Senior Director, Product Design

Senior Director, Product Design
 

Location: Dublin, Ireland

Work mode: Office-based/Hybrid 

Team: Bentley Open Applications 

Bentley Systems is the infrastructure engineering software company, advancing the world’s infrastructure—sustaining both the global economy and the environment. Within Bentley, the Design organization shapes meaningful experiences—from brand to in-product interactions—with clarity, coherence, and craft. 

As Senior Director, Product Design for Bentley Open Applications, you will set the vision, strategy, and standard of excellence for design across one of Bentley's most critical product portfolios. You will lead a talented team of designers and researchers, shaping how infrastructure professionals around the world experience our software, and how AI, data, and intelligent workflows transform their craft. 

Reporting to the Chief Design Officer with a dotted line to SVP, Open Applications, you will work closely with leaders across Design, Product Management, Engineering, and Research to help drive portfolio-level decisions, champion the user, and ensure design plays a central role in shaping the future of Bentley Open Applications.  

Responsibilities:  

• Set the multi-year vision and strategy for product design across Bentley Open Applications, ensuring that design is a driver of business outcomes, product differentiation, and user value. 

• Lead and scale a multi-layered organization of UX designers and researchers, including managers and senior individual contributors, across a distributed global environment. 

• Operate as a peer to leaders in Product Management and Engineering, representing design in executive forums and shaping portfolio-level roadmap, investment, and prioritization decisions. 

• Champion AI integration across BOA products, identifying opportunities to embed AI capabilities that boost user productivity and surface intelligent insights for infrastructure professionals. 

• Drive adoption of AI-assisted design and research workflows to accelerate delivery without compromising craft. 

• Establish design principles and patterns for AI-powered experiences, ensuring trust, transparency, and explainability across the portfolio. 

• Define and evolve the design operating model, including design systems, research practices, experience strategy, and standards of craft across the portfolio. 

• Advocate for responsible and ethical AI, embedding considerations around bias, user agency, and privacy into design decisions. 

• Build and steward executive and cross-functional relationships, influencing senior leaders across product, engineering, marketing, and data to align user-centered priorities. 

• Own department budget, headcount planning, and organizational design, making strategic investment decisions that balance growth, capability, and efficiency. 

• Foster a culture of AI fluency, experimentation, and continuous learning across the design organization. 

• Develop the next generation of design leaders, mentoring managers and senior ICs and building a strong community of practice. 

Qualifications:  

• 12+ years in product design and research, with 7+ years leading teams, including experience managing managers and scaling organizations through growth and change. 

• Proven track record influencing at the C-suite and executive level and shaping product strategy as a peer to senior Product and Engineering leaders. 

• Strategic systems thinker with experience setting multi-year design vision and translating it into measurable business and user outcomes. 

• Experience leading design in AI-enabled or data-intensive products, with a point of view on how AI reshapes user experience and design practice. 

• Strong commercial acumen, including budget ownership, workforce planning, and prioritization across competing demands. 

• Exceptional communicator, facilitator, and storyteller, able to inspire teams and influence executives alike. 

• Experience in complex enterprise, B2B, or technical software domains (infrastructure, engineering, or industrial software a plus). 

What we offer:

• Step into a collaborative work environment where ideas flourish, and teamwork propels us forward towards shared success; see our colleague video for a taste of our culture and watch this short documentary about how we got our start.  

• An attractive salary and benefits package.  

• Bentley Impact Day: take a day off from work to volunteer with an organization of your choice.  

• Celebrate milestone achievements and moments that matter through our colleague recognition award programs and our Bentley Achievers platform.    

• A commitment to inclusion, belonging and colleague wellbeing through global initiatives and resource groups.  

• Be part of a company committed to making a real difference by advancing the world’s infrastructure for better quality of life, where your contributions help build a more sustainable, connected, and resilient world. Discover our latest user success stories for an insight into our global impact.  

Who we are: 

Around the world, infrastructure professionals rely on software from Bentley Systems to help them design, build, and operate better and more resilient infrastructure for transportation, water, energy, cities, and more. Founded in 1984 by engineers for engineers, Bentley is the partner of choice for engineering firms and owner-operators worldwide, with software that spans engineering disciplines, industry sectors, and all phases of the infrastructure lifecycle. Through our digital twin solutions, we help infrastructure professionals unlock the value of their data to transform project delivery and asset performance. 

Equal Opportunity Employer