VP, Experience

Job description

ABOUT APPLY APPLY is the Agentic Customer Experience (ACx) partner for the world's most ambitious consumer and entertainment brands. We bring together deep domain expertise across Retail, CPG, Sports, and Media with AI-native delivery capability, designing and delivering agentic solutions that turn CX vision into commercial reality. We are the partner of choice for brands like Arc'teryx, NFL, Lululemon, and Kraft Heinz. For more information, visit applydigital.com. LOCATION: APPLY is hybrid/remote friendly. The preferred candidate should be based in either the Greater Toronto Area or the Greater Vancouver Area of Canada, working in hours that align to ET (Eastern Timezone) or PT (Pacific Timezone). THE ROLE: Key Responsibilities Team Leadership & Development Build an elite, future-ready team through mentorship, smart hiring, and clear standards. Develop Senior Leaders: Direct and develop the department’s senior leaders, building their capacity to coach, set standards, and drive performance across their respective teams. Cultivate High-Performance Culture: Foster a culture that values both craftsmanship and velocity - one where practitioners hold themselves to a high bar, push creative boundaries, collaborate fluidly, and engage clients with confidence and authority. Strategic Hiring: Champion intentional hiring that strengthens the team's depth, diversity of thinking, and Agentic fluency, identifying and closing capability gaps proactively. Targeted Upskilling: Partner with People Leaders to commission targeted training programs, with immediate priority areas including Accessibility, Annotations, Component Libraries, and Agentic AI literacy. Performance Tracking: Partner with the PMO and POPS to establish meaningful performance metrics that track individual and team contributions, creating clear paths for recognition, development, and remediation. AI & Process Transformation Defining how the Experience function works in the age of Agentic AI. AI Transformation Roadmap: Guide Apply’s AI transformation roadmap (define the ongoing evolution) for the Experience function. Lead structured capability audits and execute plans to close gaps with measurable improvements in usage, certification, and client application. Workflow Automation: Direct Experience Design and Product Leaders to evaluate day-to-day tools and workflows, identifying automation opportunities and eliminating low-value effort. Standardize Frameworks: Establish standardized processes and refined deliverable frameworks for repeatable client needs: Experience Design: Information Architecture, Wireframing, CMS Design, Brand Design, Page Design, Content Audits & Strategy, Accessibility, Design Systems, Technical Hand-offs etc. Product: Site Audits, Personas, User Journeys, Roadmaps, PRDs, Ticket Creation, and Acceptance Criteria. Knowledge Sharing: Feed updates back to the overarching delivery process, ensuring Experience’s contributions remain accurate, current, and operationally useful as practices evolve. Excellence & Innovation Setting the bar and building the conditions for the team to clear it. Brand Consistency: Drive the adoption of templates and tooling such as Claude Design to enable more consistent, higher-quality outputs at scale across all client deliverables, pitch materials, and internal documentation. Creative Ambition: Champion a culture where AI handles the repetitive and routine so the team can focus their energy on capturing each client's brand in ways that are unique, resonant, and commercially differentiated. Waste Reduction: Drive the Product team to eliminate upfront planning pain points through cross-checks that ensure complete discovery, requirements integrity, protected margins, and solutions that balance analytical rigour with innovation. Award-Worthy Work: Pursue industry-recognized work as a leading indicator that Apply's Experience function is producing ACx work that moves people and businesses. Business Outcomes & Accountability Running the practice as a business, with rigour, data, and commercial intent. Financial Ownership: Own the Experience function's budget, utilization, and financial contribution to the organization. Set aggressive targets, monitor performance, and hold the team accountable. Utilization Frameworks: Partner with PMO to extend Agile Day reporting and leverage AI Tooling to track utilization, analyze trends by project type, and systematically learn from both successes and shortfalls. Monetize Specialized Offerings: Determine which elements warrant repackaging as separately scoped and priced offerings (e.g., differentiated accessibility tiers, content strategy, translation/localization management, content authoring, persona development, and extended roadmapping). Data-Driven Performance: Use operational performance data to drive decisions regarding targeted training, process redesign, or adjustments to how services are sold. Thought Leadership & Strategy Advancing Apply’s ACx vision internally, with clients, and in the market. Champion the ACx Vision: Co-own Apply’s Agentic Customer Experience (ACx) narrative alongside our other thought leaders, contributing a sharp, credible point of view on where agentic AI is taking the discipline of experience design and product strategy. Surface emerging patterns, pressure-test new ideas, and ensure the Experience function’s perspective is shaping — not just responding to — Apply’s strategic direction. External Market Presence: Represent Apply’s ACx perspective at industry events, in published content, and in peer forums — building Apply’s reputation as a firm that doesn’t just follow the shift to agentic AI but helps define what great looks like within it. Client-Facing Content & Narrative Contribution: Partner with Marketing and Growth to translate the team’s best work and thinking into case studies, frameworks, and POVs that build Apply’s credibility in the ACx space. Bring a current, well-reasoned point of view into senior client conversations — on agentic AI, the future of experience design, and what separates durable digital experiences from short-term ones — elevating Apply’s positioning from delivery partner to trusted advisor. Business Development & Client Partnership Acting as the senior