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Design Lead

ustwo is looking for a Design Lead to join our design team in the London studio. We are a global studio committed to making a measurable positive impact on people's everyday lives. We work across the entire product lifecycle, from visioning and discovery, validating propositions to launching products and services that are valuable to both users and businesses. As a result, we have a lasting and transformative effect on the companies and organisations we work with.

To meet these opportunities, our design team is made up of versatile designers who have and are constantly developing and broadening their wide skill sets and deepening their process knowledge. Our designers are skilled, confident, and multi-faceted, collaborating across all disciplines involved in the product and service development process.

REQUIREMENTS

The Role

As Design Lead at ustwo, you'll be intuitive on how best to support the needs of the people, projects and studio. You know when to get hands-on with the detail yourself and when to set your teams up for success by delegating work while directing and teaching. You'll be responsible for ensuring that our designers are learning and developing through role modelling, and you'll provide guidance and support to individual designers and teams, bestowing vision and direction during projects, from discovering value to validating propositions all the way through to delivering product and services.

You will often be hands-on during projects, working with other designers, developers, and delivery coaches to define, build, and iterate solutions for our fantastic clients and partners. In addition, you'll have the opportunity to work with other senior members of the design team, helping us improve process, approaches, and strategy for both the design team and the studio as a whole.

ustwo is known for exceptional design craft, we are looking for a Design Lead that can help lead teams to create experiences that not only express brands within products but resonate emotionally with audiences.

Location

We have a beautiful London studio on 154-158 Shoreditch High Street. Although we are a hybrid model we expect everyone to be in our studio on a Tuesday for our universal day. The design team also come in on Thursdays too and you are free to come in beyond that as much or as little as you like! We really find collaborating in person as a team hugely beneficial as a studio so we encourage anyone to take advantage of using our space particularly to support collaborative project work.

You are…

• Comfortable, confident and competent at managing and directing individuals and teams.
• Able to frame and communicate challenges and opportunities to clients and teams, and create alignment on a way forward.
• Adept at growing client relationships and contributing to business development
• A brilliant and accomplished designer with proven experience working on things that exist in the real world, not only as prototypes.
• A natural and inclusive collaborator who can speak to a range of professionals from different backgrounds
• Experienced with carrying out strategic opportunity discovery work within a design practice that creates value for our clients.
• Well versed in conducting research, creating and validating ideas, creating prototypes and make confident recommendations to our businesses.
• Someone who takes a wide strategic view of problems, seeking multiple inputs and solutions and challenge the thinking of the teams and clients you work with.
• Able to understand progressive ways of working to drive both commercial and design value and have the ability to simplify complexity.
• Has proven experience creating and leading brand expressive, effective and emotionally joyful digital experiences
• Someone that enjoys being hands-on . We believe lead designers shouldn’t be separated from the reality of making things.
• Experienced and confident in visualising and prototyping concepts fast to communicate ideas.
• Able to think strategically and systemically about opportunities and challenges.
• Someone who gives and receives quality feedback in equal measures.
• Comfortable with experimentation and clear understanding when to experiment and where to use defined solutions.
• Has a product mindset and is able to make pragmatic trade-offs while holding a bigger strategic goal in mind.
• A natural storyteller and presenter.

You have…

• Veteran-level design experience with plenty of years under your belt, deep knowledge and expertise in user experience, research and product design.
• Proficiency in, and examples of, how you resolve difficult design challenges, as well as demonstrate ability in leadership, support, mentoring and working closely with other designers.
• Experience in being involved in projects that have not always followed the status quo, and can demonstrate times you have challenged dominant design perspectives and broken new ground where traditional design paradigms didn’t make sense.
• Solid understanding across other design disciplines - Brand strategy, Business design, product ownership
• Proven capability of shipping software applications and other design outputs across a variety of platforms.
• An exceptional understanding of how behaviour and context impacts design.
• Impeccable knowledge of design tools and workflows.
• The ability to multitask and contribute to more than one project at once.
• A clear written and verbal communication style.
• Successful stories about how you have helped others to develop, both in their craft and soft skills.

Once you’re in the role you will…

• Work with multidisciplinary teams on a range of products as the design authority on the project, often managing designers from a range of backgrounds
• Advocate for the user at all times to drive value for our client businesses. These projects typically range from 6 weeks to a year and vary from early-stage opportunity discovery through to producing products that go into the market through to recommending changes to existing products and services.
• Work very closely with other designers, technologists, coaches and business partners to successfully deliver projects from kick-off through to delivery for our clients. You will own the design process, outputs and integrity of the project (s).
• Give and action feedback and input into all aspects of the design process.
• Advise on team resourcing for the projects you are working on.
• Support your line managees with career development, if you are asked to line manage people.
• Work with the team to develop prototypes, alphas, betas and live services.
• Regularly conduct testing with users, design the methodology for these and turn the output into intelligence.
• Carry out client-facing workshops and presentations and help develop accounts that you are working on.
• Work with the new business team on developing pitches
• Be an expert who is continually learning about your field and help your colleagues improve their design practice
• Participate in regular sprint ceremonies for your projects - daily stand-ups, show and tells, retrospectives, sprint planning etc.
• Contribute to progressing & improving our culture and ways of working - offering up new approaches.

Interested but think your experience doesn’t perfectly align with this job description? That’s ok. Research shows underrepresented groups in particular are less inclined to apply for jobs where they don’t meet 100% of the requirements listed. We’d still love to hear from you if you feel qualified for this role!
We are committed to creating an inclusive environment for our colleagues, clients, community, and the users of our products. We don’t have all the answers but we’re on a journey, and we are learning together.

Salary banding: £75k - 90k per annum