JOB DESCRIPTION:
Role overview: This role sits at the intersection of Product Strategy, Product Development, and Marketing. This role is critical in ensuring that we design and build intuitive products - delivering a seamless experience for our business clients and their end customers. Reporting directly to the VP of Product, the Head of Design is responsible for defining and championing a cohesive vision for user experience, rooted in comprehensive customer and competitor research. This individual will lead the design team with a forward-thinking mindset, leveraging the best-in-class design methodologies, tools, and practices to ensure both exceptional product quality and rapid delivery. The role demands a keen understanding of UX principles, a deep commitment to continuous improvement, and a strategic focus on aligning design with business goals and user needs.
Key Responsibilities:
Shaping the UX Vision:
Define and refine the user experience strategy to align with product and business goals, ensuring seamless, intuitive experiences across all touchpoints.
Leading Research and Insights:
Drive user-centered design through customer and market research, including competitor analysis, user testing, and feedback, to inform relevant, effective design solutions.
Design Methodology Excellence:
Apply design methodologies like design thinking, lean UX, and agile to balance speed and quality, constantly refining processes for better outcomes.
End-to-End Product Design Ownership:
Lead all product design phases—research, ideation, prototyping, reviews, and implementation—ensuring design vision is executed to meet product requirements.
Strategic Roadmap Contribution:
Collaborate with Product, Engineering, and Marketing to shape strategic roadmaps and align design efforts with business goals while managing multiple priorities and timelines.
Behavior-Driven Design:
Create design solutions that promote healthy financial habits, leveraging user insights and data to deliver meaningful, impactful experiences.
Collaboration Across Teams:
Work closely with Product, Engineering, and Marketing to ensure alignment between design vision, product goals, and business outcomes, fostering seamless collaboration.
Continuous Innovation:
Stay ahead of industry trends and best practices, incorporating iOS Human Interface Guidelines, Android Material Design, and web design best-practice to deliver innovative, accessible, and high-quality designs.
Scalable Process Development:
Develop and refine scalable design processes that improve team efficiency and maintain high quality and consistency across projects.
Advocate for Quality:
Prioritize work, make tough calls, and uphold design quality, ensuring products meet the highest standards of usability and functionality before release.
Team Communication Excellence:
Review and assist with team-created presentations (PPT) to ensure they clearly look and feel professionally created (like McKinsey or Accenture created it).
What your day-to-day might look like;
User and UX Research -
Understanding requirements, our customers, competition and industry research, qualitative and quantitative data analysis.
Usability testing to help validate and refine final designs.
Conduct design validation sessions with users and stakeholders to reveal deep insights about the user, business needs and technical constraints for determination on how user experience and design(s) should evolve
Working with designers and researchers to continually refine and evolve the User Experience process.
Conduct independent research on multiple aspects of products and experiences.
Making strategic and tactical design recommendations based on usability findings, standard design practices, and internal and external feedback.
Collect and analyze user behaviour to inform user actions.
Work on tools to identify points of failure / where customers drop off and put in place interventions to reduce friction.
Working with Product Owners on UX Design,
Creating sketches, wireframes, mockups, and interactive prototypes occasionally, but not often on very short notice with an expected turn-around of a day or less. Your job will be to ensure that this gets delivered according to an appropriate schedule, but business needs could force it to be delivered by CoB after being communicated.
Design Handover, including design guide system, visual designs, icons, illustrations, and other assets and resources.
Translating business requirements and user needs into tangible interaction designs through detailed user flows and wireframes.
Use of storyboards/customer journey maps/narrative/wireframes/prototypes of varying fidelity to express how a product or service should behave to deliver capabilities in a way that supports user needs, goals, and workflows.
Ensure to prioritize User-Centered Design projects, improvements and content as per business priorities.
Help neaten and make professional powerpoints from the product team - and ensure that you teach them how to do this themselves.
Create reusable iconography/illustrations that can be used within the organisation by any team.
Owning the design language and making sure that all areas of design adhere to the “Cellulant Design Principles.” You will also be responsible for defining what these are. Working with Designers to improve overall design out across multiple platforms and channels.
Educational and Experience Requirements:
Must have experience:
Minimum 7+ years of experience in UX Design and with a proven record of experience with various design methodologies..
With a proven track-record of delivering user-centered solutions across multiple platforms and industries.
Strong storytelling skills to present design strategies and solutions to stakeholders.
Experience that will count in your favor:
Having previously led a design function in a digitally focused organization.
Having previously developed and maintained a design system for digitally focused organization.
Nice to have experience:
Background in designing for fintech, e-commerce, or highly regulated industries.
Experience leveraging data analytics and A/B testing to inform design decisions.
Knowledge of emerging technologies like AI, AR/VR, or conversational interfaces and chatbots.
Previous experience collaborating with global, distributed teams.
Qualification:
Experience in creating strategy and designing digital products; most recently focused on Activation, Growth & Onboarding work.
Experience in leading teams and managing people.
Experience working with designers, product management, and engineering.
Experience in user tracking interaction technology - for example: Mixpanel / Google Analytics / Appsee / Localytics / Clevertap, etc.
Proven track record of delivering successful products.
Ability to work both independently & collaboratively with other product stakeholders
Ability to flex between rapid prototyping and pixel-perfect outcomes.
Good (design/strategy) workshop moderator - with the ability to moderate physical and online/remote sessions.
Skills:
UX design leader that drives strategic product innovation and relentlessly raises the design bar.
Experienced with various design methodologies (HCD, UCD, Design Thinking).
Can organise and run/moderate design workshops.
An expert communicator at every level with the ability to flex between influencing executives and inspiring team members.
An emotionally intelligent (EQ) leader that hires and develops the best, growing, and inspiring designers to push the boundaries of what’s possible.
Great collaborator and team player - you understand design is a team sport, and when we win, we win together.
Relationship builder that actively develops cross-organisation partnerships, fosters trust and aligns stakeholders.
Ability to balance data with customer insights to inform design decisions.
Have some understanding of what it takes to build products for African customers.
A growth mindset and entrepreneurial spirit that will deliver on our goal to build and operate Africa’s payments platform of choice.
A powerpoint guru.
Personal attributes:
Adaptable and Fast-Paced: Works quickly and efficiently without compromising quality, thriving in dynamic environments with shifting priorities and tight timelines.
Proactive and Resourceful: Takes initiative, drives projects forward, and finds creative solutions to challenges.
Detail-Oriented: Meticulous in ensuring design quality, consistency, and attention to detail across all outputs.
User-Centered Mindset: Deep empathy for users and a passion for solving real-world problems through design.
Collaborative: A team player who thrives in cross-functional environments, fostering strong relationships with Product, Engineering, and other stakeholders.
Resilient: Able to navigate feedback, iterate quickly, and balance multiple priorities without compromising quality.
Continuous Learner: Passionate about staying updated with industry trends, tools, and best practices, with a growth-oriented mindset.
Problem Solver: Analytical and data-driven, with the ability to turn complex challenges into simple, intuitive design solutions.
