Ankura is a team of excellence founded on innovation and growth.
The Human & Experience Design Lead is a pivotal role within Ankura’s new Workforce AI Transformation practice in EMEA. This position exists at the intersection of human behaviour, organisational change, and AI - ensuring that as clients redesign work, roles, and operating models, people remain firmly at the centre of the story.
You will bring rigorous human-centred research, experience design thinking, and deep empathy for how individuals and organisations experience technological change. You will help clients understand not just what AI can do, but what it means for the people living and working within it. Building trust, adoption, and lasting behavioural change.
Key ResponsibilitiesExperience Design & Human-Centred Research
Lead qualitative and mixed-method research programmes to understand how employees, teams, and leaders experience AI-enabled transformation - capturing signals of trust, resistance, adoption, and readiness
Design and facilitate immersive research, ethnographic studies, co-design workshops, and human-centred discovery phases across client engagements
Translate complex human insight into accessible, actionable design principles that shape workforce strategies, role redesign, and change programmes
Develop frameworks for understanding ‘Empathy Demand’ and emotional responses to AI at scale - ensuring organisations deploy AI with responsibility and human sensitivity
Shape and contribute to Ankura’s proprietary "Execution Certainty™" framework methodology - building repeatable research and insight products
AI Adoption & Workforce Transformation
Work alongside transformation leads to embed experience design throughout large-scale workforce AI programmes - from diagnosis through to adoption and embedding
Advise HR, change, and communications leaders on how to design employee journeys through AI transition, reskilling, and new ways of working
Design learning and adoption experiences that bring people on the AI transformation journey, reducing anxiety and building capability with confidence
Explore and prototype agentic AI experiences in high-stakes, high-emotion workforce moments - testing acceptability, trust, and design standards with rigour
Proposition & IP Development
Build Ankura’s human experience design toolkit for workforce transformation - including diagnostic tools, employee persona frameworks, journey maps, and co-design playbooks
Create packaged research and design offerings that can be deployed across sectors, particularly in regulated industries where trust, vulnerability, and human complexity are high
Partner with the Responsible AI Lead and AI Strategy Lead to ensure human insight informs governance and strategic choices
Client Engagement & Market Visibility
Lead the design and delivery of client workshops, insight presentations, and experience design sprints at senior stakeholder level
Present and publish research findings that position Ankura at the frontier of human-centred AI transformation - through events, roundtables, reports, and media
Build trusted relationships with CHROs, People Directors, Change Leaders, and Heads of Design within client organisations
Contribute to business development by shaping proposals, articulating the value of the human design lens, and identifying adjacent opportunities
Experience & Expertise
20+ years of experience in human-centred research, experience design, or related disciplines, with a strong track record in applying these to organisational or technology transformation contexts
Deep expertise in qualitative and mixed-method research - ethnography, depth interviews, diary studies, contextual inquiry, and behavioural analysis at scale
Proven ability to translate human insight into experience design that shapes strategy, operating model change, and adoption programmes
Significant exposure to AI, Gen AI, or emerging technology contexts - with a sophisticated and evidence-based perspective on how people engage with, trust, and adopt AI
Experience working in or with regulated industries (financial services, healthcare, public sector) where human complexity and vulnerability are central concerns
Skills & Qualities
Exceptional communication and storytelling ability - able to make complex human insight accessible and compelling to executive audiences
Energising, bridge-building leadership style that builds human understanding between organisations and the people they serve
Intellectually curious and genuinely people-focused - able to hold complexity, ambiguity, and nuance while remaining clear and decisive
Comfortable operating in a build environment: entrepreneurial, self-starting, and able to create structure where none exists
Strong presence in the design, research, and transformation community - including speaking, publishing, and external thought leadership
Commercial awareness: able to shape research and design as sellable, scalable propositions, not just delivery capability
Quality and impact of human-centred insight embedded into client transformation programmes
Development and adoption of Ankura’s Human Experience Design methodology and IP toolkit
Revenue contribution through design-led engagements and proposition development
Client satisfaction and relationship depth with HR, People, and Change leaders
External profile: publications, keynotes, roundtables, and media presence
Cross-practice collaboration with Responsible AI, AI Strategy, and Digital practices
This is a rare opportunity for a human-centred researcher and experience designer to step into a senior consulting role at the moment it matters most. AI is reshaping work at pace - but organisations are struggling to bring their people with them. The gap between what AI can do and what humans are ready to embrace is one of the defining challenges of this decade.
Ankura is building a practice that takes this challenge seriously. This role sits at its heart: with the freedom to shape how the firm thinks about the human experience of AI transformation, the platform to publish and speak at the highest levels, and the opportunity to build something genuinely new.
Ankura is an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, or protected veteran status and will not be discriminated against based on disability. Equal Employment Opportunity Posters, if you have a disability and believe you need a reasonable accommodation to search for a job opening, submit an online application, or participate in an interview/assessment, please email [email protected] or call toll-free +1.312-583-2122. This email and phone number are created exclusively to assist disabled job seekers whose disability prevents them from being able to apply online. Only messages left for this purpose will be returned. Messages left for other purposes, such as following up on an application or technical issues unrelated to a disability, will not receive a response.
