Lead, Design

Bain & Company; Dubai; On-site; AED 60,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading consulting firm in Dubai is seeking a Design Expert within their AI Insights & Solutions team. You will lead strategic design processes to translate customer insights into growth opportunities, conduct qualitative research, and facilitate ideation workshops. The ideal candidate has 5-7 years of experience in digital design, a strong understanding of Design Thinking, and fluency in Arabic and English. This role requires collaboration across multidisciplinary teams and entails up to 40% travel across the region.

Qualifications

• 5-7 years of experience in digital product/service design or relevant roles.
• Thorough understanding of Design Thinking and Agile methods.
• Fluency in Arabic and English.

Responsibilities

• Lead strategic design processes for client projects.
• Conduct qualitative research and synthesize insights.
• Develop innovative business concepts and services.

Skills

Design Thinking

Agile methods

UX/UI

Strategic design research

Collaboration tools

Tools

Figma

Miro

Webflow

Adobe CS

Job description

WHAT MAKES US A GREAT PLACE TO WORK

We are proud to be consistently recognized as one of the worlds best places to work. We are currently the #1 ranked consulting firm on Glassdoors Best Places to Work list and have maintained a spot in the top four on Glassdoors list since its founding in 2009. Extraordinary teams are at the heart of our business strategy but these don’t happen by chance. They require intentional focus on bringing together a broad set of backgrounds, cultures, experiences, perspectives and skills in a supportive and inclusive work environment. We hire people with exceptional talent and create an environment in which every individual can thrive professionally and personally.

WHO YOU'LL WORK WITH

You’ll join our Design experts within the AI Insights & Solutions team. This team is part of Bains digital capabilities practice which includes experts in analytics engineering, product management and this multidisciplinary environment you’ll leverage deep technical expertise with business acumen to help clients tackle their most transformative challenges. You’ll work on integrated teams alongside our general consultants and clients to develop data‑driven strategies and innovative solutions. Together we create human‑centric solutions that harness the power of data and artificial intelligence to drive competitive advantage for our clients. Our collaborative and supportive work environment fosters creativity and continuous learning enabling us to consistently deliver exceptional results.

WHERE YOU'LL FIT WITHIN THE TEAM

Common stages of work include:

• Discovery: Help clients understand the business user and technology landscape. Identify priorities and assess risks to generate a transformative path forward.
• Ideation: Use design principles to guide ideation, continue to refine priorities and focus on the highest potential opportunities.
• Design and Validate: Create concept experiences and value propositions for products/services based on deep user ethnography to bring an idea to life while also testing customer desirability, commercial viability and tech feasibility.
• Create and Launch: Build experiences, products, services and launch full‑scale new businesses/business models.
• Scale: Drive commercial growth of the corporate startup product or service.

We work with our clients to fully understand the impact of digital on their business and set priorities that will transform their vision into value creation and help them create new innovative businesses. Designers are experts in discovering and defining the right opportunities for users and businesses. They apply Design Thinking processes to reframe business and organizational problems around the collective needs of users. Designers bring deep expertise in design research and concepts translating insights into innovation and business growth opportunities.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Lead the full strategic design process hands‑on to transform customer insights into impactful opportunities for growth.
• Lead qualitative research and synthesize learnings from both qualitative and quantitative sources into actionable insights and tangible artifacts (e.g. personas, customer journey maps, opportunity maps).
• Facilitate ideation workshops and creative sessions.
• Envision and conceptualize new business ideas and services with game‑changing potential and bring them to life through creative storytelling.
• Iteratively design and refine solutions through low‑to‑high‑fidelity prototyping.
• Design and run experiments and pilots to validate/evaluate new products, services or businesses.
• Work closely with project management to support cross‑functional process management and project delivery and ensure that AIS delivers successfully.
• Help ensure that AIS is successful at delivering high‑impact results.
• Independently lead design portion of project work; independently design workplans for own and design team on the project, prioritize and execute on highest‑value add activities, oversee work for more junior designers.
• Consistently help build alignment on project priorities and backlog; enable seamless relationships with multidisciplinary teams (e.g. management consultants, data scientists, engineers, etc.).
• Effectively collaborate with, co‑create, and influence multiple stakeholders (project team, client team, experts outside partners).
• Build relationships with senior‑level client stakeholders.
• Help to bring Bain to the next level as a business.
• Enhance AIS brand through support of external marketing activities.
• Play an active role in the recruitment of new design talent across EMEA and in our growing team in EMEA in particular.
• Build the AIS knowledge base by capturing learnings from client engagements.
• Teach and transfer knowledge, expertise and capabilities to Bain teams and client teams.
• Serve as a supervisor for more junior members of the (design) team.
• Support client business development for AIS (e.g. preparing proposals and building relationships across Bain EMEA offices).
• Contribute to AIS culture creation and take on team office or firm initiatives as part of the EMEA AIS team.

ABOUT YOU

• 5-7 years of hands‑on experience shaping digital products, services and/or new ventures (or equivalent experience) in roles such as Service Designer, Value Proposition/Business Designer, CX/Digital Product Designer, etc.
• A thorough practical understanding of Design Thinking and Agile methods.
• Skillset expertise focused on strategic design research, UX/UI, service design, omnichannel experience design and/or digital product design.
• Experience leading workstreams independently and overseeing more junior designers.
• Comfort with and passion for all parts of the design process from early‑stage insights gathering to strategy definition, concepting and prototyping.
• Fluency in working with state‑of‑the‑art collaboration and prototyping tools (e.g. Figma, Miro, Webflow, Adobe CS) and exposure to GenAI design tools.
• Excellent communication, presentation and collaboration skills.
• A highly ambitious and entrepreneurial spirit with the ability to thrive in a dynamic and fast‑paced environment comfortable with ambiguity.
• This role requires some travel in the region — up to 40% travel to clients across the Middle East/EMEA.
• Fluency in Arabic and English is a mandatory requirement.

An ideal candidate will also have:

• Experience working on Middle East‑based projects and a good understanding of cultural design norms in the region.
• Experience working in a client‑services environment.
• An understanding of the role of design and its value in impacting business strategies.
• Passion for expanding Service Design practice and exploring emerging industry trends (e.g. GenAI, behavioural design, immersive experience).
• Aptitude in European languages is welcomed, in particular French and Spanish.

If this sounds like you, please apply with your CV in English and a current portfolio displaying a record of your experience in developing concepts and designing products and services.