Day in the Life: Chief experience officer/founder | Digital Signage Today
Software
Day in the Life: Chief experience officer/founder
Digital Signage Today’s career series installment features Lee Dydo, chief experience officer and founder of Dydomite, LLC. Learn why he lean into the things that make one uncomfortable.
September 1, 2026 by Judy Mottl — Editor: RetailCustomerExperience.com & DigitalSignageToday.com, Connect Media
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of job roles in the digital signage industry and getting a sneak peek at what those roles are is the focus of Digital Signage Today’s new series: Day in the Life.
In each profile a digital signage industry professional will share insight on everything from specific job role responsibilities to what they like or don’t like about their job to advice to those looking to step into the role.
In this month’s series installment Lee Dydo, chief experience officer and founder of Dydomite LLC, shares insight on how he got into the industry, the best and worst part of his role and tips for colleagues looking to land a similar career position. His expertise in computer science combined with an understanding of user experience design propels development of solutions that redefine digital engagement.
Q. How did you get into the digital signage industry, and what was your first-ever job in the industry?
BrightSign had an open QA engineer position that they sent to my brother-in-law, who already had a job and forwarded it to me. I already had QA experience from working at Namco Bandai video games.
Q. What specific skills/certifications/degrees are required for your job?
No formal certs or degree required, mine’s actually in literature. But the job draws on a real mix: hands-on technical chops (I still configure players, CMS platforms, and write code myself when needed), the ability to sit with a client, hear “the sign looks like crap,” and turn that into a scoped, priced project, the business/ops side of running a company solo (pricing, contracts, no team to hand things off to), a creative/communication instinct I’d trace back to the literature degree more than anything technical, and deep, built-over-years knowledge of the digital signage/DOOH industry itself, the platforms, the vendors, where things are headed.
Q. What are your usual/typical workday hours, and are any job tasks done beyond workday hours?
The best thing about founding a company is that you only have to work half days, and as a bonus, you get to choose which 12 hours they are. More concretely: I wake up every day knowing there’s basically an infinite list of things I could do, but I can’t do everything. The hardest part isn’t finding work, it’s finding leverage, really asking myself what’s the one thing I could do right now that actually drives the business forward, and doing that instead of everything else clamoring for attention.
Q. What does your role involve/focus on?
My role is client discovery and technical architecture: figuring out the real problem behind what someone tells me they want, since that’s rarely the actual scope, then designing the solution. From there, I dynamically assemble the right team for the project, pulling together whoever’s right for a given project’s specific needs from people I trust. I still build hands-on myself when it calls for it, but the shape of the team flexes to the work, not the other way around.
Q. What are some of your daily duties/tasks?
On any given day: client discovery and scoping calls (right now, working through a custom compliance-driven signage project for a financial services client), writing and sending estimates/contracts, hands-on technical work when a project calls for it, coordinating with contractors on active builds, maintaining relationships across the partner network I’ve built over years, and outreach, both keeping existing client relationships warm and finding new ones. Increasingly I’m also doing marketing and content work, writing about the industry, doing press like this piece, because getting Dydomite’s name in front of the right people matters as much as the technical delivery.
Q. What are some unique aspects to your role?
The most unique thing is probably that I’m not an outside consultant guessing at how these platforms work, I worked directly inside BrightSign as a partner-facing software engineer from 2012 to 2020 before starting Dydomite, and after 14 years in this industry, I’ve built a deep bench of some of the best people in the space to call on for any given project. That history is still active, not a line on a resume: I still have deep relationships across technical, partner, marketing, and sales teams. So when I sit down with a client, I’m working from earned internal knowledge of how the whole system actually behaves, not hearsay or headlines.
Q. Describe a typical workday in terms of what you do in your role.
There’s no single typical day, but the shape is usually similar. Mornings start with triage, working through what came in overnight, figuring out what actually needs my attention today versus what can wait, because the biggest risk in a solo-led shop is spending the day on the loudest thing instead of the most important one. From there it’s usually a mix: a discovery or scoping call with a client, my client base spans the East Coast, West Coast, and Europe, so time zones are always something to juggle, hands-on build or configuration work when a project needs it, and check-ins with whichever contractors are active on a given build. Later in the day I’ll usually shift into the business side, drafting an estimate, working through pricing on a new deal, or writing, whether that’s client communication, positioning work, or content.
There’s no fixed schedule, just whatever the day actually calls for, and most days end whenever that list finally feels manageable, not at a set hour.
Q. What is the best part of your job?
Honestly, there are three things I love most about this job. First, the variety, one week it’s a parking lot system, the next it’s retail analytics, another it’s a franchise operator’s rollout. After 14 years in this industry, that range is what keeps it from ever feeling stale. Second, real autonomy, answering to my own judgment instead of someone else’s process, choosing what actually matters without asking permission. And third, the relationship payoff, that moment when a client who came in stressed about a problem they’d been sitting with for months actually relaxes because it’s finally solved. That’s the whole job, honestly.
Q. What are you most proud of in terms of your job success/best accomplishment?
Honestly, it’s less about one project and more about the ripple effect. I’m proud of being able to pull in some of the best people I know in this industry and put real work in front of them, because when a project lands, it’s not just me who benefits, it’s everyone I called in. If I had to sum up what success looks like to me, it’s other people having good work to do because of a call I made.
Q. What is not the best part of your job?
Chasing payment. I redesigned my whole model this year specifically to get away from it, clients now pay upfront, because collections was the one part of the job that had nothing to do with the actual work and everything to do with friction I didn’t want to carry anymore. It’s not for everybody, and honestly, that’s fine, it acts as a real filter. The clients who are comfortable with it tend to be the ones I end up having the best relationships with, because the expectations are clear from day one. The tradeoff is I can’t work with everyone, some businesses just aren’t set up to pay that way, but I’d rather have that filter than the alternative.
Q. What advice would you give to someone looking to work in your job role?
My advice to technical people especially: lean into the things that make you uncomfortable. There’s a real tendency to try to engineer your way out of every problem, build a tool, write more code, solve it alone. But relationships are what actually matter, and not just industry relationships, friends outside the industry too. You need people you can be genuinely vulnerable with instead of trying to carry everything yourself.
A client taught me a concept a few years ago called the “Teflon desk,” don’t let anything sit too long. If something’s uncomfortable, say pricing, which was genuinely hard for me for a long time, the instinct is to avoid it, and avoiding it just makes the problem bigger. So the real advice is: go try the uncomfortable thing. Don’t let it sit. Keep moving.
About Judy Mottl
Judy Mottl is the editor of RetailCustomerExperience.com and DigitalSignageToday.com at Connect Media. She is an award-winning editor, reporter and blogger who has worked for top media for nearly four decades, including AOL, InformationWeek and Internet News, as well as for leading technology providers including HP. She’s written everything from breaking news to in-depth industry trends and reported on technology long before the internet arrived, including the debut of the first smartphone. When she’s not sharing insights on digital signage deployments and trends in retail customer experience she’s on the beach or watching the latest live murder trial.
Related Media
Article
Day in the Life: Senior director of design solutions
Blog
The Enterprise Digital Signage Questions Buyers Should Be Asking
Blog
The digital signage questions buyers should be asking
Blog
At the Watercooler with Jesse Reiherzer, VP at Cree LED
Blog
The reliability of commercial displays must be demonstrated every single day after installation
Blog
What Makes a Digital Signage Rollout Successful? People, Content and Infrastructure
