Lead Designer

• We believe in the power of ingenuity to build a positive human future in a technology-driven world.

  As strategies, technologies and innovation collide, we create opportunity from complexity.
  Our diverse teams of experts combine innovative thinking and breakthrough use of technologies to progress further, faster. Our clients adapt and transform, and together we achieve enduring results.

  An innovation and transformation consultancy, we are over 3,200 specialists in consumer, defence and security, energy and utilities, financial services, government, health and life sciences, manufacturing, and transport. Our people are strategists, innovators, designers, consultants, digital experts, scientists, engineers and technologists. We operate globally from offices across the UK, US, Europe, and the Nordics.

  Bringing Ingenuity to Life.

  Job Description

  Lead Designers act as a visionary, leading the evolution of design best practice and ensuring creative excellence in every aspect of delivery and offer to clients. 

  As Lead Designer, you will have design responsibility for multiple streams of work, across multiple clients. You will support the CDO in leading the long-term creative output, with shared responsibility for the welfare, creativity, performance and profitability of the Design Team.

  You will develop strong, long-term strategic relationships with clients, shaping their understanding of digital practice and increasing their confidence when commissioning digital experiences.

  You will formulate and articulate design strategy and processes. You will lead the end to end design aspects of our work and ensure it is robust, progressive and commercially strong.

  What you’ll do:

  As Lead Designer you will have been developing responses to complex digital ecosystem problems, ideally within a consultancy, an agency or design studio. You will therefore have extensive experience and advanced knowledge of a wide range of design tools, design software, techniques and processes - and know when to use them. Your key tasks and responsibilities will be to:

  • Formulate and lead design strategy and processes
  • Clearly communicate design direction to others; oversee and direct the team but be ‘in’ the work yourself, with rolled up sleeves
  • Direct and produce artefacts across the full design spectrum as required by projects
  • Challenge inappropriate ideas and solutions
  • Build and manage relationships with internal teams and clients
  • Present, explain and justify design solutions to clients
  • Assist with managing the pipeline of future design work and the pipeline of designers - and assign designers to projects
  • Be involved in pitches and new business proposals
  • Have line management responsibility for designers: develop coaching, mentoring and training plans, organise/run performance appraisals, input on salary negotiation/reward management
  • Assist with recruitment and onboarding of new staff.

  Key Skills:

  Leadership

  • Accurately scope, estimate effort and define activities for large complex programmes of work (e.g. in proposals/SOWs)
  • Know the team well, their skills and interests; cast blended teams that compliment and challenge each other
  • Identify the way forward, set the design direction
  • Set and manage clear expectations about quality and speed of project output
  • Recognise opportunities for specialist engagement and oversee their contribution.

  Practitioner

  • Be an outstanding and highly skilled and experienced design practitioner covering all aspects of digital responsive interaction design
  • Be able to use the usual design and prototyping software to the highest level (eg: Sketch, Illustrator, Invision, Axure, Omnigraffle, Sublime/Atom, Keynote, pen and paper)
  • Confidently sketch target customer experiences, journeys and interfaces in collaborative teams and in workshops with clients.

  Communication

  • Accomplished at using storytelling techniques (that are human, impactful, accessible and captivating) to convey information, argument and persuasion in formal pressured settings, to large senior audiences
  • Able to have full and frank conversations, employing sensitivity and robustness in equal measure
  • Challenge and question using different critique techniques, offering praise when deserved; actively seek feedback on own output and management approach.