Experience & Process Design Leader

M&T Bank is seeking a dynamic and highly collaborative leader to head up our integrated Experience & Process Design organization. This role is accountable for shaping and scaling enterprise-wide experience, service, and process design capabilities to deliver cohesive, customer-centered, and operationally sound outcomes across the bank.

This leader will oversee a multidisciplinary team spanning service design, journey design, design strategy, and process engineering, and will operate at the intersection of business, technology, and operations. They will be responsible building the standards, operating models, governance, and talent systems that allow these practices to scale sustainably across the enterprise.  They will serve as a thought partner with executive leaders as they guide their teams to build and deliver exceptional end-to-end customer experiences.

The ideal candidate is a seasoned design leader who can operate equally well as a trusted advisor to senior leaders, a builder of high-performing teams, and a practical transformation leader who delivers measurable business impact in a regulated environment.

Key Responsibilities:

Enterprise Experience & Process Strategy

• Set and execute a unified enterprise experience and process design strategy aligned to M&T’s business priorities, customer needs, and transformation agenda.

• Partner with business, operations, and technology leaders to strategically prioritize journeys, services, and value streams most critical to customer and business outcomes.

• Ensure cohesive, end-to-end orchestration of products, services, processes, and touchpoints across channels.

Organizational Leadership & Capability Building

• Build, lead, and mentor a high-performing organization of service designers, journey designers, process engineers, and design strategists.

• Define and scale core experience and process design capabilities, frameworks, tooling, and methods that enable consistent outcomes across business lines.

• Establish operating models, engagement models, governance, and communities of practice that allow experience and process design to scale beyond a centralized team.

• Coach and develop senior design leaders, with accountability for talent strategy, performance management, succession planning, and organizational culture.

Consultative Partnership & Influence

• Engage deeply with executives and senior leaders to understand their goals and challenges, co-create solutions, and embed experience and process thinking into their strategies.

• Influence decision-making at all levels of the organization through compelling storytelling, data, and clear articulation of trade-offs.

• Act as a bridge between practitioners and business leaders—translating insights into pragmatic, actionable recommendations.

Measurement, Impact & Governance

• Define, track, and communicate KPIs that demonstrate the value of experience and process design, including customer outcomes, operational efficiency, and employee experience.

• Establish continuous feedback loops and learning mechanisms to evolve practices based on outcomes.

• Ensure compliance with M&T’s risk, regulatory, and internal control standards, proactively identifying and escalating issues as needed.

Executive Thought Leadership

• Serve as a trusted advisor to the Executive Leadership Team on experience, design, and process transformation.

• Champion customer-centered and human-centered ways of working across the enterprise.

• Represent M&T Bank externally as a thought leader in experience and process design within financial services.

Supervisory & Organizational Scope

• Manage a team of experience and process designers both directly and indirectly

• Full managerial accountability for staffing, performance management, promotions, compensation recommendations, and organizational health.

• Promote an environment that supports belonging and reflects the M&T Bank brand.

Qualifications:

Required

• Bachelor’s degree and a minimum of 9 years of relevant work experience, or in lieu of a degree, a combined minimum of 13 years’ higher education and/or work experience, including a minimum of 9 years’ relevant experience

• Minimum of 3 years’ managerial, supervisory, and/or work leadership experience

• Strong verbal and written communication skills

• Strong presentation skills

• Experience creating and presenting design artifacts for diverse stakeholder groups

• Strong facilitation skills

• Strong collaboration skills

• Experience facilitating workshops with diverse participants

• Experience leading the planning and executing of work in accordance with a defined plan

• Knowledge of change theory and change management practices

Preferred

• Advanced degree.

• Experience in financial services or other highly regulated industries.

• Experience operating in both centralized and federated models.

• Proven success scaling experience and process design practices across large, complex organizations.

• Deep expertise in human-centered design, service design, systems thinking, and lean/process improvement.

• Demonstrated ability to build enterprise capabilities, including frameworks, governance, training, and operating models.

• Strong executive presence with the ability to influence C‑suite and senior leaders while inspiring multidisciplinary teams.

• Pragmatic, outcome-oriented mindset with a clear focus on measurable business impact.

Why This Role Matters at M&T:

This is a rare opportunity to lead a foundational enterprise capability at the heart of M&T’s transformation journey. The Experience & Process Design Leader will shape how the bank designs experiences, improves processes, and delivers value—balancing innovation with operational rigor, and creativity with discipline—while keeping customers and employees at the center of every decision.