Role details
Role type: Permanent / Freelance
Level: Lead / Principal
Salary range: ¥9-14m
Location: Tokyo, Japan / Hybrid
About the role
Strategic Designers are responsible for reframing business and organisational problems around the collective needs of people we’re designing for. You’ll use design to push organisations forward – identifying and assessing opportunities, envisioning different futures, and aligning stakeholders around a plan for action.
The skills we look for in Strategic Designers include:
- Research and synthesis: Planning and conducting qualitative and quantitative research with customers and employees, identifying appropriate methods based on the context required. You’re able to synthesise research into insights and recommendations that are impactful for clients.
- Facilitation: Facilitating compelling processes and workshops with small and large groups – planning activities, drawing out insights, and engaging participants. You’re comfortable adapting to any situation, guiding participants toward meaningful outcomes.
- Mindsets and behaviours: Identifying customer and employee needs and mindsets, articulating these through archetypes and jobs to be done. You’re able to model behaviours and align them to quantitative data, delivering business value.
- Systems thinking: Making sense of complex spaces and mapping these into journeys and systems based on complex data points. You zoom in and out, understanding these at a macro level as well as a detailed touchpoint and interaction level.
- Prototyping: Identifying new ways to solve problems and critically assess design concepts. You create prototypes at different fidelities and test them with people, using appropriate methods based on the context.
- Organisational design: Working with organisations to change their structures, policies, and operations to deliver better experiences for employees and customers. You understand underlying organisational challenges and how they impact the success of business objectives.
- Business design: Designing new business models that are financially viable and aligned to stakeholder requirements. You have strong business acumen and understand how design work connects to strategic, financial, and organisational goals.
- Futures thinking: Using strategic foresight and speculative design to envision different futures for partners and clients. You're able to think beyond existing paradigms to push stakeholders toward radically different realities.
We also have a set of shared people skills that we practice across the team. These are drawn from our values and reflect the global, cross-cultural context we work in, including: Problem solving, Collaboration, Open Communication, Growth Mindset, Entrepreneurship, Leadership and Coaching, Stakeholder Engagement, and Organisation.
Who we’re looking for
We’re ideally looking for the following experience, but know everybody has a different career path, and encourage you to apply even if you only fit some of these criteria:
- Bilingual English and Japanese, or fluent in one with some proficiency in the other.
- Located in Tokyo, or able to work remotely from a similar time zone and would consider relocating in future.
- At least 5 years of experience, ideally in consulting or startup environments.
- Comfortable working with remote, interdisciplinary teams across languages and cultural backgrounds.
- An entrepreneurial, self-starter mindset with exceptional business acumen.
Nice to haves
- Undergraduate or Masters degree in Strategic Design, Design Research, Service Design, or a related discipline.
- Experience using Miro, Notion, Keynote, and Figma.
- Additional expertise or interest in Strategic Design, Sustainability, and Engagement.
What we provide
Shaping a positive employee experience is part of our culture, and we work to ensure our environment is welcoming and inclusive for everyone.
We purposefully look for people from across different cultural backgrounds, identities, languages, and skills – creating interdisciplinary teams that are able to approach business problems from multiple perspectives.
As part of this we provide all employees with:
- Flexible work arrangements with remote work options.
- Collaborative workspace in Nakameguro, Tokyo.
- Transparent career progression and salary levels.
- Internal coaching and skill development programs.
- Annual training budget that can be used flexibly.
- Starting 17 days of leave per year, including 5 days of wellbeing leave.
- Apple devices and cloud-based collaboration tools.
- Access to our global network through MullenLowe Group and IPG.
- A startup environment where you can directly influence the future of the company.
Let’s catch up!
Send your Resume, LinkedIn, and/or Folio to hello@fbrc.co and one of our practice leads will get back to you. We’re happy to have a coffee near our studio in Nakameguro or catch up online.
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