Head of Design Research

Join us as the **Head of** **User Research & Insights **and lead the newly formed user research & insights capability that helps unlock power of research in helping inform the bank’s product strategy as well as design execution. You will support, directly and indirectly our team of designers and researchers crafting experiences across our Personal Banking, Business Banking, Wealth Management, and Deposits products.

In this key role, you’ll report to the Chief Design Officer and partner with other design leaders, product, and business teams to drive our _understanding_ strategy to help elevate the design practice across Macquarie Bank. You’ll be responsible for directly managing a small team of researchers and indirectly help the larger team of service/strategic, UX and UI designers answer questions effectively, helping them design for excellence, based on a deeper understanding of our customers, their contexts, and the evolving marketplace.
- What you’ll do: _

**Capability Owner**
- Help envision the strategy and operationalisation of user research in the company, across the product development lifecycle.
- Define and build an efficient research operations including resourcing, planning and process. Identify team needs and implement required changes in process, tools, documentation, and asset management to make sure researchers and designers are working at optimum efficiency.
- You’ll work with the other design leaders to develop and evolve of our research and testing practice, ensuring quality and efficiency in generating user insights and gathering feedback, which can be used to influence product backlogs and design deliverables.
- You’ll setup and run a centralised COE where different product and design stakeholders can go to help answer complex questions.

**Best practice**
- You’ll use your experience as a leader to support and empower researchers & designers to develop their skills and expertise, enabling your direct and indirect reports to grow in their careers and maximize influence and impact.
- You will bring extensive experience, ideally in a large corporate, across generative and evaluative research to aid with decision making.
- You’ll command a sound understanding of mixed methods research, with an expertise in two to three research methods.
- Contribute to strategic decision making with the rest of design leaders to help define what good looks like from a user experience & design perspective.
- In collaboration with other design leaders, product leads, engineers, and business leaders, you will help set the direction for the teams in terms of design discovery and experimentation to uncover opportunities and progress strategic design initiatives forward.

***Leadership**
- Lead the execution of the research strategy and champion best practice as you guide the team through all phases of design development, from ideation to execution and post-launch success tracking and iteration, across the double diamond.
- Build and mentor a small direct and a larger indirect team of researchers and designers.
- Define career pathways for researchers, including strategies to attract and grow fresh talent at Macquarie bank.
- Raise the bar in how we understand our customers and their contexts.
- What you’ll bring to the role: _
- Demonstrable experience in building and scaling a user research capability, preferably in an enterprise environment.
- Excellent communication skills (oral and written) and a collaborative and respectful approach to leading a team. You’ll have proven experience consistently demonstrating credibility in cross-functional interactions.
- A user and data-focused design mentality and commitment to design excellence, constantly looking to hone your team’s instincts through user feedback and data insight. You understand that good ideas and insights are only worth what gets delivered to customers.

If this sounds like you, please send your CV and a portfolio/case study link. We’d like you to be able to show your abilities through an interview process that is tailored for a research leaders. Besides interviewing with key stakeholders, you’ll have the opportunity to present work through a portfolio that will focus on showcasing experience where you have previously helped build and embed user research capabilities.

**Design at Macquarie Bank**

The design function at Macquarie, headed by our Chief Design Officer, helps envision and deliver how customers experience our various products and services across multiple digital channels. We span across the full design spectrum, from early-stage conceptual design and research to delivering pixel-perfect interfaces on our digital platforms. We follow a human-centered, data-led approach to design and seek to win by collaborating with our partners and helping deliver exceptional customer experiences as a team.

**About Banking and Financial Services**

Banking and Financial Services is Macquarie’s retail banking and financial