Design Lead - Experience Architecture

Tesco; Welwyn Garden City; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus up to 20%

25 days holiday + personal day + bank

Private medical insurance

Maternity/paternity leave

Employee wellbeing resources

Job summary

Tesco is seeking a Design Lead to drive the UX strategy for the Customer Experience Horizontal across app and web platforms. You will own the design vision for shared journeys that span multiple propositions, shaping information architecture, navigation, and cross‑platform experiences.

You will collaborate closely with product, engineering, and accessibility teams to ensure scalable, accessible design. The role balances strategic thinking with hands‑on execution in a fast-paced environment.

Qualifications

• Significant experience leading UX design strategy for web and mobile.
• Expertise in information architecture and navigation design.
• Strong skills in customer journey mapping and UX principles.

Responsibilities

• Define and deliver the UX strategy for the CXH team across app and web.
• Own the design vision for shared journeys spanning multiple propositions.
• Shape information architecture, navigation, and cross‑platform experiences.

Skills

UX strategy

Information architecture

Navigation design

Customer Journey mapping

Stakeholder influencing

Research analytics

Communication storytelling

Facilitation

Accessibility awareness

Design system collaboration

Job description

About the role

This role requires 3 days working from our London Farringdon office, not WGC.

We're looking for an exceptional Design Lead to lead the design strategy for our Customer Experience Horizontal (CXH) team, part of the broader Online Shopping UXDR function.

As our Online Shopping business continues to grow across Grocery Home Delivery, Whoosh, F&F Clothing, and Marketplace, delivering a seamless, cohesive experience across propositions has never been more important. While proposition teams focus on creating outstanding experiences within their own domains, the CXH team is responsible for the experiences that connect them—ensuring customers experience one intuitive, joined-up shopping journey, regardless of how or where they shop.

This is a highly strategic design leadership role. You'll define and evolve the shared customer experience across our app and web platforms, shaping the moments every customer interacts with—from the digital front door and homepage, through navigation and search, to the patterns and principles that create consistency at scale.

Working closely with Product, Engineering, Research, Content Design, and our Design System team, you'll establish the design principles, interaction patterns, and UX standards that enable proposition teams to innovate while maintaining a cohesive, best-in-class customer experience.

You'll also play a key role in defining the future of our shopping experience, balancing customer needs, commercial priorities, and emerging technologies—including AI—to ensure we continue to raise the quality and consistency of our digital experiences.

You will be responsible for

• Partnering with the Design Manager to define and deliver the UX strategy for the Customer Experience Horizontal (CXH) team across app and web platforms.
• Owning the design vision for shared customer journeys and experiences that span multiple propositions.
• Shaping the digital front door, information architecture, navigation, search, and other cross-platform experiences.
• Defining and championing high-level UX principles, interaction patterns, and experience standards.
• Partnering with the Design System team to ensure consistency between strategic UX patterns and reusable UI components.
• Creating and evolving documentation, playbooks, and best practices that enable teams to deliver consistently high-quality experiences.
• Collaborating with and influencing Design Leads across proposition teams to balance local optimisation with platform-wide consistency.
• Working closely with Product and Engineering leaders to ensure customer experience remains a strategic consideration across roadmaps and delivery.
• Using customer insights, data, and experimentation to continuously improve the end-to-end shopping experience.
• Contributing hands-on to complex, high-impact design initiatives from discovery and problem definition through to detailed design and delivery.
• Working with the Accessibility Design Lead to champion accessibility and inclusive design, ensuring shared journeys and patterns meet the needs of diverse customers.
• Partnering with the Design Manager to maintain high standards of design quality, providing guidance on interaction design, platform conventions, and technical execution through implementation.
• Leading design critique sessions and fostering a culture of constructive feedback and continuous improvement.

You will need

• Significant experience leading UX design strategy and delivering customer-centred digital experiences across web and mobile platforms.
• Strong expertise in user experience design, information architecture, navigation, interaction design, and customer journey mapping.
• Experience designing and optimising end-to-end customer journeys that span multiple products, propositions, or teams.
• A strong understanding of design systems and the relationship between UX patterns and reusable UI components.
• Proven ability to influence stakeholders and collaborate effectively with Product, Engineering, Design, and Accessibility teams.
• Experience using customer research, behavioural data, analytics, and experimentation to inform design decisions.
• Excellent communication and storytelling skills, with the ability to articulate design rationale and build alignment across stakeholders.
• Strong facilitation skills, including leading design critiques, workshops, and collaborative working sessions.
• A passion for accessibility and inclusive design, with a solid understanding of accessibility principles and standards.
• Experience creating frameworks, playbooks, and best-practice guidance that support design quality and consistency at scale.
• The ability to balance strategic thinking with hands-on design execution in a fast-paced environment.
• A collaborative mindset and a commitment to delivering exceptional customer experiences.

Whats in it for you?

• Annual bonus scheme of up to 20% of base salary.
• Holiday starting at 25 days plus a personal day (plus Bank holidays).
• Private medical insurance.
• 26 weeks maternity and adoption leave (12 months service required at the qualifying date) at full pay, followed by 13 weeks of Statutory Maternity Pay or Statutory Adoption Pay, we also offer 6 weeks fully paid paternity leave.
• Free 24/7 virtual GP service, Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) for you and your family, free access to a range of experts to support your mental wellbeing.

About Us

You might know us as a supermarket, technology company or even for our award-winning mobile network. Truth is, we’re all of those things, and much more. Our colleagues work with one goal in mind, helping to make every day a little better for our customers, colleagues and communities all over the world. No two customers are the same, neither are our colleagues.

At Tesco, we champion a balance that lets you thrive both in and out of work. Spend 60% of your week collaborating with colleagues at our office locations or local sites and the rest remotely. Whether you're just kicking off your career, juggling passions, or navigating big life events, we're here to support you. We always welcome a conversation about flexible working, so talk to us throughout your application about how we can support.

We're proud to be an accredited Disability Confident Leader, where everyone’s welcome. That’s why we commit to providing a fully inclusive and accessible recruitment process.