Experience Design Principal

Made Tech Group; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

30 days Holiday

Flexible Working Hours

Flexible Parental Leave

Remote Working

Paid counselling

Job summary

Made Tech is seeking an Experience Design Principal to lead the design of complex digital products for public sector and private clients. You will translate product visions into strategic UX, oversee hands-on delivery of usability improvements, and mentor multidisciplinary teams.

You will work with researchers, designers, engineers, data analysts, and product owners to continuously improve user experiences while aligning with business goals.

Qualifications

• Experience leading the design of complex digital products and mapping end-to-end user journeys while balancing user needs, accessibility, and business goals.
• Strong consulting skills with a track record of trusted relationships with senior client stakeholders and a clear design vision.
• Proven ability to mentor and manage designers within fast-paced Agile environments.
• Experience contributing to proposals and driving commercial growth of a consulting practice.
• Evidence of applying user-centred design in public sector contexts (GDS/CDDO) and across app and web.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Experience Design aspects of client engagements, translating product visions into design strategies and overseeing hands-on delivery of usability improvements.
• Collaborate with researchers, designers, engineers, data analysts, and product owners to implement ongoing improvements that drive better outcomes.
• Support the Head of Experience Design in running communities of practice and knowledge sharing.
• Engage with clients to understand challenges, provide solution advice, and build trusted-advisor relationships.
• Oversee multiple concurrent client deliveries ensuring quality and sharing best practice.
• Coach and develop team members, including performance reviews and professional development.
• Act as an experience design authority and contribute to business development and scaling the practice.

Skills

Experience design leadership

Public sector UX

User Research

Content Design

Interaction Design

Service Design

Agile leadership

Consulting with senior stakeholders

Mentoring designers

Cross-functional collaboration

Proposal submissions / business growth

End-to-end user journeys

Accessible design

Job description

Our Experience Design Principals lead and deliver complex client engagements across our public sector portfolio. Sitting within the Experience Design Practice in our Strategy & Design Service Line, they work alongside leadership peers in Advisory & Change and Product & Innovation to deliver holistic outcomes.

We're looking for "T-shaped" experience design leaders whose careers have been built around designing digital products and user experiences, with expertise rooted in hands-on practice. You will bring a deep mastery of your core design craft alongside a broad, practical understanding of the wider User Centred Design (UCD) landscape. You will have a strong working understanding of our capabilities and the techniques used across our practice - including visual design, user research, content design, service design principles and UX.

We believe that great delivery stems from:

• A deep understanding of user needs and behaviours, keeping accessibility and citizen outcomes at the heart of everything we build.
• The ability to align user needs with client goals, technical constraints or opportunities, and commercial requirements.
• The ability to articulate this alignment as a clear, powerful, and inspiring service vision.
• Strong consulting and practice craft skills to realise that vision collaboratively.
• Agile leadership, enabling cross-functional teams to implement effectively in a changing environment.

Your role at Made Tech

As an Experience Design Principal, your time will be split across client strategy, hands-on quality assurance, people development, and practice growth:

Lead the Experience Design aspects of one or more of our client engagements. You will translate product visions into experience design strategies that deliver category-leading user experiences, overseeing the hands-on delivery of usability improvements and end-to-end journeys across all channels (web and app).

Partner closely with user researchers, interaction designers, content designers, engineers, data analysts, and client product owners to make ongoing, recommended improvements that drive better user and business outcomes. You will comfortably blend just-in-time delivery of design artefacts with continuous discovery and long-term ideation.

Supporting the Head of Experience Design in running our Experience Design communities of practice, in their regular meetings, away days, knowledge sharing and slack channel engagements.

Engage deeply with clients to understand their challenges, provide solution advice, and build lasting, trusted-advisor relationships. You will oversee multiple and concurrent client deliveries to ensure quality and drive the sharing of best practice.

Coach and develop team members on your engagements, providing detailed performance feedback. You will undertake people management responsibilities, including performance reviews and the professional development of your engagement and practice colleagues.

Act as an experience design authority to provide oversight and ensure alignment with internal and industry best practices. As a member of the practice leadership team, you will participate in business development activities (including bids and pre-sales), identify new opportunities, and help scale the practice to meet business needs.

Skills, Knowledge & Expertise

Throughout our interview process, we’ll be assessing you against the following core areas:

• A strong, practical grasp of user-centred design approaches within public sector environments (such as GDS/CDDO standards) and a proven track record of applying them to real-world delivery challenges.
• A solid working understanding of the capabilities and techniques across User Research, Content Design, and Interaction Design, with the ability to confidently leverage research to drive design decisions.
• The ability to look beyond single touchpoints to advise on broader Service Design challenges, collaborating effectively with cross-functional peers in Advisory and Change.
• Extensive experience leading the design of complex digital products, establishing UX strategies, and mapping end-to-end user journeys while balancing user needs, accessibility, technical constraints, and business goals.
• Exceptional consulting skills, with a track record of building trusted relationships with senior client stakeholders and articulating a clear, powerful design vision.
• Experience mentoring and managing designers, leading multidisciplinary teams, and comfortably driving high-quality implementation within fast-paced Agile environments.
• Experience contributing to proposal submissions, shaping client solutions, and driving the commercial growth of a consulting practice or account footprint.
• Evidence of a strong design ability ideally with a mix of public sector and private sector examples, across app and web.

We are always listening to our growing teams and evolving the benefits available to our people. As we scale, as do our benefits and we are scaling quickly. We've recently introduced a flexible benefit platform which includes a Smart Tech scheme, Cycle to work scheme, and an individual benefits allowance which you can invest in a Health care cash plan or Pension plan. We’re also big on connection and have an optional social and wellbeing calendar of events for all employees to join should they choose to.

Here are some of our most popular benefits listed below:

• 30 days Holiday - we offer 30 days of paid annual leave
• Flexible Working Hours - we are flexible with what hours you work
• Flexible Parental Leave - we offer flexible parental leave options
• Remote Working - we offer part time remote working for all our staff
• Paid counselling - we offer paid counselling as well as financial and legal advice

At this point, we hope you're feeling excited about Made Tech and the job opportunity.

Eligibility for SC requires 5 years UK residency and 5 year's employment history (or back to full-time education). Please note that if at any point during the interview process it is apparent that you may not be eligible for SC, we won't be able to progress your application and we will contact you to let you know why.

About Made Tech

Made Tech is on a mission to use technology to improve society - for everyone. We help organisations transform, deliver and manage world-class digital products and services.

Today, you can see our services (and people!) in action, such as the design and build of the Homes for Ukraine service, delivered in 2 weeks. We’re helping local authorities make it easier and quicker for people to log housing repairs online. By digitalising access to NHS services we’re making it more accessible, such as children needing mental health support.

All this great experience is enabling us to support new areas, like energy. We’re helping to drive better environmental outcomes by improving network performance through real-time asset monitoring, which means less wasted energy.

We were recently named as a finalist in the Raising the Bar for Workplace Transparency Award in the Shift People Awards. This is a recognition of our many great initiatives, such as our open-access employee handbook that we launched 5 years ago.