Associate Director - AI Innovation Lab, Human-centered Design

Who We Are

At Kyndryl, we run and reimagine the mission-critical technology systems that drive advantage for the world's leading businesses. We are at the heart of progress; with proven expertise and a continuous flow of AI-powered insight, enabling smarter decisions, faster innovation, and a lasting competitive edge. For our people-Kyndryls-that means doing purposeful work that powers human progress. Join us and experience a flexible, supportive environment where your well-being is prioritized and your potential can thrive.

The Role

As Associate Director, Customer Innovation & Design Leadership, you will lead customer innovation engagements end to end-from challenge framing and executive workshops through prototype direction, evidence, and the decisions that follow. Serving as the customer's strategic contact and a trusted advisor to senior leadership, you will bridge the gap between complex business problems, research insights, and tangible concepts people can test.

This is a strategic design-leadership and consulting role focused on human-AI systems. Composed in ambiguity, you will create just enough structure to move fast while directing multidisciplinary teams of creative technologists, designers, researchers, and engineers. You bring practical AI fluency and a clear point of view on how AI reshapes customer experiences, driving outcomes that lead directly to funded sprints, pilots, and enterprise transformation.

• Own the customer journey, shaping brief arcs, success measures, immersion, co-design workshops, builds, and post-Lab follow-through.
• Lead CIOs, CTOs, COOs, and senior leadership teams through ambiguity, constructive challenge, and strategic decisions.
• Translate enterprise priorities, user needs, and operational realities into clear value hypotheses and actionable design challenges.
• Define human-AI system interactions-designing handoffs, exceptions, control, and accountability between people and agents.
• Direct multidisciplinary teams through focused prototype builds, setting fidelity and defining evidence using realistic scenarios and synthetic personas.
• Connect engagement findings and validation evidence to definitive executive recommendations and owned next steps.
• Turn validated work into reusable methods, patterns, prompts, agent states, policies, and reference builds.
• Build practice capability, coach multidisciplinary talent, and dedicate capacity to moonshot initiatives in human-AI collaboration.

• Bachelor's degree in Design, HCI, Business, Engineering, Computer Science, Architecture, or equivalent practical experience.
• 10+ years in design, innovation, or consulting, including 3+ years leading multidisciplinary teams and owning executive customer relationships.
• Proven portfolio of end-to-end innovation engagements, detailing challenge framing, prototyping, testing, and business outcomes.
• Executive presence and facilitation skills, with a track record of guiding C-suite stakeholders through complex co-design and decisions.
• Strong business acumen and human-centered design leadership spanning research, framing, validation, and live implementation.
• Practical AI opportunity fluency, with enough understanding of generative and agentic systems to direct credible prototypes.
• Multidisciplinary direction capability, aligning designers, researchers, engineers, and commercial teams around unified goals.

• Master's degree or MBA in Design, HCI, Innovation, Business, or a related field.
• Background working within a design consultancy, innovation lab, product studio, or creative agency.
• Cross-industry exposure (e.g., Financial Services, Retail, Healthcare) across global markets.
• Hands-on familiarity with digital, spatial, or physical prototyping, design tools (Figma, Miro), and enterprise AI governance.