Job Description

The opportunity

As a Senior Manager in Design-led Innovation, you will lead clients through a design-driven innovation lifecycle to explore future-focused “what if?” questions about their business, sector, products and services. You will help expand horizons, identify competitive edges and define market opportunities through experimentation with tangible manifestations of questions and ideas, from lo-fi sketches to different kinds of prototypes. You will guide teams in evaluating possible directions and innovative value propositions from multiple perspectives, including user needs, business requirements and technology. You will also establish and advise on the culture, organization and repeatable processes needed to activate an innovation strategy.

• Lead engagement delivery across complex processes, solutions and/or projects.
• Maintain focus on quality and risk management while navigating operational and organizational dynamics.
• Provide leadership and direction up to and including Managers across multiple activities.

Your key responsibilities

In this role, you will be accountable for program and project management and may be accountable for the budget, delivery and performance of complex processes, solutions and/or projects. You will lead client engagements through planning, execution and closure, manage client relationships with daily external client interaction, and lead teams with broad visibility to achieve performance objectives. You will be responsible for identifying sales and new opportunities, collaborating with PPMD to complete RFPs, managing engagement economics for the whole engagement, and developing the resource plan and budget for the whole engagement. Travel is required regularly as needed by external clients.

• Exercise judgment in selecting methods, techniques and evaluation criteria for obtaining results.
• Develop solutions to complex problems and recommend changes to policies.
• Establish procedures that affect the immediate work area and possibly the business function within your area or department.

Skills and attributes for success

Success in this role calls for deep insight in innovation and experience design, strong analysis, and knowledge of best practices to solve complex problems, drive thought leadership and enable innovation. You will combine design leadership, executive alignment, experience strategy, facilitation, systems thinking and venture design to help clients activate innovation strategies. You will also bring the commercial and relationship skills needed to build trust, manage change, negotiate and influence, lead teams and drive outcomes in a client-focused environment.

• Guide clients through innovation lifecycles that frame strategic questions, explore future opportunities and define market potential.
• Lead experimentation with sketches, prototypes and other tangible outputs to evaluate possible directions and value propositions.
• Advise on innovation culture, organization, frameworks and repeatable processes needed to activate innovation strategy.
• Provide direction and feedback to engagement team members to complete tasks.
• Provide input to PPMDs for decisions related to performance evaluations and hiring or new team members.

To qualify for the role, you must have

• Bachelor’s degree required (4-year degree); master’s degree preferred. {NOTE TO RECRUITER: DO NOT DELETE but add required major if needed (i.e Accounting, Business Management, etc.)”}
• Typically, no less than 5 - 7 years relevant experience.
• Design leadership and executive alignment
• Experience strategy creation
• Facilitation
• Innovation culture and capability development
• Innovation framework design
• Innovation lab set up
• Innovation validation
• Systems design
• Venture design and incubation
• Building and Managing Relationships
• Client Trust and Value
• Commercial Astuteness
• Communicating With Impact
• Complex Problem-Solving
• Critical Thinking
• Digital Fluency
• Driving Outcomes
• Hybrid Collaboration
• Leading Teams
• Learning Agility
• Managing Change
• Negotiation and Influencing
• Sector Knowledge
• Sustainability
• Systems Thinking

Ideally, you’ll also have

• Experience leading client engagements through planning, execution and closure.
• Experience managing engagement economics, resource planning and budgets for whole engagements.
• Experience leading teams, managing change, negotiating and influencing stakeholders, and applying sector knowledge.
• Ability to exercise considerable latitude in determining objectives and approaches to assignments while collaborating with senior management on objectives and assessing results over a longer-term perspective.

What we look for

We look for professionals who can lead complex innovation work while connecting creativity with measurable business value. The right person can help clients ask future-focused questions, make ideas tangible, evaluate opportunities through user, business and technology lenses, and build cultures and processes that activate innovation. You should be comfortable leading teams, managing client relationships, navigating commercial and organizational dynamics, communicating with impact, and driving high-quality outcomes while keeping risk management in focus.