Strategic Design Lead

London Luton Airport Operations Limited; Luton; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

London Luton Airport Operations Ltd is seeking a Strategic Design Lead to shape how the airport evolves its products, services and operations. You will bridge innovation with the wider business, guiding teams through new ways of working and driving meaningful outcomes.

You’ll lead discovery-to-delivery initiatives, coach others, and collaborate with product designers, engineers, and stakeholders to fuse service design with real business value within an agile framework.

Qualifications

• Demonstrable experience in service design for complex services.
• Experience in product or service management, product design, or strategy consulting is a plus.
• Strong prioritisation skills with ability to trade-offs and focus effort where it will have the greatest impact.
• Ability to build credibility and trust quickly across senior stakeholders and frontline teams alike.
• Strong research skills — comfortable recruiting, facilitating, and synthesising across qualitative methods.
• An expert workshop designer and facilitator: hold a room, navigate tension and bring groups to clarity.
• Fluency in core service design artefacts — journey maps, blueprints, personas, prototypes.
• Ability to work at multiple altitudes: strategic framing one week, detailed interaction flows the next.
• Strong communication and storytelling skills — rigorous yet accessible.
• Experience working in agile delivery environments alongside product, engineering, and business teams.
• A collaborative, curious and generous spirit.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive product and service strategy across Now / Next / Later horizons, connecting immediate delivery to longer-term transformation.
• Act as a translator between design, technology, data and business, making complex ideas accessible and actionable.
• Apply service design, product thinking and systems thinking to real operational challenges, focusing on outcomes over artefacts.
• Lead product, service or process initiatives from discovery through to delivery, working alongside your team, wider stakeholders, and third party service providers.
• Facilitate prioritisation of the team’s workplan.
• Plan and facilitate user research — interviews, contextual enquiry, workshops — synthesising findings into clear, actionable insight.
• Map current and future-state customer journeys, service blueprints and ecosystem maps that build shared understanding across teams.
• Facilitate co-design workshops, generating alignment and momentum around complex problems.
• Define service principles, design criteria and success metrics that keep work grounded in real user and business needs.
• Collaborate closely with product designers, tech leads and delivery leads to ensure service-level thinking flows into product decisions.
• Partner with the Digital Lead and others in your team to navigate stakeholders and build strong relationships across the business.
• Maintain pace and focus within agile sprint cycles, balancing rapid experimentation with meaningful delivery.
• Build our service design practice sharing knowledge, developing frameworks and mentoring junior designers, and building a credible and effective innovation practice with the wider organisation.
• Contribute to delivering a great guest experience by performing your role with accuracy and efficiency.

Skills

Service design

Product management

Stakeholder management

Research

Workshop facilitation

Systems thinking

Agile delivery

Communication

Collaboration

Tools

Figma

Miro

Service Blueprinting

Journey Mapping

User Research

Workshop facilitation

Systems Thinking

Prototyping

Job description

Job description & person specification

Title: Strategic Design Lead

Department: Digital

Reports to: Digital Experience Lead

Job purpose summary:

Strategic Design Lead, you will sit at the centre of the newly established Innovation Team, shaping how the airport evolves its products, services and operations. You will act as a bridge between innovation and the wider business, helping teams understand, trust and adopt new ways of working. This role is equal parts strategist, practitioner and leader:

• Setting direction while remaining hands-on
• Coaching and growing others while delivering critical work
• Partnering closely with the Digital Lead to influence stakeholders and unlock progress.

You’ll be a driving force within the team, bringing clarity and momentum and confidently challenging the status quo to deliver meaningful outcomes.

Key responsibilities and accountabilities:

• Define and drive product and service strategy across Now / Next / Later horizons, connecting immediate delivery to longer-term transformation
• Act as a translator between design, technology, data and business, making complex ideas accessible and actionable
• Apply service design, product thinking and systems thinking to real operational challenges, focusing on outcomes over artefacts
• Lead product, service or process initiatives from discovery through to delivery, working alongside your team, wider stakeholders, and third party service providers.
• Facilitate prioritisation of the team’s workplan
• Plan and facilitate user research — interviews, contextual enquiry, workshops — synthesising findings into clear, actionable insight.
• Map current and future-state customer journeys, service blueprints and ecosystem maps that build shared understanding across teams.
• Facilitate co-design workshops, generating alignment and momentum around complex problems.
• Define service principles, design criteria and success metrics that keep work grounded in real user and business needs.
• Collaborate closely with product designers, tech leads and delivery leads to ensure service-level thinking flows into product decisions.
• Partner with the Digital Lead and others in your team to navigate stakeholders and build strong relationships across the business
• Maintain pace and focus within agile sprint cycles, balancing rapid experimentation with meaningful delivery
• Build our service design practice sharing knowledge, developing frameworks and mentoring junior designers, and building a credible and effective innovation practice with the wider organisation
• Contribute to delivering a great guest experience by performing your role with accuracy and efficiency. Recognising that every task whether guest-facing or behind the scenes contributes to supporting the company’s overall LLA Way Strategy and service standards.
• Proactively and positively promote the LLA Way initiatives and projects with all employees and the wider airport community.

Tools and craft:

• Figma
• Miro
• Service Blueprinting
• Journey Mapping
• User Research
• Workshop facilitation
• Systems Thinking
• Prototyping

Knowledge, skills, and experience required

• Demonstrable experience in service design working on complex service challenges.
• Experience in product or service management, product design, or strategy consulting is a plus
• Strong prioritisation skills — able to make trade-offs and focus effort where it will have the greatest impact
• Ability to build credibility and trust quickly across senior stakeholders and frontline teams alike
• Strong research skills — you're comfortable recruiting, facilitating, and synthesising across a range of qualitative methods.
• An expert workshop designer and facilitator: you can hold a room, navigate tension and bring groups to clarity.
• Fluency in core service design artefacts — journey maps, blueprints, personas, prototypes — and a thoughtful view on when to use which.
• Ability to work at multiple altitudes: strategic framing one week, detailed interaction flows the next.
• Strong communication and storytelling skills — your work is rigorous but accessible.
• Experience working in agile delivery environments alongside product, engineering, and business teams.
• A collaborative, curious and generous spirit. You bring out the best in the people around you.

This job description is intended to give an appreciation of the role and the range of duties and responsibilities to be undertaken. It does not attempt to detail every activity. Specific tasks and objectives will be agreed on an ongoing basis. The post holder will be required at all times to perform any other reasonable tasks, as requested by the Line Manager, in order to meet the operational needs of the business.

For any further information, please contact the Human Resources department at [e-mail] . London Luton Airport Operations Ltd collects your personal information when you submit your application. For more details about the personal information LLA collects, how we collect it, why we need it, what we do with it, how long we keep it, and what your rights are, please see our privacy notice at www.london-luton.co.uk/privacy-notice .

LLA is committed to fostering, promoting, and preserving a culture of diversity, equality, and inclusion as we carry out our mission. We will always be respectful and seek to learn from those different from ourselves. We strive to be an equal opportunity employer, and we are determined to ensure that no applicant or employee has a negative experience for being who they are. We welcome all applications!