A photo portrait of Jason. Jason is a bald, brown-skinned 30-something male with a neat, shortly cropped black beard, sitting at a white table. He wears clear rimmed lawyerly glasses and a light blue two-toned collared short-sleeved dress shirt. The photo is taken straight on and Jason is looking directly into the camera, in front of a white backgound. His hands are folded and he's smiling.

Jason James – UX & Conversational AI Designer

j j j j a a a a s s s s o o o o n n n n j j j j a a a a m m m m e e e e s s s s . . . . d d d d e e e e s s s s i i i i g g g g n n n n

Jason James is a digital designer with deep fintech/banking experience and a background in the humanities and business.

I've been a part of building a university science center (construction), creating a fintech chatbot (conversational AI) and launching a digital bank (UX design). NN/g UX Master Certified.

Want my story to be a part of yours? Edit it. Really. You should try it.

Experience

AVP, Product Design Lead & User Experience (UX) Manager

Santander Bank, N.A.

– Present
Remote

–
Miami, FL (Hybrid)

  • Assumed design leadership responsibility in the US during a critical time, just before the initial launch of Openbank in October 2024, having lost our UX director only three months prior. Formally promoted in August 2025.
  • Represented the United States at face-to-face meetings and design sprints in Spain as new global design leadership sought input on new ways of working
  • Successfully petitioned for funding and managed vendor onboarding of NN/Group, IxDF and hfi to provide training opportunities for the team.

Outcomes:

  1. In a global design organization of 500+, with key countries having design organizations of up to 100+ people, our team of 4 has remained visible and relevant in global projects while supporting a US product organization of 50+ stakeholders and 4+ verticals
  2. Kept our team of two designers, two writers (and one adjacent researcher) together through losing our UX director, two reorganizations and four direct reporting changes.
  3. Successfully petititioned to convert a key contractor on the team to a full-time employee
  4. Interviewed, hired and managed three summer interns.

AVP, Lead User Experience and Conversation Designer

Santander Bank, N.A.

–
Miami, FL (Hybrid)

  • Lead UX Designer for Openbank, Santander's future-state national retail online banking platform.
  • Leading a team of three designers (including myself) to support 8 verticals and 30+ product managers and owners in the US localize a white-label platform created in the EU.
  • Leading conversation design in the US of Sandi, the Santander Bank Virtual Assistant

Outcomes: After launching in October 2024, the Openbank digital platform topped $6 billion in deposits and more than 100,000 customers by October 2025.

Sr. User Experience and Conversation Designer

Santander Bank, N.A.

–
Miami, FL (Hybrid)

–
Remote (Contract)

  • Conversation Designer for Santander's Virtual Assistant 'Sandi' in the US
  • UX Designer for the self-service value stream, individually supporting two development squads for mobile and web

Contract-to-hire role through Apex Systems.

Outcomes: Santander Bank, N.A. Mobile & Web Digital Banking's highly-rated experience: 4.7/5 based on 379k ratings on the App Store as of 3/26/2025

AVP, Customer Service Operations

Safrapay

–
Aventura, FL (Hybrid)

  • Creative technologist in a fintech startup: Chatbot Designer, Product Owner & Technical Curator (IBM Watson Assistant)
  • E-mail communications copywriting & coding (html & css)
  • Customer service workflow and procedure development

Product Designer & Manager

Cross.Team

–
Miami/Fort Lauderdale, FL

  • Product design for small, cross-functional design & dev team.
  • Redesigned presentation layer for a Fortune 500 financial institution's global trading platform. Delivered design system w/ tokenized, component-based design & dev architecture.
  • Designed transportation startup's shipping platform.
  • Visual accessibility audit of Safrapay's design system.

User Experience Designer

Thinkrite

–
Fort Lauderdale, FL

  • Rebuilt design system visual layer from Sketch to Adobe XD.
  • Created interactive prototypes, including data variables, with Justinmind.

Certifications

Master Certificate in User Experience

Nielsen Norman Group

UX Master Certification Badge from Nielsen Norman Group

UXMC# 1082409 with specialities in Interaction Design, UX Research and UX Management.

15 Courses passed
  1. Visual Design Fundamentals
  2. Emerging Patterns in Interface Design
  3. Service Blueprinting
  4. Discovery: Building the Right Thing
  5. UX Deliverables
  6. User Interviews
  7. Information Architecture
  8. Omnichannel Journeys and Customer Experience
  9. Usability Testing
  10. Measuring UX and ROI
  11. Analytics and User Experience
  12. Design Tradeoffs and UX Decision-Making
  13. UX Leader: Essential Skills for Any UX Practitioner
  14. Product and UX: Building Partnerships for Better Outcomes
  15. Mastering Influence

Education

UX & UI Design Bootcamp

Ironhack

–
Miami, FL

  • Overall Hackshow Judge Favorite

Master of Business Administration, Sustainability

Eastern Mennonite University

–
Remote & Costa Rica

I took business classes at night while working full-time as a construction manager. The Collaborative MBA is rooted in the “triple bottom line” of ‘people, planet & profit’.

Course list
  • Leadership
  • Data Analysis
  • Ethics
  • Organizational Behavior
  • Managerial Finance & Accounting
  • Sustainable Organizations
  • Marketing
  • Managerial Economics
  • Sustainable Business Models
  • Economics of Sustainability
  • Applied Business Sustainability

Bachelor of Arts, History

University of Virginia

–
Charlottesville, VA

  • Learned to read, write and reason. It turns out, a foundation in the humanities might be just what's needed in an age of Generative AI.
  • Completed 1 year towards a master's degree in education.

Volunteering

Co-Organizer

UX+Fajitas

–
Miami, FL

  • Facilitated community education and sharing of design tool best practices. Previously known as Sketch+Fajitas, the official Miami Sketch Meetup

Talks

Machines are Writing Now: Conversation Design in the Age of GPT-4

After providing a foundational context of conversation design, I discussed Large Language Models and explored the changing landscape through interactive walk-throughs of tools like Watson Assistant, ChatGPT, Midjourney and Voiceflow.