Overview
Senior Design Director: Digital Jobs in Johannesburg at Absa Bank Limited
Empowering Africa’s tomorrow, together…one story at a time.
With over 100 years of rich history and strongly positioned as a local bank with regional and international expertise, a career with our family offers the opportunity to be part of this exciting growth journey, to reset our future and shape our destiny as a proudly African group.
Job Summary
Senior Design Director is responsible for driving Absa’s customer and design strategy across a design function or a highly complex strategic area in the organization. She/he acts as a thought partner to senior business leaders in formulating a customer experience strategy and ensures customer thinking is embedded in all decision making. Senior Design Director oversees the multiple design projects in her/his business area and ensures they deliver coherent, world-class customer experience aligned to the business strategy and needs.
An ideal Senior Design Director is an expert in her/his field of design and able to provide consistently excellent and creative design solutions. She/he has a track record of driving development and implementation of business strategy through design decisions and providing insights and direction to the business at senior levels. Senior Design Director is an experienced people leader, who is able to oversee multiple large projects simultaneously. She/he is passionate about high-quality customer design and developing the skills and capabilities of the people in her/his organization.
Job Description
Education and experience required
Bachelors Degree (Honors or Masters level will be preferred) in a Design discipline such as product, industrial, service, interaction, or digital design (NQF Level 8-10) &/or equal work experience
12+ years’ experience directing complex, commercial, design projects at a leading agency or within internal design function at a major brand involving senior stakeholders and interdisciplinary creative teams.
A design practitioner background and foundation within one or more disciplines. Ideally with a portfolio of award‐winning work in the financial services &/or banking industries.
Strong track record of delivering complex, high quality design projects with varying design approaches, with strong customer impact and proven value-add to the business
Other commercial or operational business experience advantageous.
Leading, managing and providing coaching on within large complex matrix teams and projects
Senior and Executive stakeholder management
Thought leadership in the design domain
Portfolio of evidence of successful strategic design delivery, projects and outcomes
Financial services &/or banking industry experience/exposure will be a distinct advantage
Design Capability development
Build a Design Centre of Excellence; grow and develop functional design capability by creating new design standards and tools to ensure continuously improving and consistent design quality across the business
Create environment of innovation, quality and ownership within the Design Office
Support the Head of Design in creating and articulating a wider Design Office strategy to deliver a truly exceptional customer experience across Absa
Work with customer metrics and measurements to both monitor and manage the quality of design delivery and to create tangible customer insights needed for the decision making
Stay abreast of industry trends and role players and ensure that RBB is well positioned to provide competitive and industry leading Design
Thought leadership and innovation
Formulate the channel/BU customer experience strategy to enable delivery of the business strategy, conceptualize the impact of the strategy to design choices and focus, and specify the appropriate measures for monitor outcomes
Drive innovation across Absa’s product and solution design, challenging the existing thinking and limitations to deliver step-change in customer experience
Act as a thought leader to business and channel leadership, providing insights and advice based on deep expertise in design thinking, design solutions and global best practice
Deliver highest quality, creative and innovative design solutions to highly complex problems, Deliver projects which enable the business to deliver on its customer experience, brand promise and GoTo strategic agenda.
Project management
Manage a large portfolio of projects, creating innovation and ease of use that delights Absa customers and is also recognized externally as the market leading design
Identify synergies across different projects and project portfolios, uplifting the design quality or reducing the effort and time to market for the different solutions
Drive a great and consistent customer experience across a highly complex area within the bank, with large number of stakeholders and competing priorities, ensuring focus on highest impact areas and delivery of exceptional outcomes
Combine the understanding of the business strategic intent and customer insights into tangible project proposals and briefs, with large value-add to the business; support Design Directors and Senior Designers in translating these into project scopes and project plans
Oversee several simultaneous projects, providing guidance and direction across all, and understand where to dive deeper to ensure great delivery. Engage and inspire entire design project teams.
Allocate and monitor design resources to ensure that quality work will be completed on time and to budget; involving external design agencies to manage demand when appropriate.
People Leadership
Create a design ecosystem and physical environment in which designers will thrive, be motivated by and develop as professionals
Drive the talent pipeline to ensure the right balance of senior and junior talent across different functional skillsets
Promote professional development of the individual designers through one to one mentoring, training and providing the right opportunities for development
Take ownership of building a best practice knowledge base and processes; and creating programs that grow design know-how in wider Retail bank
Positively contribute towards the Design Community in South Africa
Competencies: (Maximum of 8 competencies)
Customer Focus
Digital strategy and innovative thinking
Driving/Leading change
Creative and Innovative Thinking
Results Orientation
Commercial Thinking
Systems Thinking
Business Acumen
Cognitive Modality
Application of digital technologies
Education
Bachelor`s Degrees and Advanced Diplomas: Business, Commerce and Management Studies (Required)
Absa Bank Limited is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. In compliance with the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998, preference will be given to suitable candidates from designated groups whose appointments will contribute towards achievement of equitable demographic representation of our workforce profile and add to the diversity of the Bank.
Absa Bank Limited reserves the right not to make an appointment to the post as advertised
Title: Senior Design Director: Digital
Company: Absa Bank Limited
Location: Johannesburg
