UX Design Manager

Ford Motor Company; Basildon; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 85,000; Full time

Job summary

Ford Motor Company is seeking a UX Manager to lead and inspire the Product Design team, focusing on delivering exceptional customer experiences in automotive finance. The role requires strong leadership, experience in user-centered design, and collaboration across cross-functional teams, ensuring that user needs drive product development. This position is based in Dunton, UK, with a commitment to fostering an inclusive design culture and championing innovative solutions.

Qualifications

• 5+ years leading product design teams.
• Experience with user journey mapping and user-centered design.
• Strong presentation and communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead interdisciplinary teams through research/design to produce high-quality work.
• Champion user voice and leverage insights for design improvement.
• Plan and scope projects to align with business needs.

Skills

Leadership

Collaboration

Empathetic Design

Research Techniques

Design Thinking

User Journey Mapping

Education

Bachelor’s degree in user experience or related field

Master’s degree in user experience or related field

Job description

Ford Credit is experiencing significant business transformation in an ever-changing digital world. To create this all-new automotive financing experience, we are gathering together a team of world-class strategists, innovators, creators, and technicians and searching for a UX Manager, who will help form the foundation for user experience design working in a cross-functional team to deliver customer-centric experiences that engage and delight our customers.

Qualifications

The minimum requirements we seek:

• Bachelor’s degree in user experience, human-computer interaction, interaction design, service design, graphic design, or digital design-related degree
• 5+ years of experience leading highly effective product design teams
• 5+ years working on highly collaborative teams, or other multidisciplinary teams
• A solid portfolio demonstrating leadership skills and abilities

Our preferred requirements:

• Master’s degree in user experience, human-computer interaction, interaction design, service design, graphic design, or digital design related-degree
• Strong verbal, written and visual presentation skills
• Hands-on experience in research and design techniques including qualitative and quantitative methodologies
• Experience in designing and/or facilitating group collaboration workshops to ensure strategic alignment
• Experience in evangelising and explaining to others in the organisation about UX processes, methods, and benefits
• Knowledge and experience in hands-on user experience design, user journey mapping, workflow analysis and requirements gathering
• Experience partnering with both engineering and product teams
• Experience using design thinking principles or methods in a formal, in-person setting.
• Design operations experience a plus
• Deployed AI solutions to improve the output, quality and/or efficiency of a Design team
• Passionate about the automotive and transportation industry

Additional Information

The Company is committed to diversity and equality of opportunity for all and is opposed to any form of less favourable treatment or harassment on the grounds of race, religion or belief, sex, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, age, sexual orientation, gender reassignment or disability.

This position is based in Dunton, and it is expected the successful candidate will be able to attend the Dunton office for typically 4 days a week and remain flexible on the days they are required to attend the office according to business requirements.

As part of our pre-employment checks process, successful candidates will be required to undergo a criminal record check. This will be conducted in line with the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and applied only to unspent convictions.

Responsibilities

We’re seeking an innovative, expansive problem solver to provide both inspiration and leadership to our Product Design team. This people leader will get the chance to guide their team through a journey of human-centered research to uncover insights that contribute to all phases of the design process while overseeing the creation of seamless product and service experiences across the Ford Credit portfolio of products. This role will be responsible for driving a healthy, inclusive culture, and orchestrating across a broad range of functions and features to produce unrivalled designs while encouraging collaboration, transparency and clarity between multiple offices, teams, and functions.

As a UX Manager, you will:

• Help to develop and nurture a dedicated team with the right mix of skills to meet the needs of our product organisation, delivering best-in-class financial products
• Lead and manage interdisciplinary teams through the research/design process to produce high-quality work that materially impacts our partners and customers
• Champion the voice of the user and leverage inspiration to discover hidden opportunities
• Demonstrate prowess for empathetic design that accounts for end-to-end user journeys extending across a manifold of users, geographies, devices, products, and services
• Guide a team to improve both hard and soft skillsets, fostering designer growth and career development
• Ensure the team advocates for the best solutions for Ford Credit customers by using thorough research techniques and strong design acuity
• Establish relationships and work strategically with partners to help them determine where they should be focusing both time and resources
• Ensure that the team produces material which aligns with the overall vision and strategy for Ford Credit
• Apply critical thinking to challenge the status quo and traditional ways of working, pushing the team on the definition of interaction design excellence
• Plan and scope projects and teams according to business needs and design opportunities, setting them up for success with an educated view on best practices