Head, Product & Experience Design Lab

Department: Digital Banking / Technology Location: Lagos, Nigeria Experience Required: [10+ years across product and design disciplines, including 4+ years in a leadership role spanning product and design]

About the Role

The Head, Product & Experience Design Lab is responsible for ensuring Polaris Bank's digital products are human-centered, intuitive, and differentiated in the market. This is a leadership role that sets product and design vision and builds and directs specialist teams across four disciplines — Product Management, UX Research, UI/UX Design, and CX Design — rather than personally executing hands-on work in all four.

Key Responsibilities

Product Vision & Leadership

• Define the product vision, strategy, and roadmap for digital banking products in partnership with business stakeholders
  
• Oversee prioritization frameworks and ensure roadmaps reflect both customer needs and business objectives
  
• Manage stakeholder expectations across business, technology, and executive leadership
  

UX Research Oversight

• Ensure customer research, journey mapping, and usability testing are embedded in the product development lifecycle
  
• Champion evidence-based design decisions; ensure research findings directly inform product and design direction
  

UI/UX Design Oversight

• Set and enforce design system and visual consistency standards across all digital products
  
• Oversee the design team's output to ensure interfaces are consistent, intuitive, and on-brand
  

CX Design Oversight

• Oversee end-to-end customer journey design across all touchpoints (digital and physical, where relevant)
  
• Ensure service design work identifies and closes gaps in the customer experience
  

Core Competencies

• Product strategy and roadmapping
  
• Design leadership — able to critique and direct research, UI/UX, and CX design work credibly, even without being the hands-on practitioner in each
  
• Stakeholder management and cross-functional influence
  
• Customer empathy translated into commercial product decisions
  

Familiarity With Tools (used by the function's teams, not a personal daily requirement)

JIRA, Confluence, Productboard, Aha!, Miro; UserTesting, Dovetail, Hotjar, SurveyMonkey; Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, Zeplin; Smaply / customer journey mapping platforms

Requirements

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a relevant field (Design, Business, Human-Computer Interaction, or related); relevant certifications an advantage
  
• Demonstrated track record leading product and/or design functions, ideally in banking, fintech, or a comparable digital-first environment