Lead Interaction and Product Designer in London

As a Lead Interaction and Product Designer at TPXimpact, you will lead the strategic direction, delivery and growth of our work, helping us on our mission to empower organisations to deliver good design. You'll creatively solve real problems for real people, progressing our practice positively and developing our shared vision of excellence, whilst creating safe and supportive spaces where people are proud to talk about their work.

On client projects, you'll be accountable for delivering outcomes, managing commercial responsibilities and ensuring high standards of work across complex programmes. You'll represent best practice, working directly with clients to define statements of work, leading multidisciplinary teams to navigate complexity and holding uncertainty on behalf of clients. In DT Design, you'll work alongside the Head of Practice to assure the quality of design work across the practice, mentor others and contribute to business development and growth activities.

Key performance indicators for the role:

• Individual utilisation: 90%
• Problem solving responsibility and complexity: High, leading project delivery and teams.
• Accountable for managing significant ambiguity, holding uncertainty on behalf of clients and owning commercial responsibilities on complex projects.
• Managing delivery and client relationships.
• Lead practice growth (propositions, coaching, internal impact).
• Proactively contribute to business growth (bids, proposals, pitches).

Responsibilities:

• Leading strategy - defining, implementing and influencing the long term goals and vision of product strategy, working with clients to design and cost programmes of work.
• Creating environments for good design - successfully navigating ambiguity and changing directions, building trust to hold and manage uncertainty on behalf of clients.
• Ensuring high standards - maintaining the quality of work across the practice, conducting reviews, and ensuring inclusive and accessible approaches are consistently applied.
• Managing commercial outcomes - taking accountability for delivery, strategic direction and commercial responsibilities of projects, including identifying opportunities for good design to be impactful.
• Building capability - line managing and mentoring others, identifying skill gaps to build design capability in internal teams and client organisations.
• Communicating with clarity - communicating key decisions and client/leadership feedback to teams, maintaining motivation and progress positively.
• Bridging the technology gap - working with developers in technical or complex programmes to translate design into working software, including contributing to code repositories and testing plans.
• Driving business growth - proactively bringing specialist knowledge to business development by leading work for bids, proposals and pitches.
• Telling the story - effectively owning the story of impact, measuring progress against outcomes and sharing insights with wider audiences to elevate our work through compelling narratives.
• Resolving escalations - leading others through challenging situations, demonstrating positive behaviours and owning the escalation of problems that have a wider scope than your team.

About You:

Essential experience:

• Leading high level product design strategy, framing and propositions across complex programmes of work.
• Creating an environment where good design can happen, successfully navigating ambiguity, changing scope and lower digital maturity.
• Championing inclusive design and accessibility, proactively calling out when clients or teams are not adopting existing standards and working with them to improve.
• Translating design into working software by working alongside developers in technical programmes and proactively reducing design and tech debt.
• Managing commercial responsibilities on projects, including identifying opportunities for good design and defining team shape to be impactful.
• Maintaining high standards of work by assuring quality, conducting reviews and providing constructive feedback to other designers.
• Building capability and skills within internal teams and client organisations, including the line management of senior designers.
• Communicating key decisions to teams effectively without introducing uncertainty and owning the escalation of project issues to lead teams through blockers.
• Telling the story of our work and inspiring a design community environment, increasing engagement and knowledge sharing while making space for everyone to contribute equally.
• Strategically planning and managing time to deliver maximum value to our clients and their users while actively leading and contributing to practice and business growth (bids, proposals, pitches).

Desirable experience:

• Confidence using co-creation and participatory approaches to foster diverse reach and thinking from users and stakeholders.
• Developing learning materials for interaction designers and establishing practice wide governance processes.
• Contributing to the public discourse around design via blogging, public speaking or industry events.

Technical skills:

• Define, implement and influence the long term goals and vision of product strategy, working with clients to design and cost programmes of design work.
• Assure the quality of information architecture, micro interaction and visual design across projects, providing constructive feedback to elevate the work of other designers.
• Direct experimental approaches to prototyping across programmes, guiding teams to apply the right dimensions of fidelity to test ideas and influence strategic decision making.
• Champion proactive ethical and accessibility standards (WCAG), confidently challenging teams or clients not adopting inclusive practices.
• Create, maintain and contribute to complex design systems (GOV.UK, NHS, etc) including embedding robust governance and contribution processes across organisations.
• Bridge the gap to technology by conducting code reviews, contributing to code repositories and developing testing plans in collaboration with developers.
• Influence and guide how emerging technologies (generative AI, large language models) are applied responsibly to interaction design work.
• Own escalations, collaborating effectively with other leaders to resolve complex blockers and manage significant business risks.
• Direct the learning and development of others, owning the development of formal training approaches and activities that increase the skills of our teams and clients.
• Own and communicate the story of the work, engage senior stakeholders in the value of design and successfully lead multidisciplinary teams as a project director when required.

About Us:

People-Powered Transformation. We're a purpose driven organisation, supporting organisations to build a better future for people, places and the planet. Combining vast experience in the public, private and third sectors and expertise in human centred design, data, experience and technology, we're creating sustainable solutions ready for an ever evolving world.

At the heart of TPXimpact, we're collaborative and empathetic. We're a team of passionate people who care deeply about the work we do and the impact we have in the world. We know that change happens through people, with people and for people. That's why we believe in people powered transformation.

Working in close collaboration with our clients, we seek to understand their unique challenges, questioning assumptions and building in their teams the capabilities and confidence to continue learning, iterating and adapting.

Benefits Include: 30 days holiday +