Principal Product Designer

On the Beach; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Beach Perks package

Bonus potential

Flexible hours

Hybrid office in Manchester

Job summary

On the Beach is seeking a Principal Product Designer focused on retention, owning the post-booking experience to keep customers returning. You will work across engineering, product, research, and marketing, shaping the direction as an equal voice in decisions impacting the experience.

Senior designers stay hands-on, solving complex end-to-end challenges with modern tools and systems, not just managing processes or people. This role reports to the Director of Product Design.

Qualifications

• Senior designer with customer-facing product experience and ability to shape direction.
• Accountability and ability to stand behind direction and be measured on impact.
• Comfortable aligning and influencing across cross-functional groups.
• Fluent in data and testing to validate decisions.
• Thrive in fast-paced, ambiguous environments and prototype quickly.

Responsibilities

• Partner with owners of customer outcomes to set vision and priorities.
• Build a deep picture from data and market insights to identify opportunities.
• Own end-to-end experience, identify next step changes across the journey.
• Align teams and coach designers to execute the product strategy.
• Move from concept to tested prototype while elevating the design system.

Skills

Senior designer

Accountability

Cross-functional collaboration

Data-driven decision making

Ability to work in ambiguity

Job description

We’re On the Beach! Since 2003, we've been rewriting the rules of how people discover, book, and experience their perfect getaway. What started as connecting people to short-haul beach holidays has evolved into something much bigger - premium beach destinations, long-haul adventures, and vibrant city breaks – and that’s just the beginning of our story.

We send around two million holidaymakers on their dream breaks every year. And we're still growing.

Powered by our deep-rooted entrepreneurial spirit, proprietary tech, curiosity and our incredible people, we’re accelerating - delivering best in class technology, the ultimate holiday app, and experiences that keep our customers coming back for more.

Ready to build the future of travel with us?

About the Role

This is a Principal Product Designer role focused on retention: keeping customers coming back, holiday after holiday. That means owning the post-booking experience, giving people hiccup-free holidays and easy self-service when plans change, and working with marketing and customer operations to build loyalty that makes the next booking feel obvious. It's a big space with plenty to get your teeth into.

The role has two sides. You'll help set the direction, working across our cross-functional teams (engineers, product managers, researchers, marketing and more) as an equal voice on where we take the experience and why.

Our Most Senior Designers stay connected with the work, directly improving our experience end-to-end, rather than just managing processes or people. Leveraging modern tools and systems, our senior designers directly solve complex end-to-end customer challenges rather than just managing processes.

How, When & Where we work.

We want you to do your best work without sacrificing your life outside of it:

• Hybrid Working: We gather at our Aeroworks office in Manchester City Centre just one day every two weeks.
• Flexible Hours: Standard hours are 37.5/week with core hours between 10am–4pm.
• Family & Wellbeing: Enhanced maternity, paternity, adoption, and shared parental leave...

What you’ll be doing day to day

• Partner with the people who own our customer outcomes as an equal voice on vision, priorities and the value question, keeping a relentless focus on customer and business value, grounded in a real understanding of the unit economics
• Build a deep picture from data, customer insight and the wider market, and use it to spot the opportunities worth chasing
• Hold the end-to-end view: how the parts add up to one coherent experience, and where the next step change comes from
• Align teams and departments, and coach the designers around you
• Move fast from idea to tested prototype, and design to a high bar that strengthens our design system

You’ll report to the Director of Product Design. There may be some people management depending on how the team evolves, but it's secondary: seniority here is about owning the hardest problems, not the size of your team.

You’ll be a great addition to our team if you have the following skills, knowledge and experience

• A senior designer with several years on customer-facing products, who shapes direction and partners on outcomes ( e-commerce experience a plus, not a requirement)
• Someone who wants the accountability, comfortable setting a direction, standing behind it, and being measured on what it delivers
• Comfortable driving across a cross-functional group: aligning people, influencing without authority, holding the whole picture
• Fluent with the commercial and customer picture, and reaches for data and testing to know whether you're right
• At home with pace, ambiguity and modern tooling, and keen to use it to get from concept to something real, quickly

We'd love a portfolio that tells us about your thinking and what you learned, as much as the final designs.

What to expect from our interview process

We’ll run a multiple stage interview process, one stage of which may be an in-person interview at our fabulous Aeroworks office in Manchester city centre.

1. Intro call (20 mins, with our Talent team). The basics: what you're looking for, fit, right to work, and salary expectations. A good moment to ask anything early about the role or package.
2. Hiring manager interview (1 hour, with our Director of Product Design). We'd love to hear about your background, plus a quick informal walkthrough of some of your work, around 15 minutes. We'll also tell you much more about the role and company, and there's time for any questions you have for the hiring manager.
3. Project walkthrough (1 hour, with a cross-functional panel). Present one or two projects to a small panel of your future peers, around 30 minutes, then questions. This is also a great opportunity for you to hear how our cross-functional teams work.
4. Leadership interview (45 mins, with our senior leaders). A conversation with leaders from Product, Data, Engineering and People about how you think, lead and make an impact. These will be great people to answer questions about our culture, strategy, and anything else on your mind

We want to make sure everybody has the opportunity to perform at their best. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the interview process please let the Talent Acquisition team know and they will be happy to assist.

Ways of working

Our full time hours are 37.5 per week, but we don't have rigid working hours so you can find the working pattern that's right for you. We have core working hours between 10am - 4pm, so we can collaborate and enjoy the social side of work.

We also have hybrid working so we all work from home and from our Aeroworks office in Manchester City Centre. You’ll be in the office one day every two weeks, and you’re more than welcome to come in more if you’d like.

Our benefits

We might be biased but we think our colleagues are pretty great. They're the people that have made On the Beach what it is today and continue to make it vibrant and successful tomorrow. That's why we offer a benefits package, known as our Beach Perks, to all On the Beach colleagues.

We offer a competitive salary alongside performance-based annual bonuses and LTIP to reward your sustained impact.

These include:

• 25 days holiday plus your birthday off
• Generous discount on holidays, plus you will receive 2 extra days annual leave on top of your holiday allowance to use whilst you're away on your On the Beach package holiday
• Access to Learnerbly learning platform, plus workshops, courses and professional qualifications
• Enhanced maternity, paternity, shared parental leave and adoption pay, plus other family friendly support
• Employee Assistance Programme and free access to counselling
• Simplyhealth Optimise Health Plan
• Company Sick Pay scheme
• Regular wellbeing events
• Gym discount
• Share Incentive Plan (SIP)
• Death in Service cover
• Onsite subsidised coffee shop
• The Sandbox (our very own bar)
• Food and drink discounts across a number of venues in Manchester City Centre
• Regular social events
• Cycle to Work scheme