Senior Manager Innovation Lab at NMB Bank Tanzania

To lead the strategic design, development, and execution of innovative solutions that drive business growth, operational excellence, and enhanced customer value. The role champions a culture of innovation across the organization by orchestrating cross-functional collaboration and transforming emerging ideas into scalable, market-ready products and services.

Main Responsibilities:

• Define and execute the Innovation Lab's vision, strategy, and roadmap aligned with organizational goals.
• Identify emerging trends, technologies, and market opportunities to inform innovation priorities.
• Build and sustain a culture of experimentation, agility, and continuous learning.
• Drive and institutionalize the bank's User Experience (UX) design practice by introducing and embedding modern, collaborative design methodologies, tools, and frameworks that enhance creativity, efficiency, and user-centricity across the design lifecycle.
• Lead design strategy and conceptual architecture across innovation initiatives, transforming ideas into future-ready solutions by developing strategic visions, compelling value propositions, ecosystem blueprints, evaluation frameworks, customer journey maps, interactive prototypes, and UX toolkits.
  
  
  Idea Generation & Portfolio Management
  
• Lead ideation processes (design thinking, hackathons, challenge programs) to generate high-value concepts.
• Quickly understand, analyze and respond to stakeholder briefs & requests on new products & solutions developments.
• Conduct user requirements analysis, task analysis, conceptual modeling, information architecture design, interaction design, and usability testing.
• Manage multiple projects and ideas within the lab and ensure there is clear communication status updates to leaders and stakeholders on the progress of development.
• Establish governance frameworks for tracking progress, risks, and ROI.
  
  Design Lead
  
• Oversee the end-to-end design and execution of the bank's products, platforms, and digital solutions, ensuring they meet best-in-class design standards, align with customer needs, and deliver exceptional user experiences.
• Lead the creativity meetings and support the product development team with creative input and proposal writing.
• Design and specify user interfaces and information architecture using participatory and iterative design techniques, including observational studies, customer interviews, usability testing, and other forms of requirement's discovery.
• Showcase end-to-end visions of the designs and implement road maps for growing product/service ecosystems.
• Effectively communicate conceptual ideas, detailed design, and design rationale both verbally and visually.
• Work closely with product developments, system developers, digital labs & emerging technology, project management team to ensure that design specifications are implemented accordingly to the user designs
• Create a clear customer journey by mapping on all products/ solutions based on the UX/UI prototypes to ensure there is a clear workflow of the products or solutions.
  
  Digital products market Insights & research
  
• Oversee the development of comprehensive research outputs, including analytical reports, market intelligence briefs, and evidence-based recommendations derived from both qualitative and quantitative data on digital platforms.
• Leverage digital tools and platforms to conduct continuous market sensing, maintain structured databases of insights, trends, and research findings to support data-driven decision-making of the digital platforms.
• Collaborate cross-functionally to co-create market-driven products and services, ensuring that innovation initiatives are grounded in validated customer insights and commercial viability.
• Lead customer and market validation initiatives, including surveys and field studies across financial services segments to assess demand, usability, and adoption potential of banking digital products and solutions.
  
  Product & Solution Development
  
• Lead end-to-end innovation delivery by overseeing rapid prototyping, proof-of-concept (PoC) development, and pilot execution to accelerate validation and time-to-market for new solutions.
• Drive cross-functional collaboration with technology, product, operations, and business teams to refine, industrialize, and scale validated concepts into fully deployable, high-impact solutions.
• Establish frameworks for iterative development and experimentation, embedding agile methodologies and continuous feedback loops
• Oversee transition from pilot to full implementation, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, and aligned with business, regulatory, and operational requirements.
  
  User Acceptance Testing (UAT) & Pilot leadership
  
• Lead and govern the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) process for digital products and solutions, ensuring alignment with business requirements, customer expectations, and usability standards prior to full-scale deployment.
• Design and oversee pilot programs to validate product functionality, performance, and customer experience in real-world environments, ensuring readiness for market launch.
• Champion user-centric validation methodologies, incorporating customer feedback, usability testing, and iterative refinements to enhance product quality and adoption.
• Establish robust feedback loops from pilots and UAT, translating insights into actionable improvements and ensuring continuous enhancement of digital products and services.
  
  Quality Assurance & Governance
  
• Establish and enforce innovation quality standards to ensure all products, services, and solutions are delivered at the highest level of excellence.
• Oversee end-to-end quality assurance across innovation initiatives, ensuring that all products and solutions are consistently designed, validated, and implemented in alignment with cross-functional stakeholders.
• Drive continuous improvement practices by incorporating feedback loops, performance metrics, and post-implementation reviews to enhance product quality and user experience.
  
  People Management & Team Leadership
  
• Build and lead a high-performing, multidisciplinary Innovation Lab team by embedding a strong performance culture supported by structured performance management, continuous feedback, and ongoing coaching.
• Identify and address capability gaps by driving targeted learning and development initiatives, ensuring training needs are effectively planned, budgeted, and executed..

Knowledge and Skills:

• Comfort with ambiguity and experimentation
• An interest in multiple disciplines and approaches, and the ability to quickly dive into a new domain or process
• Innovative and creative
• Ability to establish and manage structures, processes and standards
• Strong planning, organization and documentation skills
• Excellent research, analytical, and problem-solving skills
• Ability to conceptualize and systematically work through projects in accordance with a structured methodology
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills with the ability to interact effectively with people at all levels
• Ability to act as a project driver, facilitating the achievement of required tasks
• Ability to work effectively within a team
• Coaching, leading, and motivating skills
• Ability to prioritize, meet deadlines and work under pressure

Qualifications and Experience:

• Bachelor's Degree in a relevant field in Information Systems/ Business Management/ Marketing/ Marketing Statistics, /Accounting & Finance/ Innovation or related field
• Human-Centered Design certification will be an added advantage
• Minimum of 5 years of experience in product design/ product development or Innovation department with leadership experience in small and large enterprise
• Experience in product development/research or innovation team in finance/banking industry will be an added advantage
  
  
  NMB Bank Plc is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to creating a diverse environment and achieving a gender balanced workforce.
  
  Female candidates and people living with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply for this position.
  
  NMB Bank Plc does not charge any fee in connection with the application or recruitment process. Should you receive a solicitation for the payment of a fee, please disregard it
  
  Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

Job opening date : 22-Jun-2026

Job closing date : 06-Jul-2026