Headquartered in Tokyo, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) is a leading global financial institution and a core member of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMBC Group). Built upon our rich Japanese heritage since 1876, we put our customers first and provide seamless access to, from and within the Asia Pacific region.   SMBC is one of the largest Japanese banks by assets and maintain strong credit ratings across our global integrated network.  We work closely as one SMBC Group to offer personal, corporate and investment banking services to meet the needs of our customers.

With sustainability embedded within our strategy and operations, we are committed to creating a society in which today’s generation can enjoy economic prosperity and well-being, and pass it on to future generations.

Key Responsibilities

1. Business Discovery and Process Transformation

• Partner with Business, Operations, Product Owners, and Technology stakeholders during the Discovery phase to understand current-state (As-Is) processes, identify pain points, uncover transformation opportunities, and prioritize business outcomes.
• Facilitate Design Thinking and co-creation workshops to define future-state (To-Be) customer journeys, business processes, service models, and operating designs.
• Conduct customer journey mapping, process assessment, root cause analysis, gap analysis, and opportunity prioritization across complex banking workflows.
• Re-engineer legacy processes to simplify customer and employee journeys, reduce operational friction and risk, and improve speed, control, and straight-through processing.
• Analyze multi-party banking processes such as liquidity management, structured trade finance, institutional onboarding, payments, lending, and operations to identify opportunities for automation, digitization, and AI adoption.
• Develop transformation recommendations, business requirements, and value hypotheses to support prioritization and delivery decisions.

2. Solution Design, Prototyping and UX

• Lead the Solution Design phase, translating business needs into user journeys, process flows, information architectures, wireframes, and prototypes that are intuitive, scalable, and operationally viable.
• Convert complex, data-intensive banking requirements into clear interaction models and end-to-end experiences for corporate clients and internal users.
• Create low-to-high fidelity wireframes, mock-ups, and interactive prototypes using Figma, or equivalent design and collaboration tools.
• Define service blueprints, UX principles, design standards, and reusable patterns to promote consistency across AI CFT initiatives.
• Collaborate with Architecture, Engineering, Data, and AI teams to ensure proposed designs are technically feasible, secure, and aligned with enterprise standards.

3. User Research and Solution Validation

• Lead stakeholder walkthroughs, user research, usability testing, and iterative feedback cycles to validate proposed solutions.
• Conduct interviews, persona development, journey validation, and prototype testing with corporate clients, business users, and operations teams.
• Refine process logic, requirements, and experience designs based on user feedback, business objectives, customer experience goals, and implementation feasibility.
• Define and track relevant adoption, user experience, and business outcome measures to support continuous improvement.

4. AI and Innovation Enablement

• Apply Generative AI and prompt engineering to accelerate user research, persona creation, journey design, requirements development, content creation, edge-case analysis, and prototyping.
• Establish prompt guidelines, reusable prompt libraries, and good practices for AI-assisted business analysis, UX design, and service design activities.
• Evaluate emerging GenAI, design, and low-code technologies and identify practical opportunities to modernize the AI CFT delivery workflow.
• Drive rapid experimentation and proof-of-concept activities to validate ideas before committing to full-scale implementation.

5. Delivery Partnership and Stakeholder Leadership

• Work closely with Engineering, Data, AI, and Delivery teams to ensure solution intent is preserved through build, testing, deployment, and adoption.
• Provide clear requirements, design artefacts, acceptance criteria, and implementation guidance to delivery teams.
• Present discovery findings, future-state designs, prototypes, and recommendations to senior stakeholders and governance forums.
• Manage design-related risks, issues, assumptions, dependencies, and decisions, escalating matters where timely intervention is required.
• Mentor Business Analysts and UX practitioners and promote consistent practices in Design Thinking, service design, user research, and AI-enabled analysis.

Job Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree in Business, Finance, Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, Human-Computer Interaction, Design, or a related discipline.
• Minimum 12 years of experience in Business Analysis, Process Transformation, Service Design, UX Design, Product Management, or Digital Transformation, preferably within Banking or Financial Services.
• Proven experience leading complex discovery, process re-engineering, and customer or employee experience initiatives.
• Strong knowledge of corporate banking processes such as Transaction Banking, Trade Finance, Payments, Cash Management, Treasury, Lending, Client Onboarding, or Operations.
• Demonstrated experience facilitating Design Thinking workshops and cross-functional co-creation sessions with senior stakeholders and end users.
• Hands-on experience in customer journey mapping, service blueprinting, information architecture, wireframing, prototyping, user research, and usability testing.
• Proficiency in Figma, , or equivalent design and collaboration tools.
• Experience translating complex, data-heavy, regulated banking requirements into intuitive and implementable user experiences.
• Practical experience applying AI and Generative AI tools to business analysis, research, process design, content generation, or prototyping.
• Good understanding of workflow automation, APIs, data-driven solutions, AI-enabled solutions, and enterprise technology delivery.
• Strong facilitation, analytical, stakeholder management, communication, and executive storytelling skills.
• Ability to influence and drive alignment across Business, Operations, Product, Technology, Data, AI, Risk, and Delivery teams without direct reporting authority.
• Experience working in Agile, Product Delivery, Innovation, or Transformation environments.
• CBAP, Design Thinking, UX Design, Service Design, Agile, Scrum, or related certifications will be an advantage.

Key Competencies

• Human-centered transformation — combines business outcomes, user needs, operational reality, and technology feasibility in solution design.
• Discovery and problem framing — identifies root causes, prioritizes opportunities, and converts ambiguity into clear transformation choices.
• Design Thinking and service design — leads effective co-creation and translates complex processes into coherent future-state journeys.
• UX and prototyping — communicates solution intent through clear information architecture, wireframes, prototypes, and user validation.
• AI-enabled innovation — applies GenAI responsibly to accelerate analysis, design, experimentation, and solution development.
• Banking domain acumen — understands complex, regulated, multi-party banking processes and their operational and control requirements.
• Stakeholder influence — builds alignment across senior business and technology stakeholders without relying solely on formal authority.
• Executive communication — presents complex findings, options, implications, and recommendations in a concise and decision-oriented manner.
• Coaching and capability building — raises Business Analysis and UX standards through mentoring, reusable practices, and knowledge sharing.