Design Director Jobs in Tennessee
Design Director jobs in Tennessee are in steady demand, with strong hiring concentrated in brand, product, and experiential design across the retail, healthcare, and entertainment sectors, at levels from senior designer through executive creative leadership. Nashville, Memphis, and Chattanooga anchor most of the activity, where established employers like Bridgestone Americas, HCA Healthcare, and Dollar General maintain significant in-house creative teams. Packaging, digital product design, and retail brand identity are the specialties appearing most consistently in Tennessee listings. Find a role that fits below and apply directly.
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HireRight is the premier global background screening and workforce solutions provider. We bring clarity and confidence to vetting and hiring decisions through integrated, tailored solutions, driving a higher standard of accuracy in everything we do. Combining in-house talent, personalized services, and proprietary technology, we ensure the best candidate experience possible. PBSA accredited and based in Nashville, TN, we offer expertise from our regional centers across 200 countries and territories in The Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Our commitment to get it right every time, everywhere, makes us the trusted partner of businesses and organizations worldwide.
Overview:HireRight is redefining its design function, and we’re looking for a Director, UX & Product Design to join us on this journey. We are looking for a player-coach that’s senior enough to raise the bar and hands-on enough to demonstrate the value firsthand.
The core of this job is evangelizing design thinking globally, starting with the Product and Engineering org and expanding to other departments as influence grows. This includes building the reusable systems that let anyone at HireRight produce good experiences: component libraries, research practices, content and copy standards, AI-assisted design workflows, and the decision frameworks that turn process into impact. This means orchestrating the creation of artifacts for designers, product managers, engineers, and even cross-functional partners that contribute to the customer or candidate experience.
If you have ever been the person who fixed the system instead of the ticket, this is that job.
Responsibilities:What Makes This Role Different
- Greenfield with air cover. You are not inheriting a mature system to maintain. You are defining what design means here and evangelizing the value it brings beyond visuals with Product and Engineering leaders who have already made the case for the investment.
- Systems over throughput. Roughly two-thirds of your time is building repeatable capability; roughly one-third is high-leverage delivery work you take on yourself.
- AI as a force multiplier. We expect you to use AI responsibly to scale design thinking across the company: reusable prompts and skills for copywriting, research synthesis, accessibility review, and pattern generation.
- Scope beyond the customer-facing surface. Candidate experience, employer and recruiter workflows, internal operations tooling, and partner-facing integrations are all in scope.
What You'll Own
Everything below is an opportunity, not a day-one checklist. We do not expect all of it at once. A meaningful part of this role is deciding what matters most, in what order, and bringing others along.
Design Systems & Scalable Capability
- Build and govern HireRight’s design system with Branding (components, patterns, tokens, content standards, etc.) including the intake, review, rollout, and deprecation processes that keep it useful, not burdensome.
- Align with Engineering’s front-end platform.
- Create AI-assisted workflows and templates (copy, accessibility checks, research synthesis, pattern generation) that non-designers can use safely, and drive adoption by making them genuinely useful rather than mandatory.
Design Tooling & Vendor Management
- Own the toolchain: audit what we license today and go-forward across design, prototyping, research, analytics, and accessibility, and assess what is actually used, duplicated, or wasted.
- Run selection and renewal with Procurement, InfoSec, and Finance, and propose a forward-looking roadmap where AI-native tools earn a place, what we pilot before we buy, and what we retire.
Craft, Quality, & Coaching
- Set and hold a high bar across interaction, visual, content, and accessibility.
- Coach designers, PMs, and engineers on craft and responsible design; give specific, actionable critique and teach others to give it.
- Install lightweight quality controls that hold without policing: critique rhythms, definition of done, accessibility checklists, and release validation.
Research, Continuous Discovery, & Measurement
- Establish research standards, templates, and learning loops with Product and Data so discovery is repeatable rather than heroic. Ensure learnings get shared and applied rather than forgotten.
- Raise the floor on problem framing: journey maps, principles, and artifacts that keep teams solving the right problem at the right scope.
- Define UX health in a few measures the team, stakeholders, and customers understand and instrument for them during design rather than after launch.
- Make user testing and evaluation routine: a standing participant pipeline, lightweight testing templates, post-launch review, and a scorecard others can run without you.
Experience Strategy & Influence
- Define a shared experience vision across the candidate and employer journeys and the mechanisms (reviews, principles, guardrails) that keep teams from fragmenting it.
- Build regulated-experience guardrails with Legal, Compliance, and Risk: disclosure patterns, consent and authorization flows, adverse action communication, and easy-to-understand copy.
- Communicate design decisions in ways that move Executives, Sales, and Engineering, and create the repeatable formats that let others do the same.
What We're Looking For
- Senior leadership experience. Substantial experience as a senior design leader, including work that scaled beyond the products you personally designed.
- Systems thinking. You can point to patterns, components, or practices you created that other people adopted and are still using today. You naturally orient towards themes and systems over bespoke solutions.
- Given a wide field of opportunity, you comfortably sift through ambiguity and noise to decide what matters most now, what waits and why, and you can make that case to the people it affects.
- Player-coach range. You are comfortable with your directs and peers and comfortable in front of a leadership team, and you know which one the moment calls for.
