Design Lead - EY Studio +

About EY Studio+

EY Studio+ brings together design, technology, and commercial expertise to help organizations reimagine marketing, sales, and customer experience. With 7,000 specialists worldwide and the power of EY.ai and leading tech alliances, we deliver human-centered, data-driven solutions that create measurable growth and lasting customer impact.

The Opportunity

As a Design Lead at EY Studio+ in Belgium, you will be a craft leader who stays close to the work: someone who thrives on designing, mentoring, and elevating design quality while shaping a strong design culture. This is not a traditional management role; it's a position where you lead through excellence, inspiration, and hands-on contribution rather than administrative oversight.

You'll guide UX/UI excellence across high-impact client projects, strengthen our design system practice, and develop the next generation of designers within Studio+. You're a creative problem solver who bridges strategic thinking with visual craft, helping translate complex business challenges into elegant, user-centered digital experiences.

Your Key Responsibilities

• Craft leadership & design direction: Lead the UX/UI direction on digital products, platforms, and design systems for leading Belgian businesses and international clients. Elevate design quality through hands-on craft leadership, structured feedback, and design excellence.
• Design systems expertise: Co-create and maintain robust design systems, including components, patterns, interaction rules, and design tokens. Ensure consistency, scalability, and quality across digital touchpoints.
• Mentoring & team development: Inspire and mentor designers at different seniority levels without heavy managerial duties. Foster a culture of craft excellence, experimentation, and continuous learning within the design team.
• Client engagement & facilitation: Represent design expertise in client discussions, clearly articulating design choices, principles, and user-centered rationale. Facilitate workshops, design sprints, and co-creation sessions with clients and multidisciplinary teams.
• Cross-functional collaboration: Work closely with strategists, developers, product owners, content specialists, and other EY service lines to deliver integrated, impactful digital solutions that drive business results.
• Methodology & standards: Contribute to building and refining Studio+ design methodologies, standards, and ways of working. Help establish best practices that scale across projects and teams.
• Innovation & emerging technology: Stay current on design trends, AI-powered design tools, and emerging technologies. Integrate innovative approaches into client work and internal processes.
• Marketing technology: Advise clients on their MarTech stack, helping them audit existing tools, identify gaps, and implement new solutions (e.g., marketing automation, analytics platforms) to drive efficiency and effectiveness.

Essential Skills and Qualifications

• 7+ years of proven experience in UX/UI or Product Design, with a track record of delivering exceptional digital products and experiences.
• Strong portfolio demonstrating craft excellence, problem-solving ability, interface design mastery, and user-centered thinking across multiple projects.
• Proven experience designing digital products, design systems, or large-scale platforms in complex organizational environments.
• Experience mentoring designers or leading project design teams, with ability to guide and inspire without formal management structures.
• Mastery of Figma and modern design practices (components, auto-layout, variants, design tokens, prototyping, collaborative workflows).
• Strong sense of visual craft combined with deep understanding of user-centered design principles and methodologies.
• Ability to turn complex problems into simple, elegant, and accessible interfaces.
• Excellent facilitation and presentation skills, with capability to lead design discussions with clients in a clear, structured, and persuasive way.
• Comfortable working in ambiguity and translating strategic business objectives into tangible design solutions.
• Collaborative, humble, and solution-oriented mindset with strong interpersonal skills.
• Fluency in English is essential; Dutch and/or French is a strong plus for the Belgian market context.

What Defines Success in This Role

We're looking for a passionate design leader who leads by example and elevates everyone around them. The ideal candidate is someone who gets energized by beautiful, functional design and by helping others achieve it. You have strong opinions, loosely held: confident in your craft but always curious and open to better solutions. You're a natural teacher who can articulate "why" behind design decisions as clearly as you can execute them. You thrive in the dynamic intersection of creativity, strategy, and technology, and you're excited about leveraging AI and emerging tools to push the boundaries of what's possible in digital experience design.