CX Activation Lead

Job Description:

CX Activation Lead

On-site | Plano, TX

About Upbound Group

Upbound Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: UPBD) is a technology and data-driven leader in accessible and inclusive financial solutions that address the evolving needs and aspirations of underserved customers. Our operating units, Acima, Brigit, and Rent-A-Center, serve customers across digital and store-based experiences.

Job Overview

The CX Activation Lead will help shape the future of the Rent-A-Center store experience and advance Upbound's ambition to make customer-centricity a driver of growth.

Our Customer Experience organization exists to elevate customer needs into business priorities and help the organization make better decisions because of what we understand about customers. This role turns that mission into action.

Focused on the Rent-A-Center store experience, the CX Activation Lead will help shape how experiences are delivered in stores, how store technology enables them, and how coworkers show up to serve customers. This person will diagnose journey friction, translate customer needs into business opportunities, derisk decisions, and help rearchitect the business to better meet customer needs.

Working in partnership with CX Insights, the Activation Lead will build a deep understanding of the customer and support strategic research that helps leaders make informed decisions about the role of the store and how it should meet evolving customer expectations. They will also partner closely with the CX Activation Lead responsible for the Rent-A-Center digital experience to create a connected customer journey across digital and store experiences.

This role is for someone who is passionate about customers, commercially minded, energized by complex problems, and biased toward action. You should be as comfortable shaping strategy with senior leaders as you are bringing cross-functional teams together to test ideas and turn them into action.

What You'll Do

Shape the Rent-A-Center Store Experience

• Own the business perspective of the end-to-end store journey and help define how it should evolve for customers and coworkers.

• Lead cross-functional projects to define how store experiences, technology, processes, policies, and coworker interactions come together to serve customers, diagnose where friction exists, and create clarity on what needs to change to deliver a better experience.

• Partner with the CX Activation Lead responsible for the Rent-A-Center digital experience to create one connected customer journey across digital and store experiences.

Turn Customer Understanding Into Business Strategy

• Partner with CX Insights to synthesize customer needs, expectations, behaviors, journey friction, and business context into evidence-based opportunities and narratives that help leaders determine where the business should focus or evolve.

• Support strategic research that helps leadership make informed decisions about the role of the store and how it should meet evolving customer expectations.

Derisk Decisions & Turn Strategy Into Action

• Bring Product, Marketing, Operations, Data, Engineering, and Design together to make customer-centered decisions, align priorities, and translate redesigned experiences into action.

• Influence roadmaps and priorities without relying on formal authority.

• Identify and test critical assumptions through rapid prototyping, concept validation, experimentation, and other test-and-learn approaches.

• Translate learning into clear recommendations on whether to advance, adjust, further test, or reconsider an opportunity.

Build the Business Case & Measure Impact

• Structure ambiguous opportunities by clarifying the customer problem, what needs to be learned or decided, and the strategic, operational, and financial implications for the business.

• Quantify the potential customer and business value of key opportunities.

• Build business cases and ROI models that help leaders evaluate and prioritize investments.

• Define measurable customer and business outcomes and partner with Data and other teams to understand whether changes are delivering the intended impact.

Drive Adoption & Lasting Change

• Help teams move from designing a better experience to operating differently to deliver it.

• Identify and address barriers to adoption as new experiences, technologies, and ways of working are introduced.

• Help coworkers understand their role in delivering the intended customer experience.

• Reinforce and scale customer-centered practices so customer needs increasingly influence how teams make decisions and operate.

You'll Thrive in This Role If You Are

• A passionate customer champion. You believe understanding customers should change how a business makes decisions, prioritizes investments, and operates.

• An exceptional translator. You can take a customer need or pain point and answer, "What does this mean for the business?"

• A systems thinker. You look beyond individual touchpoints to understand how technology, processes, policies, and ways of working shape the customer experience.

• A builder, not just an advisor. You want to make ideas tangible, test them, mobilize others, and turn recommendations into action.

• Comfortable with ambiguity. You can bring structure to complex problems without waiting for perfect information before moving forward.

• An influential leader. You build trust, navigate competing priorities, and create momentum without relying on formal authority.

• Commercially minded. You understand how customer opportunities connect to growth, operational performance, and financial value.

• A catalyst for change. You want customer-centric thinking to become part of how the organization works, not something owned by CX alone.

Skills & Qualifications

• 5–8 years of experience in customer experience strategy, business transformation, service design, product strategy, innovation, digital strategy, management consulting, or a related discipline.

• Demonstrated experience leading cross-functional projects that turn complex customer or business problems into strategies, experiments, roadmaps, or operational changes.

• Strong business acumen and the ability to connect customer needs to business opportunities and outcomes.

• Experience influencing cross-functional teams and senior stakeholders without direct authority.

• Strong problem-framing, facilitation, and structured-thinking skills.

• Experience with rapid prototyping, concept validation, experimentation, or test-and-learn approaches.

• Ability to synthesize qualitative customer understanding with quantitative, operational, and business data.

• Experience developing business cases, investment recommendations, ROI assessments, or measurable success criteria.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to simplify complex ideas for senior leaders.

• Experience supporting adoption of new experiences, technologies, processes, or ways of working.

• Experience in retail, fintech, financial services, digital products, or another complex customer-facing business is preferred.

• Must be available to work on-site at Upbound's Plano, TX headquarters.

Employment Eligibility

To be eligible for this opportunity, you must be authorized to work in the U.S. Upbound Group does not offer employment-based immigration sponsorship for this role, including OPT or CPT.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Upbound Group is an equal opportunity employer committed to ensuring all employment decisions are made on a non-discriminatory basis in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws.

Upbound Group is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.