Lead Service Designer (P2707)

84.51° Overview:

84.51° is a retail data science, insights and media company. We help The Kroger Co., consumer packaged goods companies, agencies, publishers and affiliates create more personalized and valuable experiences for shoppers across the path to purchase.

Powered by cutting-edge science, we utilize first-party retail data from more than 62 million U.S. households sourced through the Kroger Plus loyalty card program to fuel a more customer-centric journey using 84.51° Insights, 84.51° Loyalty Marketing and our retail media advertising solution, Kroger Precision Marketing.

Join us at 84.51°!

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As a Lead Service Designer, you will drive a deep understanding of our customers, their ecosystems, and the end-to-end experiences that shape how businesses interact with our products and services. You’ll lead cross-functional research initiatives that uncover opportunities to improve value delivery, streamline touchpoints, and inform strategic decisions across the product and service landscape. In this role you’ll connect business goals with customer realities – translating insights into service blueprints, frameworks, and recommendations that shape how we design and evolve our offerings. You’ll partner closely with product, design, and business leaders to ensure our solutions are grounded in real user needs and deliver measurable impact across the B2B customer journey. If you are passionate about using research to inform holistic, customer-centric service solutions and thrive in complex environments, we’d love to hear from you!

RESPONSIBILITIES:

You will play a pivotal role in shaping how the organization approaches customer understanding and service design, ensuring insights inform business and product strategy. Through this work, your responsibilities include (but are not limited to):

• Lead end-to-end research programs that inform service design, experience strategy, and product innovation — from scoping and planning through synthesis and integration with XD Team.
• Map and model service ecosystems, including customer journeys, backstage processes, and touchpoints, to identify systemic opportunities and pain points.
• Translate insights into strategic artifacts such as service blueprints, experience principles, and opportunity frameworks that guide design and business decisions.
• Facilitate workshops and co-creation sessions with cross-functional teams to align on research findings, define opportunity spaces, and prioritize initiatives.
• Collaborate closely with product managers, designers, engineers, and business leads to integrate research insights into product and service roadmaps.
• Measure and communicate impact, connecting research outcomes to product performance, customer satisfaction, and operational efficiency.
• Advocate for customer and stakeholder perspective sat all levels of the organization, ensuring business and design decisions are grounded in real-world needs.
• Build and scale service design research practices, contributing to the development of frameworks, repositories, and methodologies that raise organizational research maturity.
• Provide direction and mentorship to researchers and designers, elevating the organizational service design maturity.

PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND:

• 8–10+ years of experience in user experience research, service design, strategy, or experience innovation roles, ideally within high-complexity B2B or multi-touchpoint environments.
• Proven track record of leading discovery and service research initiatives that informed product, service, or business decisions.
• Experience working in cross-functional environments, collaborating with product, design, engineering, operations, and business stakeholders.
• Background inhuman-centered design, systems thinking, and organizational research methods (e.g., contextual inquiry, ethnography, journey mapping, service blueprinting, co-creation).
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Design Research, Service Design, Human-Computer Interaction, or a related discipline (or equivalent experience).
  
  

CORE SKILLS & COMPETENCIES:

• Skilled in uncovering insights across multi-stakeholder ecosystems, identifying opportunities for improved customer and operational experiences.
• Ability to visualize and model complex relationships among people, tools, data, and business processes.
• Adept at turning research findings into actionable recommendations and opportunity areas.
• Experienced in leading workshops and cross-functional sessions that align teams around customer understanding, insights and opportunities.
• Strong communicator who can translate complexity into compelling narratives or visuals for executive and product audiences.
• Comfortable interpreting data trends and integrating behavioral metrics into qualitative insights.
• Deep understanding of B2B dynamics, enterprise workflows, and how research impacts revenue, retention, and operational efficiency.

PORTFOLIO:

Candidates should present a portfolio or case studies that demonstrate:

• Research programs that led to strategic impact (e.g., changes in service strategy, experience design, or product direction).
• Use of service design tools such as journey maps, blueprints, or ecosystem models that illustrate systems-level thinking.
• Ability to translate insights into decisions and communicate their influence on design and business outcomes.
• Experience addressingB2B complexity, such as multi-user environments, internal vs. external workflows, or cross-channel service delivery.
• Clear storytelling that highlights your process, your role, and the outcomes achieved through your work.

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