Principal UX Designer

BBC Group and Public Services; London; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 83,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a globally recognized news organization as a Principal UX Designer, where you will shape user experiences for millions. In this pivotal role, you'll lead the design of engaging and inclusive digital products, collaborating with talented teams across various domains. Your expertise in user-centered design will drive impactful solutions that resonate with diverse audiences. This role offers a unique opportunity to influence the future of digital journalism, ensuring that high-quality content is accessible and enjoyable for users worldwide. Embrace the chance to make a difference in a dynamic and supportive environment.

Benefits

Flexible working hours

26 days holiday plus additional Corporation Day

Defined pension scheme

Discounted dental and health care

Career progression opportunities

Qualifications

• 10+ years in digital product design, with 4+ in a lead role.
• Portfolio showcasing multiple projects and contributions.
• Expertise in UCD principles and accessibility standards.

Responsibilities

• Lead UX design for global audience experiences across products.
• Analyze user problems and design intuitive solutions.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to enhance user experience.

Skills

User-Centered Design (UCD)

Prototyping

Wireframing

Communication Skills

Collaboration

Accessibility Standards (WCAG)

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Design or related field

Master's Degree in Design or related field

Tools

Figma

Slack

Zoom

Miro

Dropbox

Job description

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Principal UX Designer

Editorial, Production & Programming

Permanent - Full Time

London, GB, W12 7FA

Job Closing Date: 30/05/2025

THE ROLE

BBC Studios is a world-renowned content studio and channels & streaming business, powered by British creativity, with a reach that touches audiences in every corner of the globe.

We work with outstanding creative talent who are responsible for platform-defining shows from Strictly Come Dancing to Bluey, Prehistoric Planet to Planet Earth III.

The range and quality of our content is unsurpassed, creating critical and commercial successes and global phenomena.

From BAFTAs to RTS Awards, BBC Studios is Britain’s most awarded production company and the only producer with three of the top ten shows on IMDB; we’re the home of bbc.com, the widest-read English language news website in the world; and the UK’s largest distributor of British content.

Digital News and Streaming

At BBC Global Digital News & Streaming, (a team situated within BBC Studios, the commercial arm of the BBC) we aim to help people understand the world around them, make informed choices, and take an active part in society and democracy. As we expand our footprint to meet increasing demand for our style of quality and impartial journalism and unscripted content in North America, we are seeking motivated, passionate, high performing individuals across a variety of skillsets to join our global team. Our primary locations are New York, Washington DC, and London; we are seeking candidates whose location allows them to work hybrid from any of these offices.

Join us and be an essential part of one of the world’s most recognized brands and trusted news organizations!

Purpose of the Role

As the Principal UX Designer you will be responsible for shaping how a global audience experiences the content from one of the world’s largest news organizations. Working as part of the BBC Studios global product division across countries and time zones, you will help lead the design of intuitive, inclusive, and impactful user experiences that make complex stories accessible, building the future of the BBC product suite outside the UK. Your work will define and drive the UX vision, strategically aligning with business goals.

Collaborating closely with product, editorial, and engineering teams, your work will be a combination of both short-term and long-term UX thinking, hands-on execution, guiding and mentoring a team and communicating your ideas to constantly improve the experience and design of our products ensuring that our content is discoverable, trustworthy, and easy to consume.

Your work will help deliver high-quality journalism to millions of users worldwide, adapting to diverse cultural contexts, devices, and accessibility needs.

Principal Accountabilities

• Responsible for the overall UX and end-to-end product experiences for a global audience consuming our world class news and factual content across both existing and future products.
• Analyze user problems and oversee the design of delightful and intuitive solutions that achieve measurable business goals and achieve overarching strategic intentions.
• Deep understanding of UCD principles and ability to apply expertise across responsive websites, mobile apps, and digital products for a global product suite.
• Emphathise with user needs, adapting to a broad and diverse context, providing solutions through wireframes, complex user flows, and functioning prototypes.
• Map complex user journeys across multiple touchpoints (web, mobile, etc.) illustrating a strong grasp of IA and organizing content meaningfully, identifying pain points and friction in flows and optimizing them. .
• Triangulate and balance user needs, business needs and commercial revenue opportunities that extend the brand, answer our commercial ambition, and provide users with the best experiences to tell our stories.
• Creating low- to high-fidelity wireframes to explore and communicate design solutions and interaction patterns
• Create interactive prototypes that simulate real user behavior.
• Work with stakeholders, product managers, business analysts, and engineers to understand design requirements and expectations and communicate UX intention with confidence.
• Collaborate closely with research & insights and apply to conduct relevant analysis and testing to investigate and validate design decisions and translate research findings into actionable insights.
• Facilitate cross function workshops and brainstorming sessions.
• Work in agile design sprints to constantly improve and iterate upon our product suite.
• Communicate design work to development teams through clear documentation, prototypes, design system contributions, and other handoff materials.
• Champion accessibility best practices across all work, ensuring our digital experiences are inclusive, usable, and compliant with WCAG standards.
• Give direction and feedback to more junior members of the team and bring them on the journey of your UX strategies.
• Feed in to fostering a collaborative work environment, communicating your ideas with clarity and intention across departments

