Associate Director - AI Innovation Lab, Human-centered Design

At Kyndryl, we run and reimagine the mission-critical technology systems that drive advantage for the world’s leading businesses.  We are at the heart of progress; with proven expertise and a continuous flow of AI-powered insight, enabling smarter decisions, faster innovation, and a lasting competitive edge. For our people—Kyndryls—that means doing purposeful work that powers human progress. Join us and experience a flexible, supportive environment where your well-being is prioritized and your potential can thrive.

As Associate Director you lead customer innovation engagements end to end - from challenge framing and executive workshops through prototype direction, evidence and the decision that follows. You are the customer's strategic contact throughout and a trusted advisor to their senior leadership, bridging the gap between business problems, research insight and tangible concepts people can test.   This is a design-leadership and consulting role, not an engineering one. Practical AI fluency is essential - a point of view on how AI reshapes what we design, and enough understanding of agentic systems to direct credible prototypes - but you do not need to be the deepest engineer in the room. You are composed   in   ambiguity, create just enough structure to move   fast   and help a complementary team do its best work.

The   customer   journey .   Shape the brief, engagement arc and success measures with the customer and account team; connect immersion, co-design, workshops, build,   test   and post-Lab follow-through.   Executive momentum.   Lead CIOs, CTOs, COOs and their leadership teams through ambiguity, constructive   challenge   and the decisions   required   to move.   The opportunity frame.   Translate business priorities, user needs and operational realities into a precise opportunity, a credible value   hypothesis   and an actionable design challenge.   The human-AI system.   Define what people, agents and systems each know,   decide   and do - handoffs, exceptions,   control   and accountability.   The build and the test.   Set fidelity, medium and AI approach; direct creative technologists, designers,   researchers   and engineers through focused build cycles; define the evidence before the test using research, realistic scenarios, synthetic   personas   and system evaluation.   The decision.   Connect challenge,   evidence   and recommendation to an owned next step - sprint, pilot, transformation   initiative   or deliberate stop.   What   repeats.   Turn validated work into reusable methods, patterns, components, prompts, agent states, policies, evaluation   sets   and reference builds.   The practice.   Build complementary strengths across design, consulting,   AI   and business strategy rather than one profile; set the quality bar and coach; keep   roughly 10 percent   of capacity for moonshots in human-AI collaboration, embodied   AI   and adaptive interfaces.   Scope and partnerships   You own the whole engagement, not every artifact: its intellectual and experiential quality, the senior customer   relationship   and the path from Lab activity to durable business value.   You   own engagement architecture and outcomes.   Customer journey, design direction, prioritization, prototype intent, validation plan, executive decision moments and the post-Lab path.   The Senior Creative Technologist owns hands-on making.   Assigned prototypes, interaction artifacts, technical exploration, testing   evidence   and implementation-ready handoff, working   to   direction from you and the Director. On smaller engagements they carry the day-to-day customer relationship within that direction.   Engineering,   account   and Lab operations own their domains.   Engineering leads   own   production architecture, security,   integration   and deployment; you connect business intent and the intended experience