Staff Conversation Designer

OVO Energy; Bristol; Hybrid; GBP 75,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

OVO Energy seeks a Staff Conversation Designer to create innovative AI interactions that enhance user experience across digital and human-assisted channels. In an environment that supports flexible working, you'll drive the integration of AI systems to empower customers in managing their energy efficiently while ensuring a user-centered design approach.

Benefits

34 days of holiday including bank holidays

Healthcare cash plan

Private medical insurance

Gym membership

Discount dining

Cycle to work scheme

Flexible benefits

Salary flex

Support for charities

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience designing for chatbots or intelligent agents.
• Strong portfolio showcasing relevant past work.
• Understanding of LLM capabilities and limitations.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design of complex conversational flows across digital channels.
• Prototype and iterate conversational designs.
• Collaborate with engineers and product managers to refine experiences.

Skills

Problem-solver

Collaborative

Visionary

Design thinking

AI interaction design

Tools

Figma

Voiceflow

Rasa

LangChain

Gemini API

Postman

Job description

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Sponsorship: Unfortunately we are unable to offer sponsorship for this role.

This role in 3 words: Innovative, Strategic, Impactful

Top 3 qualities for this role: Problem-solver, Collaborative, Visionary

Please note that applications without a portfolio attached will not be considered

Where you’ll work:

At OVO, we understand that a one size fits all approach doesn’t work for everyone. That’s why we created the OVO Way of Flexibility.

All our roles are hub based (Bristol, Glasgow or London), providing a dedicated space for collaboration, connection and teamwork. You’ll also have the flexibility to work from home.

Everyone belongs at OVO

At OVO, we are on a mission to solve one of humanity's biggest challenges, the climate crisis. And we know it takes all of us to change the world. That's why we need diverse people from all gender identities, ethnicities, ages, sexual orientations, life experiences and backgrounds to join us.

Teamworking for the planet

Everything we do here spins around Plan Zero. So, naturally, the team you’ll be joining plays a gigantic role in making that happen. Here’s how:

The XD team are the DNA that exists to connect our customers, business and brand. We play a pivotal role in helping and supporting our customers on our Zero Carbon journey by crafting experiences that power the movement today and lead the path to the future.

This role in a nutshell

We’re looking for a Staff Conversation Designer to lead the design of intelligent, helpful and intuitive experiences across OVO’s digital and human-assisted channels. This is not a typical content design role. You’ll be shaping how our customers interact with AI-powered systems across the business, from LLM assistants to retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and agentic workflows. You’ll design systems that interpret, respond and act intelligently, helping customers manage their energy with clarity, confidence and less effort.

Your key outcomes will be

Strategic Design and Ownership

• Lead the design of complex conversational flows across OVO’s app, website and advisor tools
• Set design direction for conversational AI across multiple teams or products, ensuring coherence, consistency and scalability
• Identify where conversational AI can make a real difference to the user experience and product outcomes
• Influence product direction and help shape how and where AI is introduced to drive the most value
• Take full responsibility for the accuracy, usefulness and human-centred nature of AI outputs, especially those powered by generative AI
• Act as the design sponsor on high-impact AI initiatives across the business, partnering with leadership to define the vision, principles and roadmap for AI at OVO
  
  

Expert Craft and Implementation

• Design natural, efficient and context-aware interactions for AI assistants, including multi-turn dialogue, tone and logic that support intent recognition, context retention and fallback handling
• Write, structure and optimise LLM prompts for clarity, accuracy and performance, while maintaining a consistent brand voice
• Define and implement interaction patterns for both stateless and stateful dialogue systems
• Prototype, test and iterate conversational experiences to improve usability and system performance, using tools like Voiceflow, Rasa, LangChain or custom orchestration frameworks
• Contribute to the development of prompt libraries, vector-based memory systems and safety guardrails to improve scalability and control
• Lead prompt engineering and optimisation for LLMs and agent-based systems, including the design of function-calling flows and structured output handling

Collaboration and Leadership

• Work closely with designers, engineers, product managers and data scientists to shape and ship great conversational experiences
• Facilitate workshops and design sprints to drive ideas and alignment across teams
• Define and document best practices, playbooks or training to support adoption of conversational AI patterns and systems
• Coach and mentor others, raising the bar for conversation design and AI thinking across the team
• Clearly explain design decisions and technical concepts to a wide range of audiences
• Help build confidence in AI within the business by demonstrating its value and ensuring it is designed responsibly

