Principal Product Designer

JOHN LEWIS; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 72,000 - 88,000; Full time

Job summary

John Lewis is seeking a Principal Product Designer for Loyalty & Customer Engagement in London. You will shape the design vision for loyalty experiences and lead end-to-end design across the journey from discovery to delivery, collaborating with Product, UX Research, and Engineering.

The role requires senior leadership, a strong portfolio of product design across web and mobile, and a proven ability to mentor teams in a large retail organisation.

Qualifications

• Lead design direction across multiple teams and initiatives within a large organisation.
• Demonstrate end-to-end product design craft from discovery to delivery.
• Deep knowledge of interaction/visual design for web and mobile, with systems thinking.
• Deliver accessible experiences using design systems and inclusive practices.
• Strong storytelling, facilitation, and influencing to balance needs.
• Mentor designers and elevate design craft across teams.

Responsibilities

• Set the design vision for loyalty and customer engagement across product teams.
• Lead complex design challenges to create coherent loyalty experiences.
• Shape discovery with Product and UX Research, using evidence to identify opportunities.
• Deliver hands-on design from journeys to prototypes and interfaces.
• Translate long-term vision into actionable improvements with Product & Engineering.
• Collaborate with Design capability to evolve reusable patterns and consistency across experiences.
• Align stakeholders and coordinate design work through clear storytelling and decisions.
• Mentor designers and lead constructive critiques to raise design craft.
• Use research and performance data to improve understanding and engagement.

Skills

Design Leadership

Expert Portfolio

Technical Expertise

Inclusive Design

Stakeholder Alignment

Mentorship

Job description

About the role

As a Principal Product Designer in Loyalty & Customer Engagement, you will shape and deliver the design vision for experiences that help customers understand, access, and make the most of our brand's loyalty benefits and propositions.

Working within either John Lewis or Waitrose, you will lead design across the end-to-end loyalty experience, ensuring it connects seamlessly with the core shopping journey. As an expert practitioner and senior individual contributor, you will turn complex, ambiguous challenges into clear opportunities, compelling concepts, and high-quality experiences, guiding work from discovery through to delivery and continuous improvement.

Expected Salary - Salary up to £80,000, depending on experience

Contract type - Permanent

Location - London Pimlico Head Office

Working pattern/flexible working - The Partnership has adopted a hybrid working approach, meaning you'll be able to work flexibly between the office and home based upon the needs of the business. The team aims for around 2-3 days a week in the office to connect and on a more ad-hoc basis to attend key meetings. Core days will vary. There will be an expectation to travel to our Bracknell Head Office 1-2 times a month.

Key Responsibilities

• Setting the design vision for loyalty and customer engagement, aligning customer needs, brand direction, and business priorities across relevant product teams.
• Leading complex design challenges to create coherent experiences that help customers discover, understand, and use loyalty benefits.
• Shaping discovery with Product and UX Research, using evidence to challenge assumptions, identify opportunities, and evaluate solutions.
• Delivering hands-on design from journey maps and concepts through to prototypes and detailed interfaces.
• Translating long-term vision into achievable improvements alongside Product and Engineering, balancing customer value, technical constraints, and commercial priorities.
• Partnering with the brand's Design capability to evolve reusable design patterns and improve consistency across loyalty and shopping experiences.
• Aligning stakeholders and coordinating design work across teams through clear storytelling, facilitation, and explicit decisions on priorities and trade-offs.
• Mentoring designers, leading constructive critiques, and sharing learnings to strengthen design craft and practice.
• Using research and performance data to assess and improve benefit understanding, task completion, reward uptake, and engagement.

Essential skills/experience you’ll need

• Design Leadership: Proven experience leading design direction across multiple teams and complex initiatives within a large organisation.
• Expert Portfolio: Evidence of end-to-end product design craft, from early discovery and strategy to delivered interfaces and measurable outcomes.
• Technical Expertise: Deep knowledge of interaction/visual design for web and mobile, including systems and service design thinking.
• Inclusive Design: Practical expertise in utilising design systems and delivering accessible experiences.
• Stakeholder Alignment: Strong storytelling, facilitation, and influencing skills to balance customer, commercial, and technical needs.
• Mentorship: A proven track record of mentoring other designers and elevating design practice.

Desirable skills/experience you may have

• Domain Knowledge: Experience designing loyalty, rewards, membership, personalisation, or customer engagement propositions.
• Retail/Ecommerce: Experience in the retail sector, specifically connecting digital and in-store customer journeys.
• Data-Driven: Experience using behavioural data and experimentation to improve experiences.
• In-Store & Motion Design : Experience designing in-store digital products or using motion design to enhance interactions.

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.