Practice Lead: Product Design

Old Mutual; Johannesburg; On-site; ZAR 600,000 - 900,000; Full time

Job summary

Old Mutual seeks a Product Design Practice Lead to enhance multi-disciplinary product experiences. This role combines leadership in UX/UI design, strategic direction, and talent development in an innovative financial services environment. The individual will collaborate closely with design operations and lead the team's capabilities via a structured skills development program. A Bachelor’s degree and extensive experience in product design are required for this pivotal position, set to drive excellence and continuous improvement within Old Mutual.

Qualifications

• 7+ years working in product design, including 3+ in leadership roles.
• Experience in Omni-Channel Digital and Agile environments.
• Strong leadership and community management skills.

Responsibilities

• Develop and manage the strategy for product experience design.
• Ensure practice is informed by emerging trends in financial services.
• Build and implement a robust people management framework.

Skills

Action Planning

User Experience (UX) Design

Data Analysis

Project Management

Customer Analysis

Education

Bachelor's Degree

NQF Level 7

Tools

Sketch

Figma

Adobe Creative Suite

Job description

Let's Write Africa's Story Together!

Old Mutual is a firm believer in the African opportunity and our diverse talent reflects this.

Job Description

As the practice lead of Product Design, the individual is accountable for the strength of the competency of the multi-disciplinary design of product experiences within OM Group. This directly includes UX and UI, but also includes the integrated methodology for the delivery of product experience design in a multi-disciplinary fashion with teams from products and propositions, market insights units, innovation, content, customer experience, technology and feature teams.

They establish the methods, tools and techniques of the practice in line with the requirements of the design value chain and delivery environment, integrating these into the broader ways-of-work for design in collaboration with Design Ops and Design Leadership.

They develop the competency models and skills development requirements for practitioners of product design within the group, and collaborate with L&D (including the Digital Academy) to generate the learning tracks needed to develop appropriate skills. The individual collaborates closely with GRID and Group design environments to implement product design within their day-to-day design operations, and to support teams in their adoption and execution of processes through coaching and mentoring.

They establish a community for the practice, allowing both practitioners and non-practitioners to learn and contribute to the furtherance of product design within Old Mutual. They evaluate the performance of the practice and support governance as it applies to standards for its execution. Ultimately, they build a model for the development of the people, processes and tools of product design, and enable its adoption and continuous improvement across the group, towards business and customer value generation.

Responsibilities

Practice Leadership

• Develop and manage the strategy for product experience design as a capability within OM.
• Ensure that our practice thinking is informed by emerging trends, technologies, and regulations in the financial services industry, incorporating them into our practice development to give us a competitive edge.
• Develop the policies and procedures for the practice in line with the overall design value chain and within the frameworks of the Design C.o.E.
• Own the maturity of the practice against appropriate definitions and ensure that we are meeting our maturity goals.
• Use data to make informed decisions on how to improve the practice’s impact and alignment with the business’s objectives.
• Champion the practice across the Old Mutual Group, supporting the development of sponsorship and practice maturity through a change management model.

Ways-of-Work

• Work closely with Design Operations to establish the operating model of the practice within the broader operating model of the Design C.o.E.
• Define the methods, standards, tools and techniques that Old Mutual will use to execute product design through the design value chain stages of:
  • Design Strategy
  • Solution / Proposition Innovation
  • Architectural Design
  • Design Implementation
  • Design Continuous Improvement
• Ensure that Old Mutual’s product design approach is aligned to best practices and meets the context of the organisation’s strategy and operations, working closely with design partner areas, such as Product Owners, Business Owners, The Agile CoE, Customer Experience and internal to design partner areas such as Research & Simulation, Design Strategy and Architecture and the Design System.
• Define the ways of work down to an implementation level through playbooks and guardrails that support Old Mutual Product Designers to execute against them with repeatability and quality.
• Develop a contribution model that organically builds and innovates on the methods and standards through collaboration with the design community, ensuring that we are continually optimising and improving the product design ways-of-work.

Skills Development

• Build and implement a robust people management framework that fosters the development of product design talent across the team.
• Curate a structured skills development program that identifies gaps and ensures continuous learning, growth, and alignment with evolving business needs.
• Collaborate with external partners to design and deliver training programs that enhance the team’s capabilities and foster a culture of excellence.
• Establish and maintain tracking mechanisms to monitor progress, performance, and impact of skills development initiatives.
• Cultivate a culture of knowledge-sharing, fostering an environment where the team can learn from each other and grow together.
• Develop training initiatives and ensure the team stays up to date with industry best practices and emerging trends.
• Work closely with L&D partners, including the Design Academy to integrate product design into Old Mutuals learning framework, both for practitioners and for associated partner areas, such as Product Owners, other design capabilities etc.

Operations Support

• Ensure that all the operations needed to execute product design are integrated and operationally supported through design operations, directly executing operational responsibilities that are allocated to the practice lead.
• Support the organisation in tool decisions, acquisition and optimisation for product design.
• Support resourcing processes and decisions as it pertains to product design, facilitating recruitment or performance management where needed.
• Ensure that there are appropriate measurement and governance frameworks in place for the performance and quality management of product design, working along with delivery leads to facilitate expected outcomes.
• Support the establishment of engagement practices within the product design community, such as a community forum for practitioners and non-practitioners.
• Foster a culture of engagement, innovation and collaboration across the product design community.
• Prepare and present monthly reports on product design activities, including key accomplishments, challenges, and opportunities for the broader leadership team.

Product Design Leadership

• Support the Design Delivery Leadership structures to correctly scope, plan and execute product design efforts across the group.
• Directly execute senior-level product design work where required in support of business objectives, especially as they pertain to design strategies, standards and architectures.
• Establish a robust quality management framework for product design, that is executed through the line delivery management structures.
• Establish and execute on quality assurance across all the delivery portfolios to ensure that the practice is contributing correctly to design outcomes.
• Broadly coach and mentor practitioners and non-practitioners across the group to further the practice.

Working Experience & Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in design, marketing, technology, business administration or a related field. An Honour’s or Master’s degree is a plus.
• 7+ years working in the field of product design, 3+ within roles that involved product design leadership or the development of mature product design practices.
• Experience working in an Omni-Channel Digital and Agile environment, with cross-functional collaboration, working with product, engineering, and business teams.
• Proven track record of delivering high-performance team and quality outcomes across complex, omni-channel design environments.

Technical Expertise

• In-depth knowledge of design processes, user-centred design principles, and design system creation and management.
• Strong expertise in design tools (e.g., Sketch, Figma, Adobe Creative Suite) and front-end development principles (HTML, CSS, JavaScript).
• Deep understanding of UX/UI methodologies, including user research, wireframing, prototyping, usability testing, accessibility and visual design.
• Strong leadership and community management skills.
• Skilled in implementing people management frameworks to foster team growth and performance.
• Experience in building career and learning paths, and facilitating skills development activities and learning tracks.
• Up-to-date with industry trends and emerging technologies.
• Experience in senior design leadership, motivating teams to excel, mentoring and coaching teams towards high performance and integrating with executive business stakeholders towards the achievement of business goals.

Skills

Action Planning, Commercialization, Computer Literacy, Customer Analysis, Data Analysis, Data Collection Methods, IT Implementation, IT Systems Integration, Market Analysis, Marketing Communications (MarCom), Market Research Analysis, Planning and organisational skills, Product Development, Project Management, User Experience (UX) Design

Competencies

Education

NQF Level 7 - Degree, Advance Diploma or Postgraduate Certificate or equivalent

Closing Date

27 June 2025 , 23:59

The appointment will be made from the designated group in line with the Employment Equity Plan of Old Mutual South Africa and the specific business unit in question.

The Old Mutual Story!