Lead UX Designer

Join us as we work to create a thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all.

Design meaningful experiences that help healthcare teams work more effectively in athenahealth’s EHR and practice management products. In this role, you will partner with product and engineering to solve complex clinical and operational problems through thoughtful UX strategy, research, and design execution. You will balance strong design craft with practical decision-making to move work forward in a large, regulated product environment. This role reports to the UI & UX Design Manager.

About the Team:

The team designs experiences that support healthcare organizations across core clinical and operational workflows. We partner closely with product, engineering, clinical, and research stakeholders to improve usability, consistency, and value delivery across the product suite. The team uses user research, design systems, prototyping tools, and collaborative planning processes to shape and validate solutions. We work across a complex product landscape and focus on creating clear, usable experiences that support day-to-day healthcare work.

Essential Job Responsibilities:

• Lead discovery and framing of user-centered problems across complex product areas.
• Facilitate visioning sessions and translate ideas into sketches, flows, wireframes, and prototypes.
• Conduct and synthesize user research, heuristic reviews, and client feedback to inform design decisions.
• Partner with product and engineering throughout agile planning, development, and release cycles to ensure design intent is carried through implementation.
• Develop interaction models and workflows that simplify complex user, system, and data relationships.
• Present design concepts, recommendations, and tradeoffs to product, clinical, and engineering stakeholders.
• Mentor junior designers through design reviews, feedback, and day-to-day collaboration.
• Support team-level design practices and process improvements that strengthen consistency and quality.
• Use AI tools to accelerate design exploration, prototyping, and refinement while applying judgment to select, adapt, and validate outputs before sharing with partners.
• Travel required 20% annually.

Additional Job Responsibilities:

• Contribute to design system adoption and consistency across product experiences.
• Support cross-functional planning by helping clarify scope, risks, and design dependencies.
• Collaborate on documentation that communicates design rationale and implementation guidance.
• Participate in team critiques and shared learning to strengthen design quality.
• Help identify opportunities to improve workflows, tools, and team practices.
• Support onboarding and knowledge sharing for new team members.
• Adapt to changing priorities and contribute to adjacent work as needed., Our vision: In an industry that becomes more complex by the day, we stand for simplicity. We offer IT solutions and expert services that eliminate the daily hurdles preventing healthcare providers from focusing entirely on their patients - powered by our vision to create a thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all.

• Bachelor’s degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Cognitive Psychology, Computer Science, Business, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of professional experience in digital product design.
• Experience creating strong design deliverables, including visual design, interaction design, prototyping, copywriting, and design specifications.
• Experience planning, facilitating, analyzing, and presenting user research using qualitative and quantitative methods.
• Experience working in an agile software development environment.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong stakeholder management skills with the ability to influence without direct authority.
• Experience using AI tools as part of a design workflow is preferred.
• Experience designing for complex enterprise, healthcare, or workflow-heavy products is preferred.
• Ability to work through ambiguity, evaluate tradeoffs, and make timely decisions that keep work moving forward.

The base salary range shown reflects the full range for this role from minimum to maximum. At athenahealth, base pay depends on multiple factors, including job-related experience, relevant knowledge and skills, how your qualifications compare to others in similar roles, and geographical market rates. Base pay is only one part of our competitive Total Rewards package - depending on role eligibility, we offer both short and long-term incentives by way of an annual discretionary bonus plan, variable compensation plan, and equity plans., Along with health and financial benefits, athenistas enjoy perks specific to each location, including commuter support, employee assistance programs, tuition assistance, employee resource groups, and collaborative workspaces - some offices even welcome dogs.

We also encourage a better work-life balance for athenistas with our flexibility. While we know in-office collaboration is critical to our vision, we recognize that not all work needs to be done within an office environment, full-time. With consistent communication and digital collaboration tools, athenahealth enables employees to find a balance that feels fulfilling and productive for each individual situation.

In addition to our traditional benefits and perks, we sponsor events throughout the year, including book clubs, external speakers, and hackathons. We provide athenistas with a company culture based on learning, the support of an engaged team, and an inclusive environment where all employees are valued.