Experience Design Principal in London

Our Experience Design Principals lead and deliver complex client engagements across our public sector portfolio. Sitting within the Experience Design Practice in our Strategy & Design Service Line, they work alongside leadership peers in Advisory & Change and Product & Innovation to deliver holistic outcomes. We're looking for "T-shaped" experience design leaders whose careers have been built around designing and researching digital products and user experiences, with expertise rooted in hands-on practice. You will bring a deep mastery of your core design/research craft alongside a broad, practical understanding of the wider User Centred Design (UCD) landscape. You will have a strong working understanding of our capabilities and the techniques used across our practice - including user research, content design, and interaction design. Because interaction design and service design heavily overlap, you will also confidently advise on Service Design principles.

We believe that great delivery stems from:

• A deep understanding of user needs and behaviours, keeping accessibility and citizen outcomes at the heart of everything we build.
• The ability to align user needs with client goals, technical constraints or opportunities, and commercial requirements.
• The ability to articulate this alignment as a clear, powerful, and inspiring service vision.
• Strong consulting and practice craft skills to realise that vision collaboratively.
• Agile leadership, enabling cross-functional teams to implement effectively in a changing environment.

Your role at Made Tech

As an Experience Design Principal, your time will be split across client strategy, hands-on quality assurance, people development, and practice growth:

• Lead the Experience Design aspects of one or more of our client engagements. You will translate product visions into experience design strategies that deliver category-leading user experiences, overseeing the hands-on delivery of usability improvements and end-to-end journeys across all channels (web and app).
• Partner closely with user researchers, interaction designers, content designers, engineers, data analysts, and client product owners to make ongoing, recommended improvements that drive better user and business outcomes. You will comfortably blend just-in-time delivery of design artefacts with continuous discovery and long-term ideation.
• Supporting the Head of Experience Design in running our Experience Design communities of practice, in their regular meetings, away days, knowledge sharing and slack channel engagements.
• Engage deeply with clients to understand their challenges, provide solution advice, and build lasting, trusted-advisor relationships. You will oversee multiple and concurrent client deliveries to ensure quality and drive the sharing of best practice.
• Coach and develop team members on your engagements, providing detailed performance feedback. You will undertake people management responsibilities, including performance reviews and the professional development of your engagement and practice colleagues.
• Act as an experience design authority to provide oversight and ensure alignment with internal and industry best practices. As a member of the practice leadership team, you will participate in business development activities (including bids and pre-sales), identify new opportunities, and help scale the practice to meet business needs.

Skills, Knowledge & Expertise

Throughout our interview process, we’ll be assessing you against the following core areas:

• A strong, practical grasp of user-centred design approaches within public sector environments (such as GDS/CDDO standards) and a proven track record of applying them to real-world delivery challenges.
• A solid working understanding of the capabilities and techniques across User Research, Content Design, and Interaction Design, with the ability to confidently leverage research to drive design decisions.
• The ability to look beyond single touchpoints to advise on broader Service Design challenges, collaborating effectively with cross-functional peers in Advisory and Change.
• Extensive experience leading the design of complex digital products, establishing UX strategies, and mapping end-to-end user journeys while balancing user needs, accessibility, technical constraints, and business goals.
• Exceptional consulting skills, with a track record of building trusted relationships with senior client stakeholders and articulating a clear, powerful design vision.
• Experience mentoring and managing designers, leading multidisciplinary teams, and comfortably driving high-quality implementation within fast-paced Agile environments.
• Experience contributing to proposal submissions, shaping client solutions, and driving the commercial growth of a consulting practice or account footprint.

Job Benefits

We are always listening to our growing teams and evolving the benefits available to our people. As we scale, as do our benefits and we are scaling quickly. We've recently introduced a flexible benefit platform which includes a Smart Tech scheme, Cycle to work scheme, and an individual benefits allowance which you can invest in a Health care cash plan or Pension plan. We’re also big on connection and have an optional social and wellbeing calendar of events for all employees to join should they choose to.

Here are some of our most popular benefits listed below:

• 30 days Holiday - we offer 30 days of paid annual leave
• Flexible Working Hours - we are flexible with what hours you work
• Flexible Parental Leave - we offer flexible parental leave options
• Remote Working - we offer part time remote working for all our staff
• Paid counselling - we offer paid counselling as well as financial and legal advice

At this point, we hope you're feeling excited about Made Tech and the job opportunity. