Senior Design Director: Digital

Absa Group Limited; Johannesburg; On-site; ZAR 400 000 - 500 000; Full time

Job summary

A leading financial services organization in Johannesburg seeks a Senior Design Director to manage customer and design strategy. This role involves overseeing multiple design projects, ensuring high quality and coherence that aligns with business needs. The ideal candidate will have over 12 years of experience in directing complex design projects, especially in the financial sector, and possess a strong portfolio demonstrating innovation and leadership in design. The position is vital for delivering exceptional customer experiences through innovative design solutions.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience directing complex design projects.
• Strong portfolio of award-winning work in financial services or banking.
• Experience with multidisciplinary creative teams.

Responsibilities

• Drive Absa's customer and design strategy.
• Oversee multiple design projects ensuring quality and coherence.
• Manage and coach design teams within a matrix environment.

Skills

Customer experience strategy

Design quality improvement

Leadership

Stakeholder management

Design thinking

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Design or related discipline

Job description

Job title: Senior Design Director: Digital

Job Location: Gauteng, Johannesburg

Deadline: December 31, 2025

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Job Summary

• Senior Design Director is responsible for driving Absa’s customer and design strategy across a design function or a highly complex strategic area in the organization.
• She/he acts as a thought partner to senior business leaders in formulating a customer experience strategy and ensures customer thinking is embedded in all decision making.
• Senior Design Director oversees the multiple design projects in her/his business area and ensures they deliver coherent, world‑class customer experience aligned to the business strategy and needs.
• An ideal Senior Design Director is an expert in her/his field of design and able to provide consistently excellent and creative design solutions. She/he has a track record of driving development and implementation of business strategy through design decisions and providing insights and direction to the business at senior levels.
• Senior Design Director is an experienced people leader, who is able to oversee multiple large projects simultaneously. She/he is passionate about high‑quality customer design and developing the skills and capabilities of the people in her/his organization.

Education and Experience Required

• Bachelors Degree (Honors or Masters level will be preferred) in a Design discipline such as product, industrial, service, interaction, or digital design (NQF Level 8-10) &/or equal work experience.
• 12+ years’ experience directing complex, commercial, design projects at a leading agency or within internal design function at a major brand involving senior stakeholders and interdisciplinary creative teams.
• A design practitioner background and foundation within one or more disciplines. Ideally with a portfolio of award‑winning work in the financial services &/or banking industries.
• Strong track record of delivering complex, high quality design projects with varying design approaches, with strong customer impact and proven value‑add to the business.
• Other commercial or operational business experience advantageous.
• Leading, managing and providing coaching on within large complex matrix teams and projects.
• Senior and Executive stakeholder management.
• Thought leadership in the design domain.
• Portfolio of evidence of successful strategic design delivery, projects and outcomes.
• Financial services &/or banking industry experience/exposure will be a distinct advantage.

Design Capability Development

• Build a Design Centre of Excellence; grow and develop functional design capability by creating new design standards and tools to ensure continuously improving and consistent design quality across the business.
• Create environment of innovation, quality and ownership within the Design Office.
• Support the Head of Design in creating and articulating a wider Design Office strategy to deliver a truly exceptional customer experience across Absa.
• Work with customer metrics and measurements to both monitor and manage the quality of design delivery and to create tangible customer insights needed for the decision making.
• Stay abreast of industry trends and role players and ensure that RBB is well positioned to provide competitive and industry leading Design.

Thought Leadership and Innovation

• Formulate the channel/BU customer experience strategy to enable delivery of the business strategy, conceptualize the impact of the strategy to design choices and focus, and specify the appropriate measures for monitor outcomes.
• Drive innovation across Absa’s product and solution design, challenging the existing thinking and limitations to deliver step‑change in customer experience.
• Act as a thought leader to business and channel leadership, providing insights and advice based on deep expertise in design thinking, design solutions and global best practice.
• Deliver highest quality, creative and innovative design solutions to highly complex problems, deliver projects which enable the business to deliver on its customer experience, brand promise and GoTo strategic agenda.

Project Management

• Manage a large portfolio of projects, creating innovation and ease of use that delights Absa customers and is also recognized externally as the market leading design.
• Identify synergies across different projects and project portfolios, uplifting the design quality or reducing the effort and time to market for the different solutions.
• Drive a great and consistent customer experience across a highly complex area within the bank, with large number of stakeholders and competing priorities, ensuring focus on highest impact areas and delivery of exceptional outcomes.
• Combine the understanding of the business strategic intent and customer insights into tangible project proposals and briefs, with large value‑add to the business; support Design Directors and Senior Designers in translating these into project scopes and project plans.
• Oversee several simultaneous projects, providing guidance and direction across all, and understand where to dive deeper to ensure great delivery. Engage and inspire entire design project teams.
• Allocate and monitor design resources to ensure that quality work will be completed on time and to budget; involving external design agencies to manage demand when appropriate.

People Leadership

• Create a design ecosystem and physical environment in which designers will thrive, be motivated by and develop as professionals.
• Drive the talent pipeline to ensure the right balance of senior and junior talent across different functional skillsets.
• Promote professional development of the individual designers through one‑to‑one mentoring, training and providing the right opportunities for development.