Absa Group

Empowering Africa’s tomorrow, together…one story at a time.

With over 100 years of rich history and strongly positioned as a local bank with regional and international expertise, a career with our family offers the opportunity to be part of this exciting growth journey, to reset our future and shape our destiny as a proudly African group.

Job Summary

Lead the strategic design and delivery of customer and colleague experiences across digital platforms. Drive experience innovation, embed design thinking, and ensure seamless, intuitive, and value-driven interactions. Collaborate across functions to align experience design with business strategy, transformation goals, and customer needs.

Responsible for shaping and delivering an intuitive, seamless, and differentiated digital experience across all colleague interfaces and client self-service channels (web, mobile, chat and emerging platforms). The Executive leads the design of both user interface (UI) and User Experience (UX), ensuring that every interaction reflects customer and colleague needs, drive adoption, and supports the bank’s strategic objectives of enabling omni-channel engagement.

Job Description

KEY FOCUS AREAS

• Lead the development of experience design strategy across digital platforms.
• Embed design thinking and human-centred design principles.
• Drive innovation in customer and colleague experience delivery.
• Collaborate with product, technology, and transformation teams.
• Ensure experiences are intuitive, inclusive, and commercially impactful.
• Monitor experience performance and optimise based on insights.
• Align experience design with strategic change and transformation goals.
• Promote agile ways of working and continuous improvement.
• Ensure compliance with governance and quality standards.
• Foster a culture of creativity, empathy, and customer obsession.

ACCOUNTABILITIES

• Develop and execute experience design strategy for both clients and colleagues aligned to Business Bank’s digital transformation roadmap.
• Translate strategic goals into experience-led initiatives and frameworks.
• Translate long-term strategic objectives into aligned business plans, execution roadmaps and key milestone measurements for the business area.
• Cascade strategic goals and ensure alignment between business unit vision and functional implementation priorities, setting clear short, medium and long-term milestones.
• Develop effective partnerships to enable business performance and contribute to sector-wide influence aligned with strategic initiatives.
• Respond to emerging policy and regulatory trends by adapting operational strategy and ensuring compliance alignment.
• Coordinate business enablement efforts for Business Banking, ensuring delivery capability across systems, processes, and teams.
• Track execution progress against key strategic initiatives and intervene to correct course where needed.
• Support transformation initiatives through structured programme delivery and change management practices.
• Provide expert advice and support in operating model, strategy, and value chain formulation and delivery alignment.
• Undertake analysis of management and specialist information and guide reporting tool implementation to improve decision-making quality.

Customer Primacy

• Translate customer experience (CX) insights into actionable design principles, leveraging design thinking to craft human centered, intuitive solutions.
• Use customer insights and behavioral data to inform experience design.
• Ensure experiences are tailored to customer needs and lifecycle moments.
• Interpret market and customer insights to inform operational plans and prioritise capability investments.
• Utilise customer data to improve processes and propositions, ensuring measurable customer value delivery.
• Instill customer-centric decision-making in teams, balancing experience and efficiency targets.
• Implement initiatives that improve customer engagement and retention through operational enhancements.
• Coordinate cross-functional initiatives to deliver consistent customer journeys and service quality.
• Represent the voice of the customer within leadership forums to influence service delivery priorities.
• Plan and deliver services that create a culture which aims to exceed customer expectations in all aspects of the business.
• Provide expertise in designing integrated frameworks to embed service excellence.

Sustainable Growth

• Drive growth through differentiated and value-driven experiences.
• Develop growth plans aligned to Business Bank’s segment and product priorities in alignment with experience design with commercial and strategic objectives.
• Develop business area growth plans aligned to segment and enterprise priorities.
• Work with business partners to define and execute on growth strategies and operational initiatives.
• Mobilise functional teams to deliver growth targets and embed performance accountability.
• Monitor growth delivery, resolving barriers and reinforcing strategic objectives at operational levels.
• Evaluate financial and customer returns on initiatives to ensure alignment with business viability.
• Formulate and develop multi-function operating frameworks that contribute to sustainable growth

Client-Driven Innovation and Change

• Champion innovation in experience design and delivery.
• Design colleague-facing and client-facing platforms that improve efficiency, reduce friction, and enable better client conversations.
• Lead change initiatives that improve customer and colleague journeys by working with frontline and operations teams to map colleague journeys, identify pain points, and design solutions that drive adoption and engagement.
• Monitor competitive landscape and identify opportunities to improve products, services, or operations.
• Drive continuous improvement and innovation within the team to enhance customer outcomes.
• Shape client experience initiatives through project ownership and delivery responsibility.
• Influence and communicate across all levels of the business to minimise resistance to change and ensure onboarding of target audiences.
• Scan the external environment to investigate alternative delivery models and offer innovative advice for competitive advantage.
• Drive change management activities across a single value chain for optimal adoption of change.

Leading Talent

• Build and lead a team of experience designers and strategists.
• Promote a culture of creativity, empathy, and continuous learning.
• Embed people processes and values into business routines, reinforcing a strong leadership culture.
• Develop workforce capabilities to meet business plan execution requirements and future readiness.
• Create inclusive team environments that support performance, wellbeing, and growth.
• Address escalated people issues and ensure application of performance and development processes.
• Develop future leaders through mentorship, stretch assignments, and tailored development experiences.
• Provide expertise and advice in the development and implementation of human capability and accountability frameworks across functions.
• Direct the development and implementation of human capability strategies to support people management priorities

Operational Effectiveness

• Lead the creation of wireframes, prototypes, design systems, and interaction flows that align to business functionality.
• Ensure seamless integration of experience design with product and technology roadmaps.
• Partner with developers, product managers/owners and operations teams to deliver user-centric solutions on time and within budget
• Ensure experience design is embedded in operational plans and delivery.
• Monitor performance and drive improvements across touchpoints.
• Use analytics, behavioural data and A/B testing to refine interfaces and improve task completion rates.
• Operationalise strategic goals into functional plans with clear deliverables, timelines, scorecards with team and individual KPIs to enable effective tracking of business and individual performance.
• Set appropriate financial and other resourcing plans to enable business performance, tracking against budgets and investments for both current and long-term strategic goals.
• Ensure integration across business units by resolving operational friction and dependencies.
• Represent the business area in operational forums and with delivery partners.
• Leverage data insights to improve operational effectiveness and customer outcomes.
• Continuously improve processes for agility, quality, and alignment with customer needs and digital tools.
• Identify problems and formulate alternate solutions to resolve value chain conflicts.
• Provide expert advice on operating model, strategy, value chain formulation, and business controls/governance frameworks.

Digital Adoption

• Promote digital-first experiences and design-led transformation.
• Leverage tools and platforms to enhance experience delivery.
• Execute digital initiatives and promote adoption of technologies that improve efficiency and user experience.
• Monitor digital platform performance and ensure integration with business processes and outcomes.
• Deliberately identify opportunities to digitise, automate, and implement solutions for customer primacy, innovation, and operational effectiveness.

Governance, Risk and Compliance

• Establish and maintain a design system and experience guidelines to ensure consistency across teams and platforms.
• Build a culture of design excellence, driving innovation while aligning to regulatory and compliance standards.
• Ensure experience design complies with governance and quality standards.
• Monitor risks related to experience delivery and customer impact.
• Implement governance, risk, and compliance frameworks in business processes and team routines.
• Promote risk awareness and lead the response to regulatory changes and emerging issues.
• Support audit readiness and ensure operational teams adhere to compliance requirements.
• Enable the development and implementation of integrated corporate governance frameworks in areas of specialisation.
• Influence the implementation of effective internal controls systems and corporate governance practices.

Data Monetisation

• Collaborate with analytics teams to generate actionable insights.
• Apply data insights to support business planning and decision-making in the business area.
• Develop mechanisms to ensure data is collected, validated, and used to drive performance improvement.
• Oversee the explicit use of data and its inherent value to explore opportunities and guide decisions.

Stakeholder Management

• Act as the voice of design at executive level, advocating for customer and colleague needs in all strategic initiatives
• Partner with CX, Digital, Technology, Product, and Segment teams to co-create solutions that deliver measurable business outcomes.
• Manage relationships with key stakeholders to support aligned delivery and issue resolution.
• Ensure stakeholder expectations are managed and engagement is consistent with transformation priorities.

QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE

• Education/ Qualification:
• Post Graduate Degree: Honours Degree, Post Graduate Diploma and Professional Qualifications [NQF8]

Field of Study:

• Design Strategy, Digital Experience, Business Transformation, or related fields.

Work Experience:

• 12 - 15 years experience in a specific capability of importance to the bank, including a track record of 5 years in a people management position in a large enterprise.
• Experience must include developing integrated customer-centric product or service solutions or corporate practice development while working with and managing stakeholders across business and/or functional areas and budget management.
• Exposure to digital transformation and data-driven decision-making is preferred.
• Demonstrated success in leading experience design initiatives that drive customer satisfaction, digital adoption, and strategic transformation in complex environments.
• Experience in engaging executive stakeholders in aligning experience design with business strategy, influencing cross-functional collaboration, and embedding design thinking across the organisation.

COMPETENCIES

Leadership Competencies:

• Strategic Thinking
• Business Acumen
• Communication
• Influence
• Leadership
• Creativity and Innovation
• Delivering Results
• Adaptability
• Collaboration

Knowledge and Skills:

• Design Thinking & CX Expertise: Deep understanding of human-centered design methodologies and how to translate CX insights into digital solutions.
• UI/UX Mastery: Strong track record in designing enterprise-wide interfaces that are visually compelling and functionally seamless.
• Strategic Orientation: Ability to align experience design with business objectives, customer need, and long-term digital strategy.
• Leadership & Influence: Skilled at leading multidisciplinary teams (designers, UX researchers, UI developers) and influencing senior stakeholders.
• Analytical & Data-Driver: Uses data and behavioral insights to iterate and improve design outcomes.
• Technology Fluency: Familiar with agile delivery, digital platforms, and emerging technologies (AI, conversational interfaces, personalisation engines).
• Experience design strategy
• Human-centred design and design thinking
• Customer journey mapping
• Digital platform experience optimisation
• Agile and iterative delivery
• Stakeholder engagement and influence
• Experience performance tracking
• Innovation and transformation enablement
• Governance and quality assurance
• Data-driven design decisions

Education

Bachelor's Degree: Information Technology

Absa Bank Limited is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. In compliance with the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998, preference will be given to suitable candidates from designated groups whose appointments will contribute towards achievement of equitable demographic representation of our workforce profile and add to the diversity of the Bank.

Absa Bank Limited reserves the right not to make an appointment to the post as advertised

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