Scope & Impact

• Reports to the Global Digital News and streaming Head of Product Design
• Leads the UX initiative and contributes to our defining principles and creative vision for the current and future states of product experiences. Ensures this vision is documented, communicated, and followed.
• Able to take charge of individual project or task delivery.
• Mentors or guides junior creatives in the team

Knowledge, Skills, and Professional Experience

• Extensive (10+ years) experience in digital product design/UX team environment. (4+ in a lead role)
• Relevant portfolio of recent work highlighting multiple projects demonstrating your contributions.
• Comfortable
• Expert in industry tooling such as: Figma, prototyping, design systems
• Comfortable with digital remote communication and collaboration tooling such as: Slack, Miro, Dropbox, Zoom, Teams
• Comfortable presenting work to groups and stakeholders
• Keep pace with latest design trends and technology developments
• Strong verbal and written communication skills. Designers need to be able to clearly and concisely articulate themselves and explain their ideas.
• Solid understanding for design implications around WCAG accessibility requirements

Behaviors

• An ability to work quickly in a high-pressure environment.
• Meticulous and detail oriented designer.
• Creative problem solver with ambitious ideas.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills with communication, diplomacy and collaboration in bounds.
• Self-motivation and the ability to positively collaborate with a team of skilled professionals.
• Maintain an active interest in culture, trends and habits of audiences consuming digital content.

Are you the right fit?

As a global business, diversity, equity, and inclusion among team members is essential to our success. We therefore encourage highly skilled candidates from traditionally under-represented groups to submit their applications, even if they don’t check absolutely every box on our list of desired work experience.

Life at BBC Studios

We don’t focus simply on what we do – we also care how we do it. Our values and the way we behave are important to us. Please make sure you’ve read about our values and behaviours here.

The BBC is committed to building a culturally diverse workforce and therefore strongly encourages applications from underrepresented groups. We are committed to equality of opportunity and welcome applications from individuals, regardless of their background. More information on our D&I plan can be found here.

BBC Studios puts sustainability at the heart of everything we do both onscreen and offscreen, including delivering against the BBC Group’s science-based Net Zero targets. More information on sustainability at BBC Studios can be found here.

We are proud to share that we are a Level 2 Disability Confident Employer and we strongly encourage applications from disabled people. If you meet the minimum criteria for this role and declare that you are disabled, we will ensure to advance you to the next stage (minimum criteria above).

If you require any reasonable adjustments in order to apply please contact us on [e-mail].

What Will You Gain From Working At BBCStudios?

• Flexible 35-hour working week for work-life balance
• 26 days holiday (plus an additional day which is a Corporation Day) with the option to buy an extra 5 days
• A defined pension scheme and discounted dental, health care, gym and much more
• Excellent career progression – access to courses, webinars, workshops and the opportunity to work in different areas of the organisation
  

Package Description

Salary: Up to £82,500 depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.

Contract type: Permanent role

Location: Office Base is London; Television Centre. This is a hybrid role and the successful candidate will balance office working with home working.

DISCLAIMER

This job description is a written statement of the essential characteristics of the job, with its principal accountabilities, incorporating a note of the skills, knowledge and experience required for a satisfactory level of performance. This is not intended to be a complete, detailed account of all aspects of the duties involved.

BBC Group and Public Services, Broadcasting House, Portland Place, London, United Kingdom, W1A 1AA. BBC Studios Distribution Limited, company no: 01420028, registered address: 1 Television Centre, 101 Wood Lane, London, United Kingdom W12 7FA.