Company description Publicis Sapient, the digital business transformation hub of Publicis Groupe, helps clients drive growth and efficiency in a world where consumer behaviour and technology are catalysts for social and commercial change at an unprecedented pace. With 20,000+ people and over 100 offices around the globe, we help unlock value through a start-up mindset and modern methods, fusing strategy, consulting, and customer experience with agile engineering and problem-solving creativity. Combined with our culture of innovation, we deliver on complex transformation initiatives that accelerate our clients’ businesses by creating products and services that engage current and new customers. In our experience design teams, we use empathy to create products that are fully human-centred. Our teams must reflect the different experiences of the people that use them and include people of colour, women, people identifying as LGBTQIA+, carers, people of all beliefs, ages and abilities. We value a diversity of voices and perspectives in our team. For more information visit: https://www.publicissapient.com/locations/digital-transformation-in-australia Overview As a Customer Experience and Innovation Lead, you will play a leading role, and work in collaboration with cross-functional teams, on client projects to create meaningful and impactful solutions. Experience Strategists and Service Designers at Publicis Sapient design and enable innovative and truly connected outcomes for businesses and their customers. They are consultants who champion the customer in all phases of strategy, from context and problem framing to the development of roadmaps and design as well as delivery of defined initiatives. Fundamentally, Experience Strategy enables us to design and build businesses that thrive in the modern world. This Senior Manager level role will lead teams on all phases of design and strategy – from leading client engagement, research and context framing to value proposition development, the definition of roadmaps to supporting delivery of the experience vision and strategy into detailed design and delivery through ongoing consultation. You will also support proposals, pitches and business development on Experience-led propositions and play a role in business growth. Your impact Autonomously lead client engagement and delivery if Customer Experience Strategy and Service Design projects and drive through to final recommendations and delivery. Lead a team of strategists, service designers, closely collaborating with technology and data colleagues on differentiating propositions and solutions. Proactively work with stakeholders to frame the customer and business problem, and the mutual value of recommendations, initiatives, solutions, and phases of a strategic roadmap. Actively identify and define new opportunities to bring value to client engagements and ultimately help our client’s businesses to succeed beyond a specific ask Understand and can articulate how design contributes to the client’s organisational goals. Apply human-centered design to problem solving and service design methods to enable employees and organisations to support customer experience excellence Lead teams to deliver the research strategy, approach and Research Ops, ensuring research activities are of a high standard and provide traceability Lead a range of customer research techniques such as stakeholder and customer interviews, surveys, contextual inquiries/field visits, ethnography, data analysis, benchmark studies, industry, and trend research. Capture, translate, communicate and advocate findings from customer research to client stakeholders and internal teams, ensuring data and observations are translated into actionable insights, implications, and initiatives for our clients. Confidently present design outcomes to clients and recommend changes to experience, processes and systems to the client and provide evidence of measurable value to the client's business and their customers Facilitate the creation of design artefacts - e.g., personas, as-is and future state customer journeys, service blueprints, storyboards, prototypes, etc. Design, drive and facilitate creative/ideation/co-design workshops with senior stakeholders leveraging design thinking methodologies Confident and fluent in relevant workshop facilitation principles, processes and tools. Evolve, conceptualise and communicate new ideas using storytelling techniques. Leverage lean approaches that use the principles of design thinking to build strategies through continuous prototyping to test desirability. Contribute to the product roadmap / backlog and shape requirements for delivery. Guide and coach designers and non-designers to support their development and uplift their design thinking capabilities internally and externally Collaborate closely with a team of business and strategy consultants, product owner, designers, business analysts and technologists and contribute to the development of business cases Help to grow the business – representing the Experience capability and supporting our industry go-to-market and sales teams across Financial Services, Public Sector, Energy & Commodities and Retail Participate in the development and ongoing improvement of industry propositions and capability services. Act as the champion for customer, market, and technology insights and strategy with clients and internal teams. As part of career growth, contribute to thought leadership internally and externally. Your Skills & Experience Proven record of relevant experience (10+ years) in lead position from a consulting practice or digital agency You effectively lead high performing teams on fast paced projects to achieve measurable client impact. You have a strong understanding of design craft, and have roots in designing experiences and solutions for a range of digital products and services You have examples of work where you demonstrate your ability of complex problem solving, translating insights into opportunities to arrive at a design solution that created impact You champion the customer, and you are passionate about delivering meaningful experiences which positively impact the lives of people. You take an empathetic approach grounded in deep understanding of business, brand and customers You are able to see the big picture and conversely, also zoom in on the details to impactful moments of the customer experience You display empathy, intellectual curiosity and openness to learn about new industries, new fields, new disciplines and are excited by change and learning You are commercially minded, you can identify and pursue new opportunities to bring value to client engagements You are both a practitioner and a leader, which means you are comfortable being on the tools in the full end to end process, but equally can step back and play an advisory role when called for You are a lead who knows how to rally, inspire and supervise highly talented team members with big ambitions and aspirations You have excellent communication and facilitation skills, and the ability to work with senior stakeholders. You can efficiently plan and estimate project work You lead by example. Qualifications Prior experience in retail, financial services, public sector or energy & commodities clients is a plus Incorporate AI tooling into your design processes and possess a strong understanding of AI interaction models and understanding of emerging agentic experiences. Experience working in an Agile environment with cross-functional product teams (Engineering, Product and Experience) i.e., Scrum or Product Owner Certification. Experience working in innovation incubation or cross-departmental teams.