Head of User Experience, OpenBlue

Johnson Controls; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Johnson Controls in London is seeking a senior UX leader to define the UX vision and roadmap across a broad product portfolio. You will lead and mentor a UX/UI team, shaping concepts from exploration to detailed interface design.

Collaborate with customers, Product Management, AI and Engineering to test assumptions, build scalable design systems, and embed research and usability testing to drive measurable outcomes.

Qualifications

• Required: 10+ years in UX or product design with portfolio showing impact
• Hands-on design craft: turn ambiguous problems into intuitive journeys and compelling interfaces
• Team leadership: minimum 3 years leading a team of UX/design professionals
• Customer-led collaboration: experience working directly with customers and communicating across functions
• Business fluence: ability to defend design investments with metrics and tie UX to revenue/retention
• SaaS experience: browser-based/mobile SaaS products and data-rich apps (B2B/B2C/B2B2C)
• AI: hands-on experience using AI tools to generate designs and UX
• Standards and regulations: familiarity with WCAG and inclusive design
• Global collaboration: comfortable working across time zones
• Transferable digital-experience capabilities from other environments

Responsibilities

• Define the UX vision and roadmap across the portfolio, connecting customer needs with product and business priorities.
• Lead, coach and develop a UX/UI team, setting clear priorities and high design standards.
• Take an active, hands‑on role in shaping concepts from early exploration through detailed interaction and interface design.
• Create user flows, wireframes, journey maps and prototypes to explore alternatives and inform decisions.
• Partner with customers, Product Management, AI and Engineering to test assumptions and refine solutions.
• Build and evolve shared design patterns and a scalable design system for a consistent portfolio experience.
• Embed research, customer feedback and usability testing into development, measuring impact through usability and customer outcomes.

Skills

Team leadership

UX design portfolio

Hands-on design craft

Customer collaboration

Business fluence

SaaS UX experience

AI-assisted design

Accessibility standards

Global teamwork

Smart buildings domain (nice-to-have)

Tools

Figma AI

Claude

Job description

What you will do

• Define the UX vision and roadmap across the portfolio, connecting customer needs with product and business priorities.
• Lead, coach and develop a UX/UI team, setting clear priorities and high design standards.
• Take an active, hands‑on role in shaping concepts alongside the team, from early exploration through detailed interaction and interface design.
• Bring ideas to life through user flows, wireframes, journey maps and prototypes, helping teams explore alternatives and make informed decisions.
• Partner with customers, Product Management, AI and Engineering to test assumptions and refine solutions.
• Build and evolve shared design patterns and a scalable design system for a consistent portfolio experience.
• Embed research, customer feedback and usability testing into development, measuring impact through usability, adoption and customer outcomes.

How you will do it

Design alongside the team, turning complex requirements into clear user journeys, interfaces and prototypes. Interact with customers on a usual basis to ensure products respond to their needs. Use the latest AI tools to build UIs and workflows quickly (e.g., Claude, Figma AI, etc.). Explore and test ideas quickly, using customer feedback and product usage data to refine designs. Bring Product, Engineering, AI and global stakeholders together around a shared UX direction, balancing user needs, technical constraints and business priorities. Connect new and existing products through shared design patterns, improving accessibility, usability and consistency across the portfolio. Work closely and iteratively with Engineering to understand technical constraints and feasibility.

What we look for

• Required Min 10 years in UX or product design, with a portfolio showing your contribution to complex software products and the outcomes achieved.
• Hands‑on design craft: demonstrated ability to turn ambiguous problems into intuitive journeys and compelling interfaces, exploring alternatives quickly and explaining your decisions.
• Team leadership: min 3 years of experience leading a team of user experience and design professionals.
• Customer‑led collaboration: Proven experience working directly with customers when building new user experiences, incl. the ability to communicate at all levels across all functions: from Engineering to Product, AI, CxO.
• Business fluence: clear understanding of how UX ties into revenue and retention and ability to defend design investments with metrics.
• SaaS products: Background in browser‑based and mobile SaaS products and data‑rich applications. Can be B2B or B2C or B2B2C.
• AI: Proven hands‑on experience working with AI tools to generate designs and user experiences.
• Standards and regulations: Thorough familiarity with current technical standards, e.g., WCAG, etc., AI‑generated UIs and content, accessibility conformance reporting, inclusive design, etc.
• Global team: Comfortable interacting and collaborating with teams around the globe, across multiple timezones (Asia-Europe-Americas).
• Preferred Familiarity with global product environments, smart buildings, energy management or workplace experience. Smart building experience is not essential.
• We welcome transferable capabilities from other digital environments.

How you will demonstrate your capabilities

During the interview process, you will demonstrate your hands‑on design capabilities through relevant work. Show us how you explored ideas, contributed within a team and used customer feedback and stakeholder input to develop the resulting experience. We want to understand both your design craft and how you help a team deliver, beyond project coordination or stakeholder influence alone.

Why join us?

Inspire the team. Push the craft. Shape the next generation of digital experiences. Help define new cloud‑native products and a connected experience across OpenBlue. Bring ideas to life with customers, designers and engineers, with access to tools and a clear purpose: making complex building operations simpler. Combine the reach of Johnson Controls with the creative challenge of product transformation. Lead the team, stay close to design and help customers operate buildings more efficiently and sustainably. Bring your vision and your strongest work. #LI-JM1

Johnson Controls: Enhancing the Intelligence of Buildings Your buildings have a purpose. They are places for people to live or work. Facilities for learning or healing. Venues for entertainment and shopping. Sites for the specialized storage of tangible goods or mission‑critical data. Your buildings have a huge variety of functions; they are central to your mission. This is where Johnson Controls comes in, helping drive the outcomes that matter most. Through a full range of systems and digital solutions, we make your buildings smarter. A smarter building is safer, more comfortable, more efficient, and, ultimately, more sustainable. Most important, smarter buildings let you focus more intensely on your unique mission. Better for your people. Better for your bottom line. Better for the planet. At Johnson Controls, we’ve been making buildings smarter since 1885, and our capabilities, depth of innovation experience, and global reach have been growing ever since. Today, we offer the world’s largest portfolio of building products, technologies, software, and services; we put that portfolio to work to transform the environments where people live, work, learn and play.