Product Design Director, Innovation

The Innovation and Global Digital Partnerships organization defines the next phase of Innovation for Visa leading the development and commercialization of new Visa products and solutions for Big Tech, Fintech, Governments, and Platform partnerships.

Visa's Innovation team drives growth and evolution of customer-centered, market-leading products and services, from the ground up. Bringing together product managers, category experts, design practitioners, strategists, and technologists, we tackle key portfolio challenges to unlock new growth opportunities and create purposeful new payment and commerce experiences to power global commerce ecosystems.

Role Description

Leading our Europe Product Innovation Design team, you will grow our product design practice and develop next-generation payment services. As a Director, you will lead a team of UX designers and partner with product and technology groups, driving market responsive, fit for purpose use cases and value propositions.

In this role you will be engaging with big tech and fintech clients along with issuers, acquirers, and merchants, to lead design efforts towards understanding, ideating, and building best-in-class experiences across a wide consumer, business, government, digital and data product portfolios. You'll drive your team to clearly define the user journeys to achieve competitive advantage for new features, by driving compelling enterprise customer and end-user experience designs, compliant with regulatory standards.

This role reports to the VP of Design for Global Innovation, and is based in Berlin, Germany.

Responsibilities

1. Build, inspire, and lead a multi-disciplinary product design team with deep research, UX/UI, rapid prototyping, piloting & testing expertise.
2. Impact the business by broadening its understanding of current problems and long-tail opportunities. Tackle undefined and unique challenges with longitudinal and iterative cross-sectional research, analysis, and applied strategy.
3. Evolve product and UX strategies mindful of dynamic market shifts in North America, emerging technologies, design and technology trends.
4. Lead design for the product innovation pipeline - from discovery and design, to launch, testing and optimization - to deliver exceptional pilot experiences within regulatory constraints.
5. Grow and establish new research, design and technology partnerships required for scaled execution and delivery.
6. Communicate effectively within and beyond the role, demonstrating the ability to influence executive leadership.
7. Collaborate with internal and external stakeholders to align diverse perspectives and ensure meaningful business outcomes.
8. Cultivate strong relationships with technology and business partners, working together to translate business strategies into innovative products and user experiences.

This is a hybrid position. Hybrid employees can alternate time between both remote and office. Employees in hybrid roles are expected to work from the office 2-3 set days a week (determined by leadership/site), with a general guidepost of being in the office 50% or more of the time based on business needs.

Minimum Requirements

• Extensive professional experience in a similar role within digital payment solutions, fintech, or mobile money sectors, with a demonstrable track record of successful product launches.
• Deep expertise in user-centered design methodologies and ability to lead design and research teams in the creation of innovative digital products and experiences optimized for North American users, both consumer and enterprise.
• Experience with consumer digital payment platforms and systems prevalent in Europe (wallets, ecomm and PoS/in-store).
• Experience working across key categories like open banking, data, digital lending, digital identity, checkout and crypto or similar.
• Experience building products leveraging AI models or AI-augmented capabilities is a plus.
• Robust competency in leading product innovation, design, and management.
• Demonstrated commitment to building and mentoring diverse teams and product inclusion best practices.
• Strong strategic vision with extensive analytical abilities to identify growth opportunities and market trends.
• Superior communication and interpersonal skills with the ability to bridge gaps between disparate business functions.

Visa is an EEO Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.