Senior Service Designer/Innovation Lead

As part of the Cabin Crew, you will play a pivotal role in designing and orchestrating end-to-end services and experiences for our clients. You’ll help them navigate complex ecosystems of people, processes, policies, and technology while connecting customer experiences to the operations and systems that enable them.

You’ll collaborate closely with clients to understand their business objectives, assess their current capabilities, and shape strategies, services, and products that deliver real value. Your expertise in human-centered and service design will be instrumental in identifying opportunities, mapping and improving services, and guiding teams through ambiguity toward confident decisions.

We’re seeking a Strategist who embodies our passion for creating exceptional user and customer experiences through innovation. This is a hands-on individual contributor role for someone who can think in systems, lead with service design, and still roll up their sleeves to do the work, balancing strategy, design, and technology to solve real-world problems.

Responsibilities:

Lead service and product initiatives end-to-end

• Lead and execute service and product initiatives from discovery through definition and into delivery, using human-centered and service design frameworks to ensure everything is deeply rooted in real user and customer needs.
• Develop and execute experience, service, and product strategies that align user needs, business goals, and operational feasibility.

Drive service design and ecosystem thinking

• Lead service blueprinting, journey mapping, ecosystem mapping, and stakeholder mapping efforts to align teams on how a service works today and how it should work tomorrow.
• Connect frontstage experiences (customers, end users, partners) with backstage realities (teams, processes, systems, policies) to design services that are both delightful and deliverable.
• Identify gaps, failure points, and opportunities across the end-to-end service, beyond any single touchpoint or interface.

Create clarity in ambiguous spaces

• Facilitate problem framing and visioning work when the problem and solution are not yet clear, helping teams understand what to tackle first and why.
• Design and structure experiments, prototypes, and pilots that test not just interfaces, but entire service moments (people + process + tech).
• Translate complex ecosystem insights into clear narratives, options, and recommendations for decision-makers.

Champion human-centered & service design practices

• Oversee and integrate user research processes, including interviews, contextual inquiry, concept testing, and usability testing to inform service and product direction.
• Champion experience and service design practices (including UX), guiding multidisciplinary teams in creating user-centric, service-aware designs and prototypes that adhere to best practices in usability and accessibility.
• Advocate for a culture of innovation, encouraging creative problem-solving and exploration of new ideas and technologies to enhance user and customer experience.

Orchestrate cross-functional collaboration

• Collaborate with stakeholders across strategy, design, product, engineering, data, and operations to ensure strategic alignment and successful delivery of services and products.
• Use service design artifacts (blueprints, journeys, future-state stories, experience principles) as alignment and decision-making tools in workshops, working sessions, and stakeholder reviews.
• Drive continuous improvement of our methods and frameworks, incorporating project learnings to enhance future work.

Communicate, coach, and support growth

• • Articulate and present strategic visions, service and experience concepts, and roadmaps to diverse audiences, including executive teams and client partners.
  • Teach and coach client teams in service design methods—such as blueprinting, journey mapping, and experience principle development—while delivering high-quality artifacts and leading teams toward outcomes.
  • Assist business development efforts by analyzing and articulating client needs, framing opportunities, and contributing to proposals. Act as a subject matter expert on service design, human-centered innovation, and select industries, as well as Cabin’s strategic frameworks.

Requirements:

• Proven track record leading service or product strategy and experience design initiatives, with a strong portfolio showcasing service blueprints, journeys, and/or complex ecosystem work for digital and/or omnichannel services.
• Deep understanding of human-centered and service design principles, with a systems mindset and a user-first approach to shaping services and products.
• Demonstrated experience using service blueprinting, journey mapping, and ecosystem mapping to connect customer experience with operational and technical realities.
• Expertise in conducting user and stakeholder research and translating insights into actionable service and product strategies, concepts, and roadmaps.
• Exceptional facilitation skills, with an uncommon ability to design and lead workshops and problem-solving sessions that bring together diverse stakeholders and move them toward alignment.
• Strong communication and storytelling skills, capable of conveying complex concepts clearly and persuasively across different audiences—from frontline staff to executives.
• Comfort working in highly ambiguous problem spaces, where defining the right question and narrowing the focus is as important as generating solutions.
• Collaborative, low-ego approach with the ability to inspire and motivate cross-functional teams without formal authority.
• Familiarity with design and prototyping tools (e.g., Figma, FigJam, Miro) and an understanding of current trends in digital products, services, and enabling technologies.

Originally posted on Himalayas