Contextual Inquiry Jobs (NOW HIRING)

We're seeking a future team member for the role of Senior Vice President, Product Designer, Enterprise Custody Services to join our team. This role is located in New York, NY.

Custody operations is one of the most complex operational environments in global finance. Hundreds of applications. Thousands of people. We're redesigning how it all works. Not incrementally. Structurally. We're looking for someone who sees that kind of complexity and gets excited.

How we work

This team is building experience design from the ground up for one of BNY's largest platforms. We're defining the model now, which means the person in this role has real influence over how design operates, not just what it produces.

We use AI tools as part of how we work: research synthesis, prototyping, workflow analysis, and design system infrastructure. It's part of our daily practice, and we expect designers on this team to work that way too.

We believe design decisions should be grounded in evidence, not in the inherited opinions of people closest to the system. This is a cultural shift, and we're leading it intentionally.

About this role

This is a hybrid role: senior individual contributor with direct influence on a small design team. You'll mentor and guide three designers, set the quality bar and strategic direction, and work as a peer to product owners and engineering leadership. You won't manage the team administratively. You'll lead it through the work.

The role is roughly 80% strategic and research-focused, 20% hands-on design. Prior domain expertise in financial services matters far less than your ability to learn fast, ask the right questions, and bring rigorous design thinking to genuinely complex problems.

What you'll do

Contribute to a persona framework for a 100+ application platform. Custody operations isn't one user group; it's dozens of specialized roles across settlements, instruction capture, corporate events, tax, and client services. You'll bring research depth and service design rigor to a behavioral persona framework that becomes the shared language for design and product decisions.

Map and redesign end-to-end operational workflows. You'll use service design methods to map workflows as they are, identify where they break down, and design experiences that eliminate, automate, or unify manual steps.

Bring user research best practices to the platform design team. Contextual inquiry with operations teams, usability testing, and research synthesis that grounds design decisions in evidence.

Drive platform experience coherence. Over a hundred applications, built by different teams at different times, with no shared experience strategy. You'll define what coherence looks like and create the principles, patterns, and standards that move us toward it.

Design for human-AI collaboration. The platform is introducing AI capabilities (automated rule generation, exception triage, intelligent search, predictive processing) and needs a designer who can shape the interaction patterns: confidence indicators, escalation paths, transparency contracts, override mechanisms.

Mentor the design team and raise the bar. You'll work alongside three designers, providing critique, coaching, and strategic direction. You'll also influence how product owners and engineers think about user experience.

Support design strategy communication to leadership. You'll contribute to the leadership narrative at executive altitude, connecting design work to operational outcomes.

What you bring

Required:

• 10-12 years of experience in product or experience design, with significant depth in service design: mapping end-to-end workflows, creating service blueprints, designing across channels and touchpoints
• Demonstrated experience leveraging user research methods (contextual inquiry, usability testing, research synthesis) to ground design decisions in evidence
• Experience shaping persona frameworks or user segmentation models for complex, multi-role operational environments
• Systems-level thinking: you see the whole experience (the workflow, the workaround, the handoff, the failure mode), not just the interface
• Proven ability to influence product and engineering decisions through design evidence, not just design output
• Experience working in enterprise, regulated, or high-stakes operational environments. You're comfortable with complexity, compliance constraints, and organizational politics
• Strong design craft alongside strategic thinking. You can zoom in on an interaction pattern and zoom out to a platform strategy in the same conversation

Preferred:

• You've incorporated AI-assisted tools into how you design, research, and prototype, not as a curiosity, but as a working method
• Experience designing for AI-augmented workflows: confidence indicators, human-in-the-loop decision patterns, explainable AI outputs
• Experience with design system governance across a fragmented platform
• You've done service design in environments where nobody called it that. You mapped the workflows, identified the offline processes, and designed the interventions that eliminated them
• You understand that the biggest design opportunities in enterprise aren't on the screen. They're in the operations, the handoffs, and the assumptions no one has questioned yet

Portfolio

A portfolio is required, but what we most want to see may not look like a traditional design portfolio. Show us how you've understood complex systems and made them better: service blueprints, journey maps, workflow analyses, research synthesis, persona frameworks, and the design interventions that came from them.

We care far more about the thinking, the process, and the impact than the visual polish.
BNY assesses market data to ensure a competitive compensation package for our employees. The base salary for this position is expected to be between $104,000 and $253,000 per year at the commencement of employment. However, base salary if hired will be determined on an individualized basis, including as to experience and market location, and is only part of the BNY total compensation package, which, depending on the position, may also include commission earnings, discretionary bonuses, short and long-term incentive packages, and Company-sponsored benefit programs. 
This position is at-will and the Company reserves the right to modify base salary (as well as any other discretionary payment or compensation) at any time, including for reasons related to individual performance, change in geographic location, Company or individual department/team performance, and market factors.

At BNY, our culture allows us to run our company better and enables employees' growth and success. As a leading global financial services company at the heart of the global financial system, we influence nearly 20% of the world's investible assets. Every day, our teams harness cutting-edge AI and breakthrough technologies to collaborate with clients, driving transformative solutions that redefine industries and uplift communities worldwide.

At BNY, our culture speaks for itself, check out the latest BNY news at BNY Newsroom & BNY LinkedIn

 Here's a few of our recent awards:

• America's Most Innovative Companies, Fortune, 2025
• World's Most Admired Companies, Fortune 2025
• "Most Just Companies", Just Capital and CNBC, 2025

Our Benefits and Rewards:

BNY offers highly competitive compensation, benefits, and wellbeing programs rooted in a strong culture of excellence and our pay-for-performance philosophy. We provide access to flexible global resources and tools for your life's journey. Focus on your health, foster your personal resilience, and reach your financial goals as a valued member of our team, along with generous paid leaves, including paid volunteer time, that can support you and your family through moments that matter.

BNY is an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer - Underrepresented racial and ethnic groups/Females/Individuals with Disabilities/Protected Veterans.

BNY assesses market data to ensure a competitive compensation package for our employees. The expected base salary for this position when employment commences can be found in the Job Info section at the bottom of the posting. 

Base salary offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Base salary is only part of the total rewards package, which may include eligibility for an annual discretionary incentive award. Subject to the terms and conditions of the applicable plans then in effect, eligible employees may enroll in a 401(k) plan as well as participate in Company-sponsored medical, dental, vision, and basic life insurance plans for the employee and the employee's eligible dependents. Eligible employees also may receive other benefits (including various paid time off benefits, such as vacation and sick time), dependent on the position offered. Details of participation in these benefit plans will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment.

If hired, the employee will be in an "at will" position and the Company reserves the right to modify base salary (as well as any other discretionary payments or compensation programs) at any time, including for reasons related to individual performance, Company or individual department/team performance, and market factors.