User Experience Manager - Robotics

Job Description

The Role

Robotics User Experience Manager

The Robotics UX Manager is the senior functional leader for user experience across GM’s robotics portfolio. They lead the UX strategy, design, validation, and adoption for robotic systems, ensuring that human–robot interaction is safe, intuitive, and efficient for all end users (operators, technicians, engineers, and customers). This role sits at the intersection of UX, robotics engineering, and product management, guiding multiple UX teams and cross‑functional workstreams to define how people understand, control, and trust robotic systems.

The Robotics UX Manager is responsible for organization‑level UX vision, multi‑team leadership, and delivery of interaction patterns, guidelines, and standards across physical robots, control interfaces, and supporting tools, with measurable impact on safety, efficiency, and adoption across programs and sites.

What You'll Do

Strategy & Vision

• Define and own the enterprise‑level UX strategy for robotic products and platforms, shaping long‑term direction and investment across multiple programs, product lines, and sites, and aligning with GM business goals and product roadmaps.
• Develop a human-centered interaction model for robots, including mental models, task flows, safety messaging, and error/recovery patterns, that can be standardized and scaled across varied environments.
• Champion human factors, ergonomics, accessibility, and safety in all human–robot interaction decisions, ensuring UX is a key input into safety and operational standards.
• Partner with product, engineering, and operations leadership to prioritize a portfolio of UX investments and define and own success metrics and KPIs (e.g., usability, performance, adoption, satisfaction, safety outcomes, intervention rates) across multiple departments.

Leadership & Team Management

• Lead, mentor, and grow multidisciplinary UX teams (e.g., designers, human factors specialists, UX researchers) across sites and/or product lines, ensuring the optimal mix of talent and experience to deliver on strategic priorities.
• Establish and socialize design standards, patterns, and guidelines for robotic UX and HRI (Human–Robot Interaction), and drive their adoption across programs and partner organizations.
• Create and manage work plans, staffing, and priorities across a portfolio of programs and product lines, allocating resources to the highest‑impact opportunities.
• Own workforce planning for the Robotics UX function, including org design, headcount planning, succession, and talent development in partnership with HR and functional leadership.
• Partner with finance and product leadership to define and manage UX‑related budgets, making investment and trade‑off decisions that balance customer value, technical feasibility, and financial impact.
• Foster a culture of experimentation, rapid learning, and continuous improvement, role‑modeling GM behaviors and inclusive leadership.

Experience Design & HRI

• Oversee the design of interfaces and interactions for robotic systems, including:
  • Operator UIs (desktops, tablets, control panels).
  • On-robot affordances (indicators, buttons, displays, audio/visual cues).
  • Configuration, monitoring, and diagnostic tools.
• Guide the translation of complex robotic capabilities into clear, discoverable user workflows that reduce cognitive load and training time for diverse user groups.
• Ensure UX designs and human interfaces with automation support safety standards and operational procedures and reduce friction, especially in shared human–robot workspaces.
• Collaborate with industrial design and systems engineering to ensure simple and cohesive physical–digital experiences across products and sites.
• Drive cross‑team design alignment, ensuring that UX patterns and standards are leveraged across robotics, manufacturing, safety, training, and IT where appropriate.

Research, Testing & Validation

• Define and run user research programs with operators, technicians, engineers, and other stakeholders across multiple sites to understand needs, constraints, and mental models.
• Oversee usability studies, field pilots, and simulations (including VR/AR or digital twins, where applicable) to test interaction concepts before deployment at scale.
• Partner with safety, reliability, and operations teams to measure and improve human–robot collaboration outcomes (e.g., error rates, interventions, throughput, training time, incidents).
• Translate findings into prioritized UX improvements, clear product and process requirements, and recommendations that influence multi‑program roadmaps.
• Establish shared metrics and dashboards for UX and HRI outcomes and integrate them into broader functional and site‑level performance reviews.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work closely with robotics engineering, controls, perception, safety, manufacturing, and software teams to balance UX needs with technical and operational feasibility, and to co‑create large cross‑functional initiatives.
• Partner with product management to define user stories, acceptance criteria, and launch plans across a portfolio of robotic solutions and platforms.
• Collaborate with training, documentation, and support teams to ensure consistent, understandable user guidance across channels and sites, influencing training strategy and tools.
• Represent UX in design reviews, safety reviews, and program milestones, clearly articulating user impact, trade‑offs, and recommendations to senior leaders.
• Influence director‑level and above stakeholders across functions, leading change management efforts to adopt new UX standards, tools, and ways of working.

Your Skills & Abilities (Required Qualifications)

• Bachelor’s degree in Human–Computer Interaction, Human Factors, Cognitive Science, Industrial Design, Interaction Design, Computer Science, Robotics, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience).
• 10+ years of professional UX or product design experience, including 5+ years leading teams and/or managing managers in complex technical domains.
• Demonstrated experience owning UX strategy and delivery across multiple programs or product lines, with measurable business and operational impact (e.g., safety, efficiency, adoption, cost, quality).
• Demonstrated experience designing for complex technical systems (e.g., robotics, industrial automation, vehicles, aerospace, medical devices, or similar domains).
• Strong portfolio demonstrating end-to-end UX work and leadership, including problem framing, research, interaction design, prototyping, and measurable impact at team and organizational levels.
• Experience collaborating closely with engineers, product managers, and operations leaders in an agile or iterative development environment.
• Excellent communication and storytelling skills—able to convey complex technical and organizational concepts in simple, user-centered ways to both technical and executive audiences.
• Proven ability to build, scale, and develop UX organizations, including hiring, coaching, and succession planning.

What Will Give You a Competitive Edge

• Experience with robotics, autonomous systems, or human–robot interaction (HRI).
• Familiarity with safety-critical or highly regulated environments (e.g., industrial, medical, automotive).
• Hands-on experience with prototyping tools (e.g., Figma, Sketch, Axure, Framer) and, where relevant, simulation/VR/AR tools for robotics or virtual systems.
• Background in human factors, ergonomics, or cognitive psychology as applied to real-world operations.
• Experience working with physical products and hardware (e.g., embedded interfaces, control panels, wearables).
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross‑functional initiatives and influence senior stakeholders across multiple departments or sites.

Key Competencies

• Human-centered mindset with a deep empathy for operators, technicians, frontline users, and deployment/operations teams.
• Systems thinking, able to connect software, hardware, process, organization, and environment into a cohesive experience across programs and sites.
• Strategic leadership, setting long‑term direction for UX and HRI while remaining hands-on when needed to unblock high‑impact work.
• Data-informed decision-making, using both qualitative and quantitative evidence to prioritize a portfolio of UX initiatives and investments.
• Influence and storytelling, able to advocate for UX in technical and executive forums and drive alignment across stakeholders with differing incentives.
• Bias for action, comfortable with ambiguity and iterative, experimental approaches, while managing risk in safety‑critical contexts.
• Change leadership and inclusive people leadership, building strong, diverse teams and fostering a culture of learning, accountability, and collaboration.

This role is categorized as remote. This means the selected candidate may be based anywhere in the country of work and is not expected to report to a GM worksite unless directed by their manager. The selected candidate will be required to travel <25% for this role. This job may be eligible for relocation benefits.

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