Urgent Search: Head of Design

As Head of Design, India, you'll be leading WongDoody's five studios in India, responsible for a growing team of 450+ designers. WongDoody is Infosys' Creative and Technology Agency globally, bringing together various agency acquisitions and Infosys' own experience design teams under one global brand. We are a team of fun, fearless, egoless, values-driven and collaborative problem-solvers distributed around the world with one goal in mind - unlocking what's next for people and brands. We create digital products, services, platforms, digital marketing and immersive experiences for the world's largest organisations. Backed by Infosys' scale and access to clients, we create and deliver experiences end-to-end for our clients in a truly global integrated agile delivery model. In India, we are already one of the country's largest design studios, and our ambition is to become the best digital experience and marketing agency in India building and scaling our studios' competencies across Digital Marketing, Experience Design and Immersive Experiences including virtual production. Our vision of a truly global studio model is different from the large agency networks and most of our competitors: We believe great talent and design can come from anywhere, and hence we position our India studios on par with those in the rest of the world in craft and quality outcomes, staffing project teams globally across studios, to bring the best minds together to solve a problem through creativity and technology. We want your help to drive this vision forward working with your peers globally towards goal of 65% of all work within WongDoody being delivered from India studios. The ideal candidate for this role is a true design practitioner who grew and matured in experience and remit, but did not lose touch with hands-on design, and can guide the planning of design thinking workshops, inform how best to approach a user research or service design challenge, structure a CX Center of Excellence for a client, or setup a design system regardless of the region where a client is headquartered. Your responsibilities as Head of Design, India: - Lead the scale of the design operation from India. In terms of the growing team size across 5 studios in India, in terms of the number and complexity and scale of engagements for clients, and in the amount of deep collaboration with the other 17 studios globally insuring best-in-class outcomes for design. - Drive design quality, craft, and practice, continuously enhancing overall competency of the team. Drive the team to create award-winning work, and setup the India studios as true peers in quality of outcomes to all other WongDoody studios globally. - Evolve our service offering and value propositions to our clients - developing new models for how we design closer with clients and technology teams in truly agile engagements across locations - ensuring our propositions are aligned with key market trends. - Provide strategic design thought leadership to the whole organisation, publish and speak at internal and external events to further build WongDoody's reputation internally and externally in the market, particularly in India. Strong strategic thought, as well as an engaging presentation style are key. - In new business, guide and direct the strategy, approach, and concept creation for proposals. Define the storyline for pitches and presentations and deliver engaging and inspiring presentations to clients to drive higher-value design outcomes over volume outputs. Drive follow-through to insure conversion of design scope. - Facilitate design-focused sessions and engaging workshops with C-suite and C-suite minus 1 client from the world's largest organisations across all industries. A solid understanding and quick learning of industry specifics and business models is vital. - Cultivate relationships with new and existing clients, both onsite (we have very frequent visits from client delegations) and remotely. Uncover new opportunities to apply strategic thinking and creative craft to solve challenges for them leveraging scale and quality of India studios for best outcomes. - Assess performance and provide career mentorship and performance decisions for senior members of the design team. - Help attract the best new hires to the studios, building WongDoody brand in India and insuring hiring standards and processes are maintained for highest quality of outcomes. - Work closely with the global CXO, and your regional counterparts in North America, UK, EMEA, and APAC and with heads of New Business to evolve best practice, establish training and refine models for engaging talent across the organization to meet client needs. - Provide directional oversight of individual project teams' work and assume overall accountability for it, raising the quality of design outcomes across teams. - Build and maintain a studio environment where each member of the team can do their best work, grow and thrive. Through the Creative Democracy we empower all our people and our clients with a voice and a vote in the creative process. It's our belief that egoless collaboration will always garner the best results. - Build and strengthen the multidisciplinary skillsets and quality of craft of design teams across the studio, while also looking ahead at key market trends impacting client needs to future-proof our teams. QUALIFICATIONS - 15+ years of relevant industry experience; 7+ years leadership/management experience of teams of 50+ designers. - A background in the agency world or running large-scale teams for startups and organisations in-house. Entrepreneurial spirit as a co-founder in a startup or agency is a plus. Previous roles may include Global Creative Director, Senior Experience Director, VP Design, etc. - Extensive knowledge and experience with driving and applying user-centered design processes while working collaboratively with customers, along with cross-functional teams including engineering, product management, and user research. - Mastery in Product Design, Service Design, User Research, demonstrated through a portfolio of outstanding work performed by teams led and directed by you - References from clients, team, and peers about the outcomes you achieved and your leadership style. - Proven experience building aligned connections both regionally and globally as a respected leader in the design community. - Highly proactive with outstanding communication and interpersonal skills. Great presentation skills and ability to engage with C-suite clients. - Experience working on developing and launching new growth areas for clients, and/or applying design to areas such as culture change and strategy.