Product Design Lead - Digital Consumer Experience

M&T Bank•Buffalo, NY

33d•Hybrid

About The Position

We're seeking a strategic, systems and scale-minded Lead UX Strategist to join our design team supporting the Digital Consumer Experience Product Suite - someone who is energized by a blank slate, as well as comfortable and experienced with the ambiguity of early-stage product development. This role will focus on shaping the future of our consumer digital products, leading the development of a strong product vision, evolving our design strategy and implementation processes to bring that vision to life, and supporting the early stages of the design lifecycle through experience definition and rapid concepting. You will be joining an established team that sits within a larger Digital Design Organization, that supports our enterprise's Digital function.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in UX Design, Human Computer Interaction, Industrial Design, or similar, and a minimum of 5 years relevant experience or in lieu of a degree, a combined minimum of 9 years of education and/or relevant/product design work experience.
Proven expertise in Product Design/Human-Centered Design
Experience creating use cases, flow diagrams, prototypes, scenarios and wireframes to communicate ideas and designs to diverse groups of stakeholders
Understanding of strengths and shortcomings of different design thinking methods, including when and how to apply them during product development processes
Hands-on experience of designing for a variety of digital touchpoints and non-digital channels and supporting the delivery of those designs
Experience supporting the full product development process, from vision to launch to iteration
Experience functioning as a project leader as well as an individual contributor
Ability to mentor and educate others on the value and principles of good experience design
Team player who is comfortable navigating ambiguity within a self-directed culture
Ability to establish strong working relationships with colleagues, clients, and key stakeholders
Extensive experience conducting remote and in-person workshops; strong familiarity with supporting tools such as Miro and Webex
Experience with design and prototyping tools such as Adobe, Sketch, InVision, Figma or other similar tools used widely in the design community
Proficiency in industry best practices for desktop, mobile and web applications
Experience with accessibility standards, cross-platform issues, mobile user interfaces and systems-thinking
Customer Centric - Outside in perspective with a focus on improving the customer experience
Curiosity - Seeks out ways to improve the customer experience
Resilient - Respectful of broad opinions and makes tough calls with ease
Driven & Prioritization - Self-motivated and knows how to say no
Challenges assumptions
Decisive & Lead Taking - Sense of urgency with an ability to inspire followers
Takes ownership with a strong sense of accountability
Interdependent - Communicates and convenes others; reaches across boundaries
Continuously seeks out ways to improve
Familiarity with design systems

Nice To Haves

Have experience shaping a Product through multiple evolutions and has managed multiple designers assisting in shaping and designing those iterations into development-ready features.
Have the capacity to improve the team and program muscle in UX Strategy, Wireframing, and Concepting, establishing standards and defining what good looks like, and upskilling the team.
Be comfortable in driving evolutions program operating models, ensuring program leadership is maturing when and where design and research participates in the Product Design and Development process.
Demonstrate deep knowledge and experience in utilizing and growing design systems that feed multiple programs and evolving team operations to fluidly influence and pull patterns into the system itself, as well as our work and products.
Have front-end, generative research experience, either defining and leading research directly, or participating in a supporting role in the definition and execution of research exercises.
Experience in financial services industry a plus

Responsibilities

Collaborate with Business Product Ownership & Management stakeholders to evolve our Digital Products so they help achieve their Businesses Objectives and Key Results.
Shepard Product Experience Visions and Roadmaps, that clearly communicate the intended evolution of our products, and the value they'll provide our customers and users over time.
Confidently strategize and plan product-level discovery and concept design exercises that influence the shape features take, streamlining the detailed feature design and development process.
Exercise a strong player-coach mindset, focusing both on creating clarity for other designers on the team, shaping and delegating work that accelerates your core efforts, or carries that work forward.
Drive effective research integration into our design workflows, collaborating with research team members, and your peer design leads, to ensure our design decisions are research-driven.
Partner with other design leads on the team, as well as our design producer, to elevate our design and experience craft; emphasizing high quality and consistent outputs that effectively meet our business and experience objectives.
Consistently demonstrate thought-leadership to envision and design a desired end-state that meets business goals and end user needs/expectations, as informed by research.
Lead fast-paced ideation, concepting, and prototyping sessions to explore and validate experience directions early in the product lifecycle.
Define and evolve the structure of our products, anticipating future areas of change and growth, and setting information architecture strategies addressing aspects such as density, and purpose.
Mentor Product Designers alongside your peers and build knowledge of design thinking among product teams and senior leadership.
Strategize and plan early-stage prototype and test methodologies to drive the team and partners to product design decisions.