Lead Specialist, Experience Design

Pearson; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

Pearson is seeking a Senior Design Engineer to take product concepts from first sketch to interactive prototype and production-quality interfaces. You will design in Figma, code, and validate with real enterprise clients, with no handoff, ensuring a cohesive user experience.

This senior IC role requires strong front-end craft, accessibility expertise, and the ability to work across design, research, and engineering in a flexible, fast-paced UK hybrid team.

Qualifications

• Experience spanning product design and front-end engineering.
• Strong front-end craft: TypeScript/JavaScript, React and CSS.
• Solid design skills across typography, layout, color, interaction and motion.
• Fluency with Figma and AI-assisted workflows.
• Experience designing for complex, integration-rich enterprise environments.
• Knowledge of WCAG accessibility and practical application.

Responsibilities

• Prototype new product concepts in code (React/TypeScript or similar).
• Design and build the user-facing layer end to end: interaction design, IA, visual design and front-end code.
• Make composed products feel like one product by stitching together Pearson and third-party systems.
• Establish lightweight design foundations with patterns and components.
• Plan and run validation with usability sessions and prototypes as research instruments.
• Ship accessible by default, with WCAG conformance as a baseline.
• Flex between coding, research, facilitation, or design as the bet requires.

Skills

TypeScript/JavaScript

React

Design craft

Figma

WCAG accessibility

AI tools

Complex systems design

Communication

Tools

CSS

LTI/SCORM/xAPI

Job description

About the team

Our charter is simple to state and ambitious to deliver: build what Pearson does next. We are a small, newly formed team within Pearson's Enterprise Learning & Skills (ELS) division, creating entirely new products for our enterprise clients rather than improving existing ones.

Our starting point is an asset few companies can claim. Pearson has nearly two centuries of history and, with it, one of the world's deepest bodies of learning content, assessment data, and credentialing expertise. AI has transformed what that heritage makes possible. Our mission is to bring it to bear in new and distinctive ways - solving problems for our customers that could not be solved before AI.

That charter is intentionally broad. Each product may address a different challenge for the organizations we serve, but everything we build shares three characteristics:

• It will always involve integrations. Our products operate inside our clients' ecosystems - learning platforms, HR systems, identity providers, and data pipelines - and must work seamlessly with all of them.

• It will almost always build on other Pearson products. Pearson's portfolio spans assessment, qualifications, credentials, learning content, and workforce skills. We combine these capabilities - and the data and insight behind them - in ways that were not possible before, collaborating across the company as much as within the team.

• It will be researched and validated before it scales. We take an evidence-led approach: concepts are tested with real customers, and only those that prove their value move forward. Some ideas will be retired and others will advance - both outcomes are signs of a disciplined process.

The team is built around senior individual contributors - design engineers, product engineers, and a zero-to-one product manager - who work as peers from initial concept to shipped product.

The role

You think like a designer and build like an engineer. As a Senior Design Engineer on this team, you'll take new product concepts from first sketch to interactive prototype to production-quality interface - sometimes in the same week. There's no handoff here: you design in Figma, in code, and in whatever AI tool gets you to the answer fastest, then put the result in front of real users at real enterprise clients.

This is a senior individual contributor role. There are no direct reports; your influence comes from craft, evidence, and trust.

What you'll do

• Prototype new product concepts in code (React/TypeScript or similar) at whatever fidelity the question demands - from disposable spikes to polished, demo-ready experiences used in client validation.

• Design and build the user-facing layer of new products end to end: interaction design, information architecture, visual design, motion, and the front-end code behind all of it.

• Make composed products feel like one product. Our concepts stitch together other Pearson products and third-party enterprise systems; you make those seams invisible to learners and administrators.

• Establish lightweight design foundations for each new bet - patterns, components, tokens - with enough system to move fast, and not so much that it calcifies around ideas we might kill.

• Plan and run validation alongside the product manager: usability sessions, concept tests, and prototypes built specifically as research instruments.

• Ship accessible by default. For enterprise learning products, WCAG conformance is a floor, not a feature.

• Flex to what the bet needs - some weeks that's deep in the codebase alongside the product engineer; others it's entirely in research, facilitation, or design.

What you'll bring

• Relevant of experience spanning product design and front-end engineering in any mix, with a portfolio of shipped products and prototypes you can walk us through.

• Strong front-end craft: modern TypeScript/JavaScript, React or a comparable framework, and CSS you're genuinely proud of.

• Real design skill - typography, layout, color, interaction, and motion - plus the judgment to know when polish matters and when speed does.

• Fluency across the modern toolchain: Figma for design, and AI-assisted workflows (e.g., Claude, Cursor, Copilot) as a natural part of how you explore and build.

• Experience designing for complex systems: multi-role products, data-heavy interfaces, or integration-rich enterprise environments.

• Working knowledge of accessibility standards (WCAG) and how to apply them in practice.

• The autonomy to operate in ambiguous, zero-to-one contexts, and the communication skills to bring others along with you.

Nice to have

• Involvement with the web standards community (W3C, WHATWG) - through working groups, community groups, or deep working knowledge of the standards themselves.

• Familiarity with learning technology standards and ecosystems: LTI, SCORM, xAPI, QTI, Caliper, and the LMS/LXP platforms our clients run.

• Committee or working-group experience - you know how to move ideas through structured, multi-stakeholder processes.

• Research experience, whether user research, design research, or academic.

Who thrives on this team

• Flexible. Bets change, priorities shift, and fidelity ranges from napkin sketch to production. You move fluidly between them.

• Not precious. Some of what we build will be thrown away - that's the process working, not failing. You hold your work loosely and your standards tightly.

• Comfortable in parallel. You'll usually carry more than one workstream at a time, and you can context-switch without dropping threads.

• A systems thinker. You can understand complex systems - technical, organizational, or both - and figure out how to work effectively within them.

• A genuine problem-solver. You start from the problem, not from your job title or your favorite solution.

• Good with people. You build trust quickly across teams, disciplines, and levels - inside Pearson and with clients.

• Principled and pragmatic. You follow the rules that matter - ethics, privacy, security, and accessibility are non-negotiable - and you know how to flex in and out of heavyweight structures when a small, fast-moving team calls for it.

• A clear communicator. You make your thinking legible in writing, diagrams, demos, and rooms full of executives or engineers.

• Ego-free about execution. Everyone on this team is willing to write ALL the code or NONE of the code, depending on what the bet needs.

• Comfortable in discomfort. Ambiguity, unfamiliar domains, and half-formed ideas are the raw material of this job.

• An independent thinker. You form your own view, argue for it well, and update it quickly when the evidence says you should.

Location & Work Set Up

This is a full-time hybrid role based in the UK, with regular collaboration from our London office.

Your Rewards & Benefits

We know you'll do great work, so we give a lot back with some of the best benefits in the business. We know one size doesn't fit all, so our workplace programs meet the different needs of our diverse teams, and their families, too.

Please see our attractive UK benefits here: Home - Pearson Benefits

Who we are:

At Pearson, our purpose is simple: to help people realize the life they imagine through learning. We believe that every learning opportunity is a chance for a personal breakthrough. We are the world's lifelong learning company. For us, learning isn't just what we do. It's who we are. To learn more: We are Pearson.

Pearson is an Equal Opportunity Employer and a member of E-Verify. Employment decisions are based on qualifications, merit and business need. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status or any other group protected by law. We actively seek qualified candidates who are protected veterans and individuals with disabilities as defined under VEVRAA and Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act.

If you are an individual with a disability and are unable or limited in your ability to use or access our career site as a result of your disability, you may request reasonable accommodations by emailing [e-mail].