually appealing, and user-friendly interfaces that meet business goals and user needs.

Web Trends & Directions: Knowledge of web trends; ability to utilize a variety of web information and technical tools to apply web developing trends within the organizational infrastructure.

Considerations for Top Candidates:

- Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience.
- Professional experience in Product Design, User Experience Design, Human-Centered Design, or a related field.
- Significant experience owning and shaping experiences from discovery through delivery.
- Experience influencing product strategy and defining experience vision across multiple products, platforms, or domains.
- Strong portfolio demonstrating systems thinking, strategic problem solving, visual design excellence, and end-to-end product design leadership.
- Demonstrated ability to influence and design across complex ecosystems, platforms, customer journeys, or interconnected product experiences.
- Strong systems thinking mindset with experience identifying opportunities and dependencies across multiple products or domains.
- Proven ability to partner with Product, Engineering, Research, and business leadership.
- Strong facilitation, storytelling, communication, and executive presentation skills.
- Experience mentoring designers and elevating design quality across teams.
- Experience creating alignment across cross-functional stakeholders with competing priorities.

Preferred Qualifications:

- Experience designing products that combine hardware and software experiences.
- Familiarity with Human Machine Interface (HMI) design principles.
- Experience working with embedded systems or resource-constrained platforms.
- Experience designing enterprise, industrial, manufacturing, robotics, construction, mining, agriculture, or automotive products.
- Experience with connected products, IoT platforms, and digital ecosystems.
- Experience using customer research, analytics, and data to influence strategic decisions.
- Familiarity with design systems, scalable component libraries, accessibility standards, and design best practices.
- Experience leading design efforts within Agile product development environments.

What You'll Bring: