Senior Principal: Product Design at Cellulant

JOB DESCRIPTION:

• The Senior Principal: Product Design role sits at the intersection of Product Strategy, Product Development, and Marketing.
• This role is critical in ensuring that we design and build intuitive products - delivering a seamless experience for our business clients and their end customers.
• Reporting to the Vice President (VP) of Product, this role is critical in shaping a clear vision for our user experience, spearheading execution with forward thinking, and applying the best and most appropriate design method/methodology, always balancing speed and quality.

CORE RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Develop and maintain a Design System that drives consistency & efficiency.
• Champion and cultivate a culture of user-oriented approach in the business through every touchpoint across all customer journeys.
• Simplify complexity by breaking down tough problems and aligning senior Product leaders on customer-centered solutions.
• Responsible for all phases of product design work: distilling research, ideation, reviews, prototyping, final spec design, and implementation.
• Contribute to strategic roadmaps with cross-functional partners, and manage multiple complex schedules and stakeholders.
• Create positive behavior design thinking, ideas, and solutions to help customers develop healthy financial habits.
• Lead, and foster collaborative relationships with Engineering, Product, and Brand Creative to deliver a unified mission and message for our customers.
• Develop repeatable, scalable mechanisms and approaches to doing our best work.
• Have the backbone to make tough calls, prioritize work, and stand for quality when products are not ready to ship.

YOUR TYPICAL DAY WILL LOOK LIKE:

User and UX Research

• Understanding requirements, our users, competition research, qualitative and quantitative data analysis
• Usability testing to help validate and refine final designs.
• Conduct design validation sessions with users and stakeholders to reveal deep insights about the user, business needs and technical constraints for the determination on how user experience and design(s) should evolve.
• Working with designers and researchers to continually refine and evolve the User Experience process.
• Conduct independent research on multiple aspects of products and experiences.
• Making strategic and tactical design recommendations based on usability findings, standard design practices, and internal and external feedback.
• Collect and analyze user behavior to inform user actions.
• Work on tools to identify points of failure / where customers drop off and put in place interventions to reduce friction.

Working with the Product Owners on UX Design

• Creating sketches, wireframes, mockups, and interactive prototypes.
• Design Handover, including design guide system, visual designs, icons, illustrations, and other assets and resources.
• Translating business requirements and user needs into tangible interaction designs through detailed user flows and wireframes.
• Use of storyboards/customer journey maps/narrative/wireframes/prototypes of varying fidelity to express how a product or service should behave to deliver capabilities in a way that supports user needs, goals, and workflows.
• Ensure to prioritize User-Centered Design projects, improvements, and content as per business.

Working with Designers to improve overall design out across multiple platforms and channels

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE:

• Bachelor's degree in a related field.
• Experience in creating strategy and designing digital products; most recently focused on Activation, Growth & Onboarding work.
• Minimum 7+ years of experience in UX Design and with a proven record of experience with various design methodologies
• Experience in leading teams and managing people.
• Experience working with designers, product management, and engineering.
• Experience in user tracking interaction technology - for example: Mixpanel / Google Analytics / Appsee / Localytics / Clevertap, etc.
• Proven track record of delivering successful products.
• Ability to work both independently & collaboratively with other product stakeholders
• Ability to flex between rapid prototyping and pixel-perfect outcomes.
• Good (design/strategy) workshop moderator - with the ability to moderate physical and online/remote sessions

SKILLS AND ATTRIBUTES PREFERRED:

• Bachelor's degree in a related field.
• UX design leader that drives strategic product innovation and relentlessly raises the design bar.
• Experienced with various design methodologies (HCD, UCD, Design Thinking).
• Can organise and run/moderate design workshops.
• An expert communicator at every level with the ability to flex between influencing executives and inspiring team members.
• An emotionally intelligent (EQ) leader that hires and develops the best, growing, and inspiring designers to push the boundaries of what's possible.
• Great collaborator and team player - you understand design is a team sport, and when we win, we win together.
• Relationship builder that actively develops cross-organisation partnerships, fosters trust and aligns stakeholders.
• Ability to balance data with customer insights to inform design decisions.
• Have some understanding of what it takes to build products for African customers.
• A growth mindset and entrepreneurial spirit that will deliver on our goal to build and operate Africa's payments platform of choice.