Strategic Design Leader

We're on the hunt for a Strategic Design Leader who can navigate the overlap between business strategy, customer experience, research, innovation, AI-enabled delivery, and digital transformation. This role takes vague business problems and shapes them into well-defined opportunities, coordinated decisions, and executive-level deliverables. This is not your typical UX, Product Design, or people-management job. It's a hands-on leadership position for someone capable of shaping pursuits, managing complex engagements, developing compelling narratives, directing prototype strategy, and uniting multidisciplinary teams across numerous accounts

Responsibilities

• Spearhead discovery and problem framing for complex transformation, modernization, and innovation projects, structuring unclear business challenges
• Tie together customer needs, business objectives, operational constraints, and technological feasibility into one cohesive strategic view
• Turn uncertainty into structured hypotheses, decisions, plans, and measurable outcomes that push initiatives ahead
• Facilitate high-level stakeholder discussions and work through conflicting viewpoints to reach agreement
• Establish experience visions, design principles, customer journeys, service ecosystems, and future-state ideas that inform transformation efforts
• Pinpoint tensions, opportunity areas, and intervention points across channels, roles, and operational systems
• Translate strategic vision into actionable experience frameworks, roadmaps, and prototype guidance
• Make certain recommendations are commercially sound and genuinely executable, not just theoretically attractive
• Team up with account and delivery leadership to build strategic opportunities and client-facing propositions
• Craft proposal narratives, methodologies, workstreams, staffing plans, estimates, and governance frameworks supporting pursuits
• Generate differentiated viewpoints, demonstrations, and prototype narratives that strengthen client decision-making
• Play an active role in pitches, workshops, executive reviews, and resulting follow-up discussions
• Bring together user research, market intelligence, competitive benchmarks, stakeholder interviews, and operational data into unified insight
• Distinguish between confirmed evidence and assumption while identifying critical gaps needing resolution
• Turn evidence into implications, recommendations, and decision-ready narratives rather than straightforward reporting
• Build strategic decks, points of view, one-pagers, proposals, workshop materials, transformation narratives, and decision tools
• Organize complex information in a way that's clear, credible, and actionable for executive stakeholders
• Maintain rigorous standards for information hierarchy, visual storytelling, and editorial precision in all deliverables
• Utilize AI tools such as Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, Figma AI, Miro AI, and research agents to accelerate research, synthesis, content creation, and prototyping
• Establish repeatable AI-assisted workflows while applying sound judgment, verification, and quality oversight
• Support teams in leveraging AI as a delivery accelerator without compromising strategic depth or producing generic work
• Provide direct strategic guidance to researchers, service designers, UX and product designers, content strategists, and solution teams
• Translate executive vision into clear briefs, operational structures, and quality standards guiding team execution
• Lead effectively through influence, including in settings without formal reporting authority

Requirements

• More than ten years of professional background in experience strategy, service design, innovation, consulting, product strategy, or digital transformation
• Demonstrated history of owning complex client engagements fully, from initial framing through recommendations and concept development
• Direct experience collaborating with senior client stakeholders and account leadership to influence results
• A strong body of work showcasing executive narratives, strategic deliverables, and transformation projects
• Advanced facilitation capability, achieving productive alignment across stakeholders with differing views
• Powerful synthesis skills, converting complex and varied input into clear, decision-ready understanding
• Exceptional written communication ability, producing polished materials appropriate for executive review
• Strong presentation skill, conveying intricate strategic concepts with clarity and conviction
• Demonstrated ability to manage several high-priority workstreams simultaneously while preserving narrative coherence and quality
• Professional fluency in English and Spanish, strongly preferred given the LATAM focus of this role

Nice to have

• A relevant Product Management certification would serve as a valuable addition to your qualifications

Benefits

• International projects with top brands
• Work with global teams of highly skilled, diverse peers
• Healthcare benefits
• Employee financial programs
• Paid time off and sick leave
• Upskilling, reskilling and certification courses
• Unlimited access to the LinkedIn Learning library and 22,000+ courses
• Global career opportunities
• Volunteer and community involvement opportunities
• EPAM Employee Groups
• Award-winning culture recognized by Glassdoor, Newsweek and LinkedIn