Strategic Design Leader

EPAM Systems; United States; Remote; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

EPAM Systems is seeking a Strategic Design Leader to operate at the intersection of business strategy, customer experience, research, innovation, AI-enabled delivery and digital transformation. This hands-on leader will shape pursuits, guide engagements, define prototype direction, and mobilize multidisciplinary teams across multiple accounts.

Responsibilities include leading discovery, framing ambiguity, aligning stakeholders, and delivering executive-ready narratives and roadmaps.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in experience strategy, service design, innovation, consulting, product strategy, or digital transformation.
• Proven ownership of complex client engagements, end-to-end from framing to recommendations and concept definition.
• Direct experience engaging with senior client stakeholders and account leadership to shape outcomes.
• Strong executive narratives and polished, executive-ready materials.
• Fluency in English and Spanish is strongly preferred for LATAM scope.

Responsibilities

• Lead discovery and framing for complex transformation initiatives and bring structure to ambiguity.
• Connect customer needs, business objectives, constraints, and feasibility into a strategic view.
• Convert ambiguity into structured hypotheses, decisions, and measurable outcomes.
• Facilitate conversations with senior stakeholders to reach alignment.
• Define experience visions, journeys, ecosystems, and future-state concepts.
• Translate strategic direction into actionable roadmaps and prototype briefs.
• Develop proposals, workstreams, staffing, estimates, and governance structures.

Skills

Experience strategy

Service design

Innovation

Consulting

Product strategy

Executive storytelling

Stakeholder facilitation

Synthesis

Bilingual English/Spanish

Job description

We are seeking a Strategic Design Leader who can operate at the intersection of business strategy, customer experience, research, innovation, AI-enabled delivery and digital transformation. The role converts ambiguous business challenges into clear opportunity spaces, aligned decisions and executive-ready outputs. This is not a traditional UX, Product Design or people-management position. It is a hands‑on leadership role for someone who can shape pursuits, guide complex engagements, create persuasive narratives, define prototype direction and mobilize multidisciplinary teams across multiple accounts

Responsibilities

• Lead discovery and problem framing for complex transformation, modernization, and innovation initiatives, bringing structure to ambiguous business challenges
• Connect customer needs, business objectives, operating constraints, and technology feasibility into a cohesive strategic view
• Convert ambiguity into structured hypotheses, decisions, plans, and measurable outcomes that drive forward momentum
• Facilitate conversations with senior stakeholders and work through competing perspectives to reach alignment
• Define experience visions, design principles, customer journeys, service ecosystems, and future-state concepts that guide transformation efforts
• Identify tensions, opportunity spaces, and intervention points spanning channels, roles, and operational systems
• Translate strategic direction into actionable experience architectures, roadmaps, and prototype briefs
• Ensure all recommendations are commercially viable and executable, not just conceptually appealing
• Partner with account and delivery leadership to shape strategic opportunities and client‑facing propositions
• Develop proposal narratives, approaches, workstreams, staffing models, estimates, and governance structures to support pursuits
• Create differentiated points of view, demonstrations, and prototype stories that help clients make confident decisions
• Contribute directly to pitches, workshops, executive reviews, and the follow‑up conversations that stem from them
• Synthesize user research, market intelligence, competitive benchmarks, stakeholder interviews, and operational inputs into unified insight
• Distinguish confirmed evidence from assumptions and surface critical gaps that need to be addressed
• Convert evidence into implications, recommendations, and decision‑ready narratives rather than purely descriptive reporting
• Create strategic decks, points of view, one‑pages, proposals, workshop materials, transformation narratives, and decision frameworks
• Structure complex information so that it is comprehensible, credible, and actionable for executive audiences
• Maintain a high standard of information hierarchy, visual storytelling, and editorial precision across all deliverables
• Use AI tools such as Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, Figma AI, Miro AI, and research agents to accelerate research, synthesis, content development, and prototyping
• Design repeatable AI‑assisted workflows while applying strong judgment, verification, and quality control to outputs
• Help teams adopt AI as a delivery multiplier without sacrificing strategic depth or producing generic results
• Provide hands‑on strategic direction to researchers, service designers, UX and product designers, content strategists, and solution teams
• Translate executive intent into clear briefs, working structures, and quality criteria that guide team execution
• Operate effectively through influence, including in situations where you hold no direct reporting authority

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in experience strategy, service design, innovation, consulting, product strategy, or digital transformation
• Demonstrated ownership of complex client engagements, managing them end-to-end from initial framing through recommendation and concept definition
• Direct experience engaging with senior client stakeholders and account leadership to shape outcomes
• A strong portfolio showcasing executive narratives, strategic deliverables, and transformation work
• Expert‑level skill in facilitation, enabling productive alignment across stakeholders with differing perspectives
• Strong synthesis ability, turning complex and varied inputs into clear, decision‑ready insight
• Excellent written communication skills, capable of producing polished, executive‑ready materials
• Strong presentation skills, able to convey complex strategic concepts with clarity and confidence
• Capability to manage multiple high‑priority workstreams simultaneously without sacrificing narrative coherence or delivery quality
• Professional fluency in English and Spanish, strongly preferred given the LATAM scope of this role
• Nice to have Relevant Product Management certification, which would be viewed as a valuable addition to your qualifications