face of Experience: internally, with clients, and in new business. Executive Advisory: Serve as a trusted advisor to Apply's senior leadership — and a credible voice externally — on experience quality, product strategy, team capability, and where agentic AI is reshaping the competitive landscape. Senior Client Partnership: Co-own senior client relationships alongside Client Services, acting as a strategic partner who brings depth, credibility, and continuity to complex brand and product conversations. Business Development: Active partner to Growth teams on pitches, helping scope and price Experience and Product services, and identifying opportunities to develop new service offerings. Commercial Pricing & Scoping: Lead data-dependent commercial reviews of how services are scoped to identify where the team is underestimating effort. Workflow Optimization: Partner with Growth, Technology (including QA), and Project Management to improve cross-functional workflows, refine estimation standards, and build infrastructure to compare estimates against actuals. Sales Enablement: Build and maintain briefing guides and enablement materials that allow Growth teams to scope and close Experience and Product work with greater accuracy and confidence. Qualifications Experience & Leadership 12+ years in UX, product management, and experience design disciplines, with significant time spent in a senior leadership role at a digital consultancy, agency, or product-led organization. 5+ years leading and developing multi-disciplinary teams of 15+ people, spanning both creative and product functions. Demonstrated track record of practice transformation, building processes, standards, and cultures that measurably improve both output quality and team health. Track record of leading complex, large-scale brand, experience, and technology projects for enterprise and brand-name clients. Proven experience managing and developing senior leaders and strong principal contributors. Commercial & Strategic Acumen Proven ability to own senior client relationships, building trust, navigating complexity, and expanding engagements over time. Experience actively contributing to business development (pitching, scoping, and pricing experience/product services in a consulting context). Strong financial literacy: Comfortable with budget ownership, utilization modeling, margin analysis, and pricing strategy. Experience identifying under-monetized services or developing entirely new products and services. Technology & AI Fluency Demonstrated ability to lead teams through technology transitions with clarity, purpose, and genuine enthusiasm. Experience with Agentic AI tools and workflows, or a well-documented history of rapidly mastering and applying emerging technologies in a professional context. A credible, current point of view on how Agentic AI changes the practice of experience design, product strategy, and the economics of delivery. Communication & Ways of Working Exceptional communicator: Equally effective presenting to a C-suite executive, coaching a junior designer, or navigating a difficult cross-functional conversation. A leadership style that combines high standards with genuine investment in people's growth (demanding but developmental). Comfortable operating in ambiguity and under pressure; able to create structure where none exists. Deep familiarity with Agile and iterative delivery models, and experience partnering with PMO functions to optimize tracking. A demonstrated history of external thought leadership — speaking, writing, or publishing — with a perspective on agentic AI and the future of experience design that is credible, current, and distinctly their own. Nice to Have Familiarity with agentic delivery methodology, or experience in a similar consulting environment. I.e. Experience or familiarity with BMAD methodology or similar AI-augmented product discovery and requirements frameworks. Depth in one or more of: standard product management practices or design system practices. LIFE AT APPLY People are at the core of everything we do at APPLY. We provide you with modern tools, systems and approaches, value your time, safety, and health, and strive to build a work community where you can thrive and grow. Here are a few benefits we offer to support you: Agentic Delivery: Our people work in a modern way to deliver client outcomes. Broaden your skills on a range of engagements with international brands that have a global impact. An inclusive and safe environment: We’re truly committed to building a culture where you are celebrated and everyone feels welcome and safe. AI & Strategic Upskilling: Accelerate your professional growth with generous training budgets and mentorship, with a specific focus on Agentic AI expertise and the critical human skills required for the future of work. Generous vacation policy: Work-life balance is key to our team’s success, so we offer flexible personal time off (PTO); allowing ample time away from work to promote overall well-being. Customizable benefits: Tailor your extended health and dental plan to your needs, priorities, and preferences. Flexible work arrangements: We work in a variety of ways, from remote, to in-office, to a blend of both. APPLY is a safe, respectful, and inclusive community where differences are celebrated. We are committed to equal opportunity and fostering a workplace where everyone belongs. Learn more in our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) section. For recruitment accommodations, please email careers@applydigital.com. ABOUT APPLY APPLY is the Agentic Customer Experience (ACx) partner for the world's most ambitious consumer and entertainment brands. We bring together deep domain expertise across Retail, CPG, Sports, and Media with AI-native delivery capability, designing and delivering agentic solutions that turn CX vision into commercial reality. We are the partner of choice for brands like Arc'teryx, NFL, Lululemon, and Kraft Heinz. For more information, visit applydigital.com. LOCATION: APPLY is hybrid/remote friendly. The preferred candidate should be based in either the Greater Toronto Area or the Greater Vancouver Area of Canada, working in hours that align to ET (Eastern Timezone) or PT (Pacific Timezone). THE ROLE: