Practice Lead: Product Design at Old Mutual South Africa

Job Description

• As the practice lead of Product Design, the individual is accountable for the strength of the competency of the multi-disciplinary design of product experiences within OM Group.
• This directly includes UX and UI, but also includes the integrated methodology for the delivery of product experience design in a multi-disciplinary fashion with teams from products and propositions, market insights units, innovation, content, customer experience, technology and feature teams.

Responsibilities
Practice Leadership

• Develop and manage the strategy for product experience design as a capability within OM.
• Ensure that our practice thinking is informed by emerging trends, technologies, and regulations in the financial services industry, incorporating them into our practice development to give us a competitive edge.
• Develop the policies and procedures for the practice in line with the overall design value chain and within the frameworks of the Design C.o.E.
• Own the maturity of the practice against appropriate definitions and ensure that we are meeting our maturity goals.
• Use data to make informed decisions on how to improve the practice’s impact and alignment with the business’s objectives.
• Champion the practice across the Old Mutual Group, supporting the development of sponsorship and practice maturity through a change management model.

Ways-of-Work

• Work closely with Design Operations to establish the operating model of the practice within the broader operating model of the Design C.o.E.
• Define the methods, standards, tools and techniques that Old Mutual will use to execute product design through the design value chain stages of:
• Design Strategy
• Solution / Proposition Innovation
• Architectural Design
• Design Implementation

Design Continuous Improvement

• Ensure that Old Mutual’s product design approach is aligned to best practices and meets the context of the organisation’s strategy and operations, working closely with design partner areas, such as Product Owners, Business Owners, The Agile CoE, Customer Experience and internal to design partner areas such as Research & Simulation, Design Strategy and Architecture and the Design System.
• Define the ways of work down to an implementation level through playbooks and guardrails that support Old Mutual Product Designers to execute against them with repeatability and quality.
• Develop a contribution model that organically builds and innovates on the methods and standards through collaboration with the design community, ensuring that we are continually optimising and improving the product design ways-of-work.

Skills Development

• Build and implement a robust people management framework that fosters the development of product design talent across the team.
• Curate a structured skills development program that identifies gaps and ensures continuous learning, growth, and alignment with evolving business needs.
• Collaborate with external partners to design and deliver training programs that enhance the team’s capabilities and foster a culture of excellence.
• Establish and maintain tracking mechanisms to monitor progress, performance, and impact of skills development initiatives.
• Cultivate a culture of knowledge-sharing, fostering an environment where the team can learn from each other and grow together.
• Develop training initiatives and ensure the team stays up to date with industry best practices and emerging trends.
• Work closely with L&D partners, including the Design Academy to integrate product design into Old Mutuals learning framework, both for practitioners and for associated partner areas, such as Product Owners, other design capabilities etc.

Operations Support

• Ensure that all the operations needed to execute product design are integrated and operationally supported through design operations, directly executing operational responsibilities that are allocated to the practice lead.
• Support the organisation in tool decisions, acquisition and optimisation for product design.
• Support resourcing processes and decisions as it pertains to product design, facilitating recruitment or performance management where needed.
• Ensure that there are appropriate measurement and governance frameworks in place for the performance and quality management of product design, working along with delivery leads to facilitate expected outcomes.
• Support the establishment of engagement practices within the product design community, such as a community forum for practitioners and non-practitioners.
• Foster a culture of engagement, innovation and collaboration across the product design community.
• Prepare and present monthly reports on product design activities, including key accomplishments, challenges, and opportunities for the broader leadership team.

Product Design Leadership

• Support the Design Delivery Leadership structures to correctly scope, plan and execute product design efforts across the group.
• Directly execute senior-level product design work where required in support of business objectives, especially as they pertain to design strategies, standards and architectures.
• Establish a robust quality management framework for product design, that is executed through the line delivery management structures.
• Establish and execute on quality assurance across all the delivery portfolios to ensure that the practice is contributing correctly to design outcomes.
• Broadly coach and mentor practitioners and non-practitioners across the group to further the practice.

Working Experience & Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in design, marketing, technology, business administration or a related field. An Honour’s or Master’s degree is a plus.
• 7+ years working in the field of product design, 3+ within roles that involved product design leadership or the development of mature product design practices.
• Experience working in an Omni-Channel Digital and Agile environment,  with cross-functional collaboration, working with product, engineering, and business teams.
• Proven track record of delivering high-performance team and quality outcomes across complex, omni-channel design environments.

Technical Expertise

• In-depth knowledge of design processes, user-centred design principles, and design system creation and management.
• Strong expertise in design tools (e.g., Sketch, Figma, Adobe Creative Suite) and front-end development principles (HTML, CSS, JavaScript).
• Deep understanding of UX/UI methodologies, including user research, wireframing, prototyping, usability testing, accessibility and visual design.
• Strong leadership and community management skills.
• Skilled in implementing people management frameworks to foster team growth and performance.
• Experience in building career and learning paths, and facilitating skills development activities and learning tracks.
• Up-to-date with industry trends and emerging technologies.
• Experience in senior design leadership, motivating teams to excel, mentoring and coaching teams towards high performance and integrating with executive business stakeholders towards the achievement of business goals.

Skills

• Action Planning
• Commercialization
• Computer Literacy
• Customer Analysis
• Data Analysis
• Data Collection Methods
• IT Implementation
• IT Systems Integration
• Market Analysis
• Marketing Communications (MarCom)
• Market Research Analysis
• Planning and organisational skills
• Product Development
• Project Management
• User Experience (UX) Design

Competencies

Education

• NQF Level 7 - Degree, Advance Diploma or Postgraduate Certificate or equivalent

Closing Date

• 27 June 2025