Scaling UX Capacity for a Global E-Commerce Leader
Supporting rapid digital growth with embedded UX talent, coaching and practice development.
Background: Partnering to Support Rapid Digital Growth
One global e-commerce and retail giant we’ve partnered with has always known this: great design drives customer loyalty. With 270,000+ employees worldwide and over $100B in revenue, the pressure to deliver seamless digital experiences never stops.
Their UX Director was juggling a lot: leading not just UX, but also CX, branding, and the need to scale quickly on top of this. Demand for new digital products was accelerating, and they needed a way to match this demand without overloading internal teams, or drowning in endless hiring cycles or vendor paperwork. They needed a partner who could ease the leadership burden, help evolve their design practice, and give their team the space to thrive.
Roles Staffed
- UX Designers
- Intermediate UX Designer
- Senior UX Researchers
- Senior UX/UI Lead
- UX Writer
Challenge: Scaling UX Talent Without Slowing Momentum
If you’re leading UX at scale, this will sound familiar:
Too many vendors, too much chaos. Contractors spread across multiple suppliers meant piles of onboarding paperwork and administrative headaches. They needed to consolidate with a single trusted partner.
No bandwidth for hiring cycles. Managing UX, CX, and brand teams left zero time to wrangle slow hiring processes and vendor management.
Delivery pressure mounting. Product teams needed UX support yesterday, but hiring freezes and budget constraints made it nearly impossible to keep pace. Contractors offered a way to scale fast while staying flexible.
Practice development falling through the cracks. Coaching, advisory work, and building design maturity mattered, but deadlines always won out.
This director didn’t need to just fill roles —they needed strategic support. And that’s not something they could ask from the average recruitment firm or talent vendor. So, they reached out to us at Outwitly.
Solution: Talent + Coaching for Lasting Impact
Outwitly placed 10 UX specialists in under a month — including UX designers and UX researchers — with a mix of remote and on-site resources. We also handled recruitment, vetting and onboarding, so the Director could focus on leading their teams instead of managing logistics. What made the difference was pairing staffing with strategic UX partnership:
Vendor consolidation: One partner, one process, no admin chaos. Outwitly became the single point of contact.
Bi-weekly coaching: Our coaches supported their 25+ person internal UX team, covering design research, personas and collaboration across research and design.
Custom training sessions: We took on the design and facilitation of a team workshop focused on integrating AI into UX processes.
Ongoing practice advisory: We did deep thinking alongside the director to help them grow their organization’s design maturity and troubleshoot challenges in real time.
This partnership is ongoing! Since our initial work, we’ve added UX writers and more designers to the team, and continue to collaborate on taking all of this to the next level.
Results: A Stronger, More Scalable UX Practice
The impact was immediate:
Resourcing speed: 10 roles filled in four weeks — much faster than internal hiring could ever deliver.
Seamless team integration: Designers and researchers embedded and quickly became critical contributors. One Product Owner said about a placed designer, “I honestly don’t know what we would do without them.”
Leadership relief: Vendor consolidation and faster hiring freed up the UX Director’s time to focus on strategy and team development instead of paperwork.
Elevated design maturity: Coaching helped researchers and designers bridge gaps, collaborate more effectively, and keep personas alive as actionable tools, instead of static documents.
Widespread praise: Feedback came from every corner — the UX Director, UX Research Manager, UX Design Manager, and Product Owners all emphasized that Outwitly talent wasn’t just skilled, but adaptable, personable and highly collaborative.
Ready to create impact with the right team behind you?
We’re ready when you are.