Innovation Consulting, Design Team Lead, Senior Manager/Director

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Job Category

Sales

Job Details

Innovation Consulting, Design Team Lead, Senior Manager/Director

Salesforce Ignite is a global customer-facing innovation and transformation team within the fastest growing and most innovative company of the decade (see more from Forbes here).

Ignite provides a unique form of creative advisory service to Salesforce's top customers, blending capabilities in design, research, and strategy. We engage with the C-suites of the world’s biggest brands to help them understand and reframe their most acute innovation challenges, collaborating with them to identify new opportunities and reshape the future. Igniters bring to bear their critical thinking skills and creativity to create catered, innovative solutions that help customers grow their businesses and help Salesforce chart a path to $50 billion in revenue.

We are looking for a Design Team Lead. This is a senior role with people management, design practice building, client advisory, and project leadership responsibilities. The Design Team Lead is responsible for inspiring and developing the Ignite EMEA design team, working with business development team members to scope engagements, getting hands-on as a designer on customer engagements, and working across the Salesforce ecosystem to help our customers digitally transform.

If you are interested in:

• Combining design excellence, business understanding, critical thinking, and creative instinct to help some of the world’s largest companies design their futures and create better experiences for their customers

• Working across multiple streams of activity, such as hands-on project delivery, presenting to customers, and coaching team members

• Excelling at designing and communicating ambitious visions to senior partners and to customers

• Inspiring and developing designers to build new skills, stretch into new opportunities, and experiment with new ways of working

• Working in close collaboration (remote and face-to-face) in cross-disciplinary teams

• Using design strategically to catalyse change at the executive and C-suite level

...then we’d like to hear from you!

The job is an EMEA role and, as such, can be based in one of our current city hubs (Berlin, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Munich, Helsinki, Paris, Amsterdam, London) or remote, with travel across EMEA for key customer and Salesforce collaborator meetings as required. There is also potential for limited customer-facing global travel.

Responsibilities

This is a management role with the following leadership responsibilities:

• People Management - Actively contribute to and support the development of direct reports by finding opportunities, effectively delivering constructive feedback, and advocating within the organisation

• Design Mentorship - Inspire, guide, and coach designers and other team members to develop

• Craft Advocacy - As a seasoned design practitioner, apply design strategically to innovation challenges, introduce and champion new methods, deliverables, and processes, and build relationships within the design community at Salesforce and beyond

• Team Building - Foster a sense of team, promote collaboration, cultivate psychological safety, and help manage change in a fast-paced, dynamic environment

• Engagement Leadership - Lead cross-functional teams through complex digital transformation engagements to deliver high-quality outputs, create compelling visions, and garner executive alignment and consensus for change

• Partner Management - Create relationships and build trust across the vast Salesforce, customer, and partner ecosystems to align resources, win hearts and minds, and find ways to help all parties achieve their goals

• Thought Leadership - Synthesise takeaways across projects to create compelling, practical thought leadership to inspire Salesforce colleagues and customers

• Customer Engagement - Quickly gain trust as a digital advisor to executive and C-suite level customers by inspiring, facilitating conversations, and asking good questions

• Operational Excellence - Effectively manage the processes around hiring new team members, project reporting and updates, and required approvals for direct reports

Required Experience and Skills

We’re looking for someone with:

• Significant experience working with customer executives on complex innovation challenges and leading cross-functional teams consisting of design, research, and strategy

• Experience in leading design teams and cross-functional project teams

• Demonstrated ability to influence, motivate, and collaborate across multi-disciplinary teams

• Demonstrated experience in applying design thinking and user-centered practices to solve innovation challenges

• Demonstrated experience in gaining trust, guiding, influencing, and facilitating C-level executives, internal and external partners

• Strong emotional intelligence, understanding how to balance confidence with humility, and remaining approachable and measured when faced with adversity

• Adept at managing ambiguity and helping other team members thrive in it

• Enthusiastic about working in and creating a culture of critique, collaboration, and iteration

• Exemplary verbal, presentation, and written communication skills, plus natural facilitation skills with an ability to balance conversation in mixed groups and manage political dynamics

• Ability to multi-task, prioritise, and manage time effectively across teams, projects, and clients simultaneously

• Positive attitude, naturally curious with ability to teach, mentor and develop others

• Fluency in English

• Experience in enterprise tech, including SaaS (preferred)

Additional preferred experience

• Fluency in a modern European language

• Hand sketching and storyboarding

• Experience designing for mobile apps, web, accessibility, and analytics

• Skill and experience in physical prototyping

• Proven entrepreneurial bias for action with the ability to resolve problems with limited resources and input

• Experience in articulating the value of design through teaching, publishing, speaking, etc.

We welcome candidates with various backgrounds and work experiences. If you don't have a strategic design background, but believe your skills are transferrable and can demonstrate the following experience and skills, then please do apply:

• Proven track record leveraging design to communicate complex ideas in ways that are understandable and unforgettable.

• Success in designing future experiences at the intersection of purpose, impact, and technical platforms for all collaborators using service, interaction, and digital design.

• Deep experience simplifying complexity, with sharp analytical skills

• Experience taking a product from an initial idea to a minimum viable product to launch

• Ability to think strategically and analytically about business and consulting challenges

• Intuitive curiosity, with a passion and skill for compelling, human-centric storytelling

• Experience working with ambiguity and quick pivots in response to unanticipated change

NEXT STEPS

A job description is never the full picture so please reach out to our recruiting team and let’s have a conversation. We’re excited to meet you.

*LI-Y

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