Customer Experience Design Manager

Waitrose & Partners; Bracknell; Hybrid; GBP 65,000 - 79,000; Full time

Job summary

Waitrose & Partners is seeking a Customer Experience Design Manager to shape end-to-end experiences for our food lovers. Based at Bracknell Head Office, you will lead journey design, partner with cross-functional teams and influence development aligned with our food lover ambition.

The role demands strong design leadership, strategic planning, and the ability to translate insights into compelling customer outcomes.

Qualifications

• Experience working in design-led, human-centred or service design environments.
• Proven track record of defining and delivering end-to-end experience improvements.
• Exceptional communication and influencing skills, combining analytical rigor with emotional resonance to drive alignment and commitment.
• Evidence of shaping priorities and direction, not just outputs.
• Experience working across short-term delivery and longer-term transformation.

Responsibilities

• Strategic Experience Design: Play a key role in developing the end-to-end food lovers experience, the 3-year CX plan, and the associated budget.
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Lead complex, cross-functional value stream priorities. Partner closely with Store Concept Design and other matrix teams to design customer outcomes across priority experiences.
• Stakeholder Influence & Communication: Marry evidence-based rationale with compelling, human-centric storytelling to inspire stakeholders and drive alignment across all levels, from C-suite executives to cross-functional peers.
• Systems Thinking: Apply systems thinking to seamlessly connect people, processes, technology, and environments into a coherent omnichannel experience.
• Test, Learn & Standards: Design and lead test-and-learn activities to ensure solutions are practical and scalable. Set and maintain clear design quality standards as part of an overall CX toolkit.
• Capability Building: Coach and develop team capability to improve consistency, pace, and impact across experience design practices.

Skills

Design-led

Human-centred design

Stakeholder management

Cross-functional leadership

Service design

Job description

About The Role

We are looking for Customer Experience Design Managers to join our team at Waitrose. As a Customer Experience Design Manager, you will play a pivotal role in defining and shaping the end-to-end Waitrose experience for Food Lovers. You will ensure our customer experiences are built around eliminating pain points and enhancing passion points that drive customer behaviour, perception, and commercial performance. In this role, you will lead the design of key customer journeys and concepts, partnering with cross-functional matrix teams to inspire and influence development activity fully aligned with our food lover ambition. This role is known internally as Experience Design Manager.

• Expected salary - Salary up to £72,000 depending on experience.
• Contract type - This position is a Permanent contract.
• Working pattern/flexible working - The Partnership has adopted a hybrid working approach, meaning you'll be able to work a mixture between the office and home based upon your personal needs whilst balancing the needs of the business. The team are required to be in the office 3 days a week, with core days being Tuesday and Wednesday. The other day may be instore or with an agency.
• Location - Bracknell Head Office
• Interviews - Please note there will be a 2 stage interview process. The first stage will be about exploring your skills and experience in relation to the role and will be virtual. There is no pre-work required for this interview. If you are successful following this stage you will be invited to a second stage interview which will be held in person at our Bracknell Head office on from the 5th October onwards.

Key Responsibilities

• Strategic Experience Design: Play a key role in developing the end-to-end food lovers experience, the 3-year CX plan, and the associated budget. Translate customer insights into clear, compelling, and actionable priority experiences.
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Lead complex, cross-functional value stream priorities. Partner closely with Store Concept Design and other matrix teams to design customer outcomes across priority experiences.
• Stakeholder Influence & Communication: Marry evidence-based rationale with compelling, human-centric storytelling to inspire stakeholders and drive alignment across all levels, from C-suite executives to cross-functional peers. Leverage the voice of the customer to build genuine enthusiasm and consensus around customer experience improvements, articulating complex design strategies with clarity and impact.
• Systems Thinking: Apply systems thinking to seamlessly connect people, processes, technology, and environments into a coherent omnichannel experience.
• Test, Learn & Standards: Design and lead test-and-learn activities to ensure solutions are practical and scalable. Set and maintain clear design quality standards as part of an overall CX toolkit.
• Capability Building: Coach and develop team capability to improve consistency, pace, and impact across experience design practices.

Essential Skills/experience You’ll Need

• Experience working in design-led, human-centred or service design environments.
• Proven track record of defining and delivering end-to-end experience improvements.
• Exceptional communication and influencing skills, combining analytical rigor with emotional resonance to drive alignment and commitment. Proven ability to engage, present to, and influence stakeholders at all levels, including senior leaders and C-suite, as well as cross-functional peers.
• Evidence of shaping priorities and direction, not just outputs.
• Experience working across short-term delivery and longer-term transformation.

Desirable Skills/experience You May Have

• Experience in complex, multi-channel organisations.
• Experience working alongside product, digital or operational teams.

About The Partnership

We're the largest employee owned business in the UK and home of our cherished brands, John Lewis and Waitrose. We're not just employees, we're Partners, driven by our purpose to build a happier world. As we look to our future, there's never been a more exciting time to join us.

We're ruthlessly focused on being brilliant at retail. We continue to innovate, adapt and diversify. Never Knowingly Undersold on price, quality and service in John Lewis and passionately serving food-lovers in Waitrose.

As Partners we all share the responsibility of ownership and in its rewards. We use our voices to contribute to our success, working together through the good and challenging times, holding true to our behaviours and treating everyone with kindness and respect.

We all own making the Partnership somewhere we belong. Embracing our differences and creating an environment where we're free to be ourselves and can THRIVE. Growing ourselves individually, and as a collective.

As Partners, we make all the difference. And, we all own it.

Important points to note:

It's important to note that some of our roles are subject to pre-employment vetting (which may include DBS checks for successful candidates). If required, you'll be informed and provided with information about vetting during the recruitment process and we encourage you to complete any vetting documents quickly to avoid delays. Any DBS checks required will be carried out by a third-party registered body and financial probity checks may also be required for some of our roles.

We occasionally close vacancies early in the event we receive a high volume of applications, and therefore, we recommend you apply early. If you require a reasonable adjustment due to a disability which means you may need longer to complete your application please contact us as soon as possible.

We want all of our Partners to have a good work-life balance and we support flexible working. This might mean flexible or compressed hours, job sharing or shorter hour contracts, where possible. Please discuss this further with the hiring manager during your interview.