Tools and Methodologies

• Confident using tools like Figma, Miro and conversational design platforms, alongside AI development environments such as the Gemini API, Postman and prompt engineering sandboxes
• Experienced in evaluating AI interactions using metrics such as fallback rate, hallucination rate, token usage, response latency and user satisfaction
• Work closely with ML engineers and backend developers to define integration points, orchestrate AI behaviours and ensure system performance
• Understand the constraints of LLMs, including context windows, API limitations and prompt token budgets
• Apply an agile, iterative approach, working in short cycles to learn and ship quickly
• Use both AI performance data and qualitative insights to continuously refine and optimise interactions

Community of Practice:

• Contribute to the appropriate Community of Practice (CoP) by leading discussions, sharing practices, and offering firsthand experience to the wider community
• Create content and individually contribute to the stated successful outcomes for this CoP
• Help shape how conversation design evolves as a discipline within OVO and beyond

You’ll be a successful Staff Conversation Designer if you

• Think beyond copy and flows and take a systems-level view of how AI experiences are designed and delivered
• Have hands-on experience designing for chatbots, voice assistants or intelligent agents, with a strong portfolio to back it up
• Understand the capabilities and limitations of LLMs and can design within those constraints
• Care deeply about the user and use research, performance data and feedback to guide your decisions
• Can switch between high-level thinking and fine-tuned craft, and know when to zoom in or out
• Communicate well with both technical and non-technical teams and are comfortable challenging assumptions
• Are curious, proactive and comfortable working in fast-moving, ambiguous environments
• Have a working knowledge of how LLMs are deployed in production, including prompt orchestration, agent behaviour and data retrieval methods

You won’t like this role if you…

• Struggle with ambiguity, shifting priorities or shaping clarity where none exists, especially in the context of fast-moving AI technologies
• Prefer to execute on predefined solutions rather than driving the vision, strategy and standards for conversational AI at scale
• Are uncomfortable influencing across multiple teams or guiding complex work through a mix of direct contribution, facilitation and stakeholder alignment
• See conversation design as a copywriting task rather than a systems design discipline grounded in logic, architecture and machine learning principles
• Are not deeply engaged with the ethical, social and technical responsibilities of designing AI systems that affect real people
• Avoid hands-on collaboration with engineers, data scientists and product leads to build, test and evolve AI-driven experiences in production environments

Let’s talk about what’s in it for you

We’ll pay you between £75k - £90k depending on your specific skills and experience. If your expectations are a little different, have a chat with us!

We keep our pay ranges broad on purpose to give us, and you, flexibility to match your experience to our zero carbon mission.

You’ll be eligible for an on-target bonus of 15%. We have one OVO bonus plan that focuses on the collective performance of our people to deliver our Plan Zero goal.

We also offer plenty of green benefits and progressive policies to help you feel like you belong at OVO…and there’s flex pay. It’s an extra 9% of your salary on top of your core pay to use as you like. You can take it as cash, add to your pension, or choose to spend it on a huge range of flex benefits.

Here’s a taster of what’s on offer:

For starters, you’ll get 34 days of holiday (including bank holidays).

For your healthWith benefits like a healthcare cash plan or private medical insurance depending on your career level, critical illness cover, life assurance, health assessments, and more
For your wellbeingWith gym membership, gadget, travel and cyber insurance, workplace ISA, will writing services, DNA testing, dental insurance, and more For your lifestyle With extra holiday buying, discount dining, culture cards, tech loans, and supporting your favourite charities with give-as-you-earn donations

For your home Get up to £300 off any OVO Energy plan (when you pay by Direct Debit), plus personal carbon offsetting and great discounts on smart thermostats and EV chargers
For your commute Nab a great deal on ultra-low emission car leasing, plus our cycle to work scheme and public transport season ticket loans

Want to hear about our full range of flexible benefits and progressive people policies? Our People Team can tell you everything you need to know.

For your Belonging

To find better ways to support our people, we need to listen to each other’s experiences and find ways to build a truly inclusive and diverse workplace. As part of this, we have 8 Belonging Networks at OVO. Led by our people, for our people - so when you join OVO, you can play a part - big or small - with any of the Networks. It's up to you.