Product Design Lead
Manufacturers and Traders Trust Co
Overview:
As a Product Design Lead on the M&T Experience Design & Innovation team, you will lead experience strategy and product design across complex customer and colleague experiences.
Working closely with Product, Technology, Research, and business partners, you will uncover customer needs, shape product direction, and create experiences that drive meaningful customer and business outcomes.
This role requires a strategic design leader who can guide teams through ambiguity, influence decisions, and turn insights into action.
Primary Responsibilities:
Lead experience strategy, discovery, and design efforts across products, services, and customer journeys.
Define and communicate experience vision through research, journey mapping, information architecture, content strategy, and service design.
Partner with cross-functional stakeholders to align priorities, influence roadmaps, and drive customer-centered outcomes.
Facilitate workshops and collaborative sessions that build alignment and accelerate decision-making.
Drive end-to-end experience quality across products, channels, and touchpoints.
Champion accessibility, design standards, and scalable experience practices.
Mentor designers and contribute to hiring, onboarding, and talent development.
Ensure adherence to compliance, risk, and governance requirements.
Scope of Responsibilities:
This role will establish and evolve foundational experience assets across Commercial Treasury experiences, including customer understanding, journey frameworks, navigation models, and experience strategies.
The role is expected to guide work across multiple initiatives, influence portfolio direction, and help create a more cohesive end-to-end experience across products, channels, and customer journeys.
Managerial/Supervisory Responsibilities:
Lead, mentor, and potentially manage designers across one or more product areas. Provide coaching, strategic guidance, and design leadership while helping teams deliver high-quality experiences and achieve customer and business outcomes.
Education and Experience Required:
- Bachelor's degree in UX Design, Human Computer Interaction, Industrial Design, or similar, and a minimum of 5 years relevant experience or in lieu of a degree, a combined minimum of 9 years education and/or relevant/product design work experience.
- Proven expertise in Product Design/Human-Centered Design
- Experience creating use cases, flow diagrams, prototypes, scenarios and wireframes to communicate ideas and designs to unique groups of stakeholders
- Understanding of strengths and shortcomings of different design thinking methods, including when and how to apply them during product development processes
- Hands-on experience of designing for a variety of digital touchpoints and non-digital channels and supporting the delivery of those designs
- Experience managing programs supporting the full product development process, from vision to launch to iteration
- Project and people management skills; experience functioning as a project leader as well as an individual contributor
- Strong ability to mentor and educate others on the value and principles of good experience design
- Team player who is comfortable navigating ambiguity within a self-directed culture
- Ability to establish strong working relationships with colleagues, clients, and key stakeholders
- Extensive experience conducting remote and in-person workshops; strong familiarity with supporting tools such as Miro and Webex
- Experience with design and prototyping tools such as Adobe, Sketch, InVision, Figma or other similar tools used widely in the design community
- Proficiency in industry best practices for desktop, mobile and web applications
- Experience with accessibility standards, cross-platform issues, mobile user interfaces and systems-thinking
Education and Experience Preferred:
Customer-centric mindset with a deep understanding of customer needs, behaviors, motivations, and pain points.
Strategic thinking that connects customer needs, business goals, and technology capabilities into a clear experience vision.
Design leadership that guides teams through ambiguity and drives experience-led decision-making.
Systems thinking with an understanding of how products, channels, journeys, and processes connect into an end-to-end experience.
Facilitation and influence that builds alignment across diverse stakeholders and drives productive conversations.
Strong storytelling and communication skills that translate complex ideas into clear, compelling narratives for teams and senior leaders.
Collaboration and partnership across organizational boundaries to achieve shared outcomes.
Ownership and accountability for delivering results and driving initiatives forward.
Curiosity and continuous improvement through learning, experimentation, and challenging assumptions.
Location
Buffalo, New York, United States of AmericaSummary
Lead experience strategy and product design across customer journeys and channels.
Job title
Product Design Lead
Experience level
5+ years
Minimum experience
5+ years exp
Industry
financial services
Location requirements
Buffalo, NY; remote work not specified.
Salary
$103k–$172k
Management role
Yes
Required skills
Preferred skills
Specializations
Structured locations inferred from the posting.
Buffalo, NY, USA