Design Lead

Job Description

Location: London, GB

Condé Nast is a global media company producing the highest‑quality content with a footprint of more than 1 billion consumers in 32 territories through print, digital, video and social platforms. The company’s portfolio includes many of the world’s most respected and influential media properties including Vogue, Vanity Fair, Glamour, Self, GQ, The New Yorker, Condé Nast Traveler, Allure, AD, Bon Appétit and Wired, among others.

About Condé Nast Technology

Condé Nast Technology builds the products, systems and experiences that power our brands. Our mission is to enable creativity and business growth through next‑generation publishing, loyalty and commerce platforms. We’re a global team of designers, engineers, product managers and researchers dedicated to creating innovative, user‑centric products that enable world‑class storytelling and digital experiences.

You\’ll be part of a talented international team working across London, New York and ten other markets, collaborating daily with colleagues in Product, Engineering, Architecture, Design, UX, and Data. We partner closely with Consumer Marketing, Commercial, Licensing, Editorial and Brand teams to ensure our tools and experiences deliver real impact.

About Our Design Team

Our team is experienced in visual design, UX design, interaction design and design research. We partner closely with editorial, product management, engineering and business partners to strategise, design and launch ambitious digital products. We believe that a well‑formed design culture is essential to delivering top‑notch work.

The Role

We are looking for a Product Design Lead to help us bring to life our brands’ unique personalities across our websites, toeing the line between consistency and distinction. You’ll work across multiple brands, using new or existing capabilities in our design system to improve storytelling, finesse and distinctiveness of our digital experiences.

This role sits at the intersection of system and story, taking what we’ve built and making it better through focus, craft and attention to detail. You’ll move fast, get hands‑on and make tangible improvements across our front‑end at scale. This isn’t a management role; it’s a senior IC position for someone who can design, finesse and implement independently while building trusted partnerships across editorial, design, product and engineering.

What will you be doing?

• Elevating visual quality – you focus on the visual standard of our sites, ensuring every interaction, layout and detail feels deliberate, cohesive and premium, driving improvements in typography, rhythm and composition to create experiences that are refined and unmistakably Condé Nast.
• Partnering across teams – you build trusted partnerships across design, editorial, product and engineering to align brand ambition with platform capability. You translate editorial and creative goals into actionable design improvements that strengthen both storytelling and usability.
• Crafting with systems thinking – you champion design excellence within the parameters of a shared system. You balance brand expression with scalability and performance, ensuring component use remains consistent, purposeful and high‑quality.
• Delivering hands‑on impact – you take ownership of tangible quality improvements across our brands. You move quickly and independently, identifying and executing high‑value design opportunities that elevate our products.
• Championing design culture – you model craft, curiosity and clarity through your work. You set the standard for what “good” looks like, mentoring through example and helping to raise the collective bar across the design organisation.

Who you are:

You move easily between system and brand thinking, understanding how shared components underpin consistency and how to stretch them to deliver distinctive brand expression. You value clarity, rhythm and restraint, and you know that craft is often what separates good from great.

You’ll thrive in this role if:

• You have a genuine love for editorial design and storytelling – you understand the role design plays in how stories are expressed and experienced.
• You move easily between system and brand thinking, understanding how shared components underpin consistency and where to stretch them to deliver distinctive moments.
• You are confident speaking the language of both brand teams (Creative Directors, Editors) and engineers, being able to navigate both creative and technical conversations. You’re equally comfortable in Figma and GitHub.
• You are outcome‑oriented and are able to bring initiative and a self‑starter attitude.
• You’re familiar with CMS‑driven design environments and multi‑brand complexity.
• You are passionate about your craft – you have a strong eye for hierarchy, typography and composition, and an instinct for orchestrating these to create delightful interactions. You are curious about new tools, what AI means for our craft and how our brands and experiences will continue to evolve, always looking for smarter, more creative ways to design and deliver quality.
• You’re a strong communicator – you communicate clearly and collaborate openly, giving and receiving feedback with equal care.

What we’d like to see (Portfolio & Experience evidence)

We’re looking for evidence that you can apply design craft, judgement and systems thinking to real publishing experiences. Your portfolio should demonstrate:

• Strong creative brand sensitivity and how you interpret and express a brand identity within shared design systems or structured frameworks.
• Editorial and content‑led design with examples of how you design for storytelling, hierarchy and content‑rich journeys, ideally within digital publishing or media contexts.
• System fluency and how you’ve refined or extended design systems, component libraries or configuration layers to elevate quality and brand expression.
• Craft range through work that spans from clean, systematic interfaces to expressive, identity‑led experiences.
• Implementation quality with evidence that your design intent carried through to production; how you’ve worked with engineers or used tools (Figma, configs, tokens) to ensure fidelity.
• Visual judgement and examples showing confident hierarchy, rhythm, motion and composition – with a clear point of view on what “great” looks like online.
• Curiosity and progression, including signs that you stay current, experiment with new tools or technologies (including AI) and push your craft forward.

Does this sound like you?

Please upload your CV and cover letter/portfolio, which highlight why you would love to take on this role and why you’re a great match for what we’re looking for. We value the time and effort behind every application. All submissions are reviewed by a member of our talent team – we don’t use AI‑assisted technology to review applications.

What benefits do we offer?

• 25 days holiday (plus bank holidays) and extra days of annual leave if you move house or want to volunteer.
• Competitive pension scheme, Bupa Private Healthcare, season‑ticket loans and eye tests.
• Range of tools to support wellbeing, including core hours, 10 remote days (from home or a country with a Condé Nast office location), access to our Employee Assistance Programme, corporate gym membership and cycle‑to‑work scheme.
• Dog‑friendly office, discounts and magazine subscriptions to keep you up‑to‑date with all things Condé Nast.
• Personal and professional growth through the Condé Nast Learning Hub, with an extensive portfolio of learning courses and training available in local languages.
• Employee Resource Groups that provide a platform for employees to identify shared objectives, exchange ideas and work on community priorities for our global workforce.

What happens next?

If you are interested in this opportunity, please apply below, and we will review your application as soon as possible. You can update your resume or upload a cover letter at any time by accessing your candidate profile.

Condé Nast is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, age, familial status and other legally protected characteristics.

Seniority level

Mid‑Senior level

Employment type

Full‑time

Job function

• Design, Art/Creative, and Information Technology

Industries

Media Production

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