Senior Innovation Design Lead

Senior Innovation Design Lead, Global Design Team, IWPB

Some careers grow faster than others.

Some careers shine brighter than others. 

If you’re looking for a career that will help you stand out, join HSBC, and fulfil your potential. Whether you want a career that could take you to the top, or simply take you in an exciting new direction, HSBC offers opportunities, support and rewards that will take you further. 

Join the Global Design Team within International Wealth and Premier Banking (IWPB) at HSBC, where we craft forward-looking, best-in-class experiences for our affluent customers worldwide. We combine strategic insight with human-centred design to create services that anticipate customer needs and shape the future of banking.

As a Senior Innovation Design Lead, you’ll lead multidisciplinary design initiatives that explore emerging trends, technologies, and customer behaviours. You will manage a small team of designers and collaborate with senior stakeholders to bring bold ideas to life guiding early-stage concepts through to prototypes and pilots.

This role is an opportunity to influence global experience strategy and lead the creation of meaningful future-facing solutions within one of the world’s largest financial institutions.

As an HSBC employee in the UK, you will have access to tailored professional development opportunities and a competitive pay and benefits package. This includes private healthcare for all UK-based employees, enhanced maternity and adoption pay and support when you return to work, and a contributory pension scheme with a generous employer contribution.

We are currently seeking an experienced individual to join this team in the role of Senior Innovation Design Lead.

In this role, you will:

• Lead Strategic Design Thinking: Define opportunity areas and shape speculative and future-focused design concepts, aligning them with business strategy and customer needs.
• Drive Design Direction: Guide concept development across journeys, service blueprints, storyboards, and prototypes, helping teams translate abstract ideas into tangible outputs.
• Influence & Collaborate Across the Business: Engage senior stakeholders across product, strategy, technology, and research, using storytelling and strategic framing to align thinking and secure buy-in.
• Manage and Develop Talent: Lead, mentor, and support a team of designers—helping them grow their skills, deliver high-impact work, and contribute to a culture of innovation.
• Embed Future Thinking in Real-World Contexts: Ensure that future design ideas stay grounded in business realities, customer needs, and global market nuances.

To be successful in this role you should meet the following requirements:

• Deep Experience in Innovation and Service Design: Proven experience shaping design-led innovation projects with clear business and user value—preferably in complex or regulated industries.
• Strategic Stakeholder Management: Confidence managing senior-level relationships and influencing cross-functional partners with clarity and credibility.
• Visionary and Hands-On Design Leadership: A strong portfolio showing concept framing, future scenarios, and experience guiding early-stage ideas to a testable level of fidelity.
• People Management Skills: Experience leading designers or cross-functional teams, with a focus on coaching, capability-building, and inclusive team culture.
• Passion for Emerging Trends: A forward-thinking perspective on customer behaviour, technology, and culture, with a natural curiosity to explore and challenge conventions.
  
  

Opening a world of opportunity. You’ll achieve more when you join HSBC.

At HSBC we look to enable our employees to better balance their work / life priorities and have the flexibility required to meet challenging needs as they progress through different life stages. Where possible we will consider the following flexible working options: part-time working, job sharing, term-time working, and working from home and staggered hours. If in considering a role with HSBC, you have a need for some flexibility in your working arrangements please discuss this with the recruitment team in the early stages of the application process.

We believe that being open to a range of perspectives and cultures is vital for our business. We work hard to ensure our diverse and inclusive workplace reflects the communities we serve. We want everyone to achieve their potential – regardless of their gender, ethnicity, disability, religion, sexual orientation, or age. If you have a different way of seeing the world, we are interested in hearing from you.

HSBC is committed to being an inclusive employer and providing an inclusive and accessible recruitment process for all. We will provide reasonable adjustments to remove any disadvantage to you being considered for this role. We are proud members of the Disability Confident Scheme and will offer an interview to disabled candidates who meet the minimum criteria for the role.

If you would like to receive any information in a different way or would like us to do anything differently to help you apply for our roles, please contact our Recruitment Helpdesk:

Email: hsbc.recruitment@hsbc.com
Telephone: +44 2078328500.
 
Within the workplace you will have access to various employee resource groups which aim to promote and achieve a healthy work / life balance and support our diversity ambitions. HSBC has processes in place to avoid nepotism.  This means we will avoid circumstances in which the appearance or possibility of conflicts of interest may exist within the hiring process.