The Company
Star is a global consultancy firm that connects strategy, design and engineering services to help companies accelerate product innovation. With over a decade of constant annual growth, we’re rapidly expanding our consulting services, geographic footprint and industry expertise. We’re on the cusp of further growth as we become a household name in consulting. The role of the SVP of Design will be instrumental in getting us there.
Star works for businesses in a variety of industries, including Automotive & Mobility, HealthTech, FinTech, AdTech & MarTech. Our clients include BMW Group, Porsche, Daimler, SAIC, Lufthansa, Denso, NIO, Panasonic, AppyWay, Zeiss, Walmart, Dolby, and many more.
We support our clients at every step of their digital journey. Through co-creation, we guide them from ideation and concept crafting to full-stack development. We always remain focused on helping our clients win the hearts and minds of their customers.
At Star we connect business, strategy, insights, design and engineering into a seamless workflow devised to support our clients every step of the way - no matter how long or complex their journey. We anchor everything we do in clear and compelling endgames, which in turn enable our multidisciplinary teams to create superior solutions and impressive commercial returns for our clients.
Star is truly global. That is why we are the first major consulting company that does not have a headquarters. Instead, we have many front doors, spanning Silicon Valley, Tokyo, London, Munich, Milan, Copenhagen, Kyiv, Wroclaw, and other vibrant design, technology and creative nuclei of the world. Our spirited and growing strong Star Crew takes great pride in working side by side with their trailblazing counterparts at some of the world's most disruptive "unicorn" startups and iconic global brands.
Our passion is to make every great person, every great idea and every great company shine. That's why we're called Star.
The Opportunity
This position is a unique opportunity for you to join an innovative, fast-growing organization and become an integral part of its future success. Reporting directly to the CEO, you will be charged with taking Star Design to the next level of growth. Building on a strong foundation of 75+ world-class designers across seven key locations, your objective will be to significantly scale our design practice in pursuit of our vision to build impactful futures through design-led technology innovation.
Qualifications
Must have:
- 15+ years of recent work experience as a group leader/general manager in a design consulting service company;
- Proven experience with developing and closing million-dollar customer deals;
- Deeply familiar with professional services delivery operations, including best practices for design/creative services;
- Track record of meeting/exceeding financial performance targets of the company, business unit, or department;
- Directly managed design agency/business unit revenues of at least $10M in annual revenues, and comfortable leading a design business to 50%+ annual growth over a multi-year period;
- Business line P&L management experience;
- Experience hiring and leading teams across multiple geographies, with a proven track record of hiring, managing, and developing high-performance and multicultural design leadership.
Should have:
- Inherent understanding of design disciplines across product, service, business, and brand design;
- Available to travel 30-60 days per year;
- Experience setting up new studio locations globally;
- Deep expertise within one or more of our focus industries – Automotive & Mobility, AdTech & MarTech, HealthTech, and Fintech; and
- Multicultural mindset, with experience in Asia, Europe, and North America.
Nice to have:
- Experience (academic and/or professional) as designer;
- Multilingual experience (in addition to English);
- Experience with integrating teams acquired through M&A;
- Experience building new Industry Practices (verticals) and/or Services Practices (horizontal areas of expertise);
- Past/recent role in sales/BD as an individual contributor and as a leader in building commercial teams; and
- MBA degree.
Responsibilities
- Responsible for Star Design as a business unit including all financial, commercial, and operational KPIs;
- Define and execute Star Design’s growth strategy resulting in 50%+ annual growth over the next decade;
- Liaise with the CEO and other C-level team members to plan and execute commercial programs to fuel Star Design's growth;
- Lead a team of Design Directors (studio leads) across global locations, and define and recruit for new roles within Star Design in commercial and operational functions;
- Partner with the Chief Technology Officer and the broader technology practice to ensure a unified end-to-end offering and delivery across both design and technology;
- Contribute to landing key accounts globally by leveraging existing relationships, overseeing BD/sales/pre-sales efforts, participating in strategy workshops, delivering proposal and pitch presentations, and facilitating deal structuring and negotiation;
- Establish and implement performance measures designed to track and report progress against the global design strategy;
- Implement best practices for design processes, tools, and methodologies, while ensuring a strong global baseline and shared foundation that gives studios the freedom to create and adopt practices to best suit their particular needs;
- Build a strong culture of design and be an internal thought leader and champion of the role and value design in technology innovation;
- Enable collaboration and cross-pollination across all global design studios, ensuring that they can operate and thrive independently, yet feel and act as part of a global design team;
- Explore M&A targets to fuel inorganic growth of 10-20% annually;
- Own executive and board-level reporting on design practice performance activities.
What you’ll get
We offer a rewarding compensation and benefits package, an intellectually and creatively stimulating environment, professional flexibility and unique international travel opportunities.
Star is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We believe that equity, diversity and inclusion are key to our ability to provide our clients and crew members with unique business and career outcomes. Your race, color, ancestry, religion, gender, identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, and/or disability have no effect on our hiring decisions. If you have a special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.
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