Technology User Experience Consultant (UX)

Challenge your thinking and build an amazing career with the best people in the financial services industry! Baird’s Financial Advisors provide advice, strategies, and solutions to high-net worth individuals and families across the United States, serving as true partners. True wealth management goes beyond managing investments. At Baird, we understand it begins with learning all we can about what our clients want for themselves and their families. We work closely with them to prioritize their goals, utilizing Baird’s resources and expertise to create a tailored plan to ensure success as they’ve defined it. Our 1,700+ private wealth associates serve clients coast-to-coast from over 160 + locations in over 33 states. We have been recognized on Barron’s Top Wealth Management Firms for 10 consecutive years and hold over $255 billion in client assets. Check out this video to learn more about our Private Wealth Management business.

Our Private Wealth Management (PWM) division is seeking a member for its PWM Technology Best Practices team.  The PWM Technology Best Practices team is an established group with a mission to help grow revenues, enhance the associate and client experience, and improve profitability through technology.  We pride ourselves on providing our Financial Advisors and clients with top-notch platforms that are critical in driving our business forward.

The Technology UX Consultant will be expected to play a leading role in the foundational analysis, design research, and strategy to develop a cohesive experience and decrease fragmentation of various PWM applications.  This role will have strong partnership with Technology Product Managers including WealthTech and Client Digital platforms.  Feedback and collaboration with Financial Advisors (FA), Client Specialists (CS), and various corporate resource groups will be critical to ensuring associate-friendly, efficient, and visually appealing platforms that align with PWM goals and regulatory requirements. Additionally, this role will have a supporting role in the strategy, day-to-day management, and education and training components lead by the overall Tech Product Team.  This role may grow to include additional responsibilities as PWM’s priorities change.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Encompass all aspects of WealthTech platforms that associates and clients experience directly and indirectly.
• Gather user feedback early and regularly alongside Product Managers in several forms including focus groups, surveys, interviews, card sorting, and other industry UX decision tools.
• Discover opportunities, risks, user goals, and objectives across entire WealthTech stack to build continuity and further unify the platforms through the associate experience
• Contribute to change campaigns, training deliverables, and help create collateral needed to support platform adoption and continued education ensuring efficient on-going use of PWM technology.
• May be asked to assume additional technology product ownership of related platforms as project portfolio needs dictate.

Technology Product Management

• Work with Tech Product Managers to align user needs/wants with supporting product and market research
• Lead design working sessions with delivery aligned teams to drive and facilitate the discovery process through high-level sketches, mock-ups, and design concepts leveraging industry tools such as Figma and Miro
• Support with defining project minimal viable product (MVP) and bringing solution ideas into focus
• Expand upon internal and external personas to illustrate experience using customer journey mapping
• High-level process mapping to ensure associate experience builds efficiency in their day-to-day workflow
• Break deliverables down to fit into Agile principles and timelines
• When applicable use a data driven approach to product design decisions

UI/UX Expertise

• Maintain a long-term, strategic focus by staying familiar with industry platforms and capabilities, assessing competitive positioning, understanding branch associate needs, and journey mapping.
• Organize style guides, branding images, content libraries, screen patterns, navigation principles, and other componentized UI elements
• UI design and wireframe creation, including first run experience, platform, and feature walkthrough screens
• Comfortable engaging in vendor relationships (including leveraging 3rd party design agency expertise).
• Participate in user experience committees and participate in roundtables to gather peer and industry insight.

Qualifications Needed:

• Bachelor’s degree preferred.
• 3-5 years of UX/UI experience required.
• Financial industry experience preferred.
• Superior customer service attributes; willingness to go “above and beyond” for the client.
• Advanced technical skill set with the ability to translate for the non-technical end-user.
• Must be able to take ownership of issues and see them through to completion.
• Must be able and desire to solve problems.
• Exceptional oral and written communication skills; ability to interact and influence all organization levels.
• Ability to develop, build, and maintain relationships with internal and external partners.
• Ability to identify issues and trends to anticipate change and provide recommended comprehensive solutions and remedies.

#LI-CM!

Commitment to Inclusion & Diversity

Baird is committed to inclusion & diversity for our clients, our associates and the communities where we live and work. This commitment stems from our culture of integrity, genuine concern for others and respect for the individual. We view inclusion & diversity as an ongoing journey – one of shared responsibility, continuous improvement and a focus on progress. We invite you to join us as we work together to foster an environment where diversity unites rather than divides us. Learn more here.