Product Designer (12 months)

The Vanguard Group; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 60,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading investment management company in Manchester is seeking a full-time Product Designer. The role involves working on their Public Website, blending Content Design and Product Design skills. Candidates should have proven design experience and a strong understanding of user experience. The position supports a hybrid working model.

Qualifications

• Experience in design for public websites and apps.
• Proven background in finance or asset management is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate within a multi-disciplinary team to improve digital experiences.
• Translate customer needs into design solutions.
• Drive design production and ensure stakeholder approvals.

Skills

Content guidelines

Prototyping

Content Management (AEM)

Simplifying complex concepts

Microcopy production

UX understanding

Figma proficiency

Tools

Figma

InVision

Sketch

Zeplin

Job description

Project Contractor

Product Designer (Content Specialist)

The opportunity

At Vanguard we are passionate about giving UK investors the best chance of investor success. We do this by creating intuitive digital experiences that inform, compel and delight. In this role you will be working in a specific value stream within our customers’ end‑to‑end lifecycle and will be collaborating with a multi‑disciplinary team (Product Manager, Content Designer, Data Analysts, UX Researchers, Scrum Teams). Your job will involve understanding what our customers need or want and, in collaboration with other designers, solving problems and designing sensible experiences.

This role is focused on our Public Website, so we are looking for a designer who blends Content Design & Product Design skills.

The purpose of our website is to attract, engage and educate investors. Experience in investing and/or educational/marketing design is therefore preferred.

Your Design skills

• Familiar with content guidelines, content best practice and an expert at writing for accessibility
• Comfortable working with Design Systems (Storybook & Figma) and able to build prototypes & designs from these building blocks
• Familiar (and ideally experienced) with AEM for Content Management
• Ability to translate complex financial/investment concepts into simple plain English language
• Capability to produce different types of content (microcopy, conversational, product marketing, help/instructional) and adapt the content to the medium
• Understanding that consistency is important but occasionally breaking away from it creates meaningful content
• Contributes to research activities by helping with research plans, discussion guides, prototype building and insight synthesis
• Autonomously drives design production and leads sign‑off with Product, Business, Legal and Compliance stakeholders
• Proactively engages with immediate stakeholder groups (PM, Marketing, UX, Developers) and other SME groups (legal, compliance, business strategy, customer services, etc.)
• Engages with the Content and Design practice through show‑and‑tell and contributes to the betterment of the design craft as a whole
• Understanding of UX, the Double Diamond and an Agile delivery mindset
• Works on hypothesis and problem statements
• Highly proficient in Figma, which is our primary workspace for all design work

Your Designer skills

• Able to work on multiple projects simultaneously and comfortable with content switching
• Adaptable, able to flex ways of working depending on project nature and team composition (proactive and reactive)
• Autonomous, knows what to do without specific tasks
• Proactive, takes ownership and constantly seeks to add value
• Curious, relentlessly asks questions, obsessed with understanding how our products and processes work and keen to keep learning
• Builds trust and works in symbiosis with other designers through constant and proactive communication
• Open‑minded and self‑less, recognizes design is a team sport and welcomes scrutiny and debates
• Runs the design conversation from conceptualisation to leading meetings and workshops, connecting with relevant SMEs and sourcing customer insight
• Thinkstrategically about work and its impact beyond the immediate value stream
• Thorough, considers decision making, seeks root causes of problems and does not rush to solutions
• Comfortable sharing and presenting ideas and solutions

What this role isn’t

Our team does not currently work on social media blogging or content marketing.

Experience

• Proven experience in design (writing for journeys, apps, public websites, dashboards, etc.)
• Experience in finance, asset management or other regulated industries is strongly recommended

How We Work

Vanguard has implemented a hybrid working model for the majority of our crew members, designed to capture the benefits of enhanced flexibility while enabling in‑person learning, collaboration and connection. Our mission‑driven, highly collaborative culture is a critical enabler to support long‑term client outcomes and enrich the employee experience.

Key Skills

InVision, Interaction Design, UX, Usability, Visual Design, Design Thinking, Zeplin, User Research, UI, iOS, Figma, Sketch

Employment Type: Full‑Time

Experience: years

Vacancy: 1