- Strong current Figma skills. We use Figma today; we want your influence on what we use tomorrow, so we are looking for someone fluent in the tool but not married to it.
- AI fluency. Practical experience with AI tools in a design workflow plus judgment about where they help and where they quietly degrade quality.
- Accessibility depth. Real WCAG 2.1 AA fluency and beyond, applied to shipped products rather than audited after the fact.
- Influence without authority. Across Product, Engineering, Compliance, Sales, and Operations, translating design decisions into the language each of those functions use.
- Bias towards action. You know when to plan and when to just do. You get things done.
Nice to Have
- You have built and implemented a design system or component library from zero inside an organization or team that did not have one.
- You have created AI design templates, prompt libraries, and Claude skills that others use in production work and can speak to the business and customer impact.
- Experience adapting systems across varied platforms and stacks: you have opinions, but they travel.
- Background in regulated, high-trust, or compliance-heavy domains (HR tech, background screening, financial services, healthcare) where clarity and comprehension carry legal weight.
- Experience designing for multiple audiences with different incentives (in our case, candidates, the employers screening them, and internal team members driving the work).
- Enterprise B2B experience, including complex workflows and configuration-heavy products.
Who This Role Is Not For
- You want a large reporting line.
- You don’t enjoy doing some IC work.
- Your best work happens only when requirements are settled.
- You wait to be told what to work on and have others chase you for progress.
- You’re strong on theory but have not actually put lasting systems into practice.
What do we offer:
- Medical
- Dental
- Vision
- Paid Life/AD&D Insurance
- Voluntary Life Insurance
- Short & Long Term Disability
- Flexible Spending Accounts
- 401K
- Generous Vacation and Sick Program
- 10 Paid Holidays
- Education Assistance Program
- Business Casual Attire
- Generous Referral Program
- Employee Discounts and Rewards
- And much more!
- All resumes are held in confidence. Only candidates whose profiles closely match requirements will be contacted during this search.
HireRight does not accept unsolicited resumes through or from search firms or staffing agencies. All unsolicited resumes will be considered the property of HireRight and HireRight will not be obligated to pay a placement fee.
HireRight, LLC is an Equal Opportunity Employer
See All 5 Design Director Jobs in Tennessee
Find roles in Tennessee that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Design Director JobsDesign Director Jobs by City in Tennessee
Where Tennessee roles are concentrated, by current openings.
Design Director Job Market in Tennessee
A snapshot from current Tennessee openings, updated as new roles post.
Who's Hiring



Top Industries Hiring
- Healthcare & Medical Services
- Education
What Tennessee Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in design director jobs across Tennessee.
- Bachelor's degree in graphic design, industrial design, or a related creative field
- Seven or more years of progressive design experience including team leadership
- Demonstrated portfolio showing brand identity, product, or experiential design work
- Proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite, Figma, and current UX or visual design tools
- Experience managing and mentoring designers across cross-functional project teams
- Strong collaboration skills working with marketing, product, and executive stakeholders
Design Director Jobs in Tennessee: Frequently Asked Questions
How do you become a design director in Tennessee?
The path to a design director role in Tennessee typically starts with a bachelor's degree in graphic design, industrial design, or a closely related field from a program like those at Middle Tennessee State University or the Watkins College of Art. No state-issued license is required for the role. Employers in Tennessee expect a strong portfolio, progressive leadership experience, and demonstrated success guiding creative teams, which candidates usually build through senior designer or art director positions before stepping into director-level work.
Which companies hire design directors in Tennessee?
Employers hiring design directors in Tennessee right now include HireRight, University of Tennessee, and CKE Restaurants Holdings, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of October 2026. Tennessee's concentration of retail headquarters, healthcare systems, and entertainment brands in Nashville and Memphis creates consistent demand for design leadership roles beyond agencies and into large in-house creative teams.
Which Tennessee cities have the most design director jobs?
Memphis, Franklin, and Nashville have the most design director openings in Tennessee. Nashville drives the largest share of activity, anchored by its dense cluster of healthcare, entertainment, and consumer brand headquarters, while Memphis adds volume through logistics and retail corporate offices, and Chattanooga contributes through its growing manufacturing and regional corporate presence.
Are there remote design director jobs in Tennessee?
Yes, and more than many senior roles, since design directors frequently work on digital deliverables and can collaborate remotely with distributed creative teams. About 25% of design director openings tied to Tennessee are remote or hybrid as of October 2026, reflecting strong employer openness across brand and digital product disciplines. Brand strategy, UX leadership, and digital campaign oversight are the sub-areas where fully remote arrangements appear most often.
How can I get hired as a design director in Tennessee with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path is building toward director-level work through an art director or senior designer role, which large Tennessee employers like HCA Healthcare and Bridgestone Americas hire for regularly as stepping stones. Candidates without extensive leadership experience should target associate creative director or design lead positions, build a portfolio that demonstrates team coordination and brand strategy, and consider graduate programs at Tennessee institutions that include practicum or industry-partnership components to accelerate the transition into management.
Where can I find and apply to design director jobs in Tennessee?
You can find and apply to design director jobs in Tennessee on Migrate Mate, which lists current Tennessee openings across industries and experience levels. Find the roles that fit your background and apply directly from the listings on this page.
See All 5 Design Director Jobs in Tennessee
Find roles in Tennessee that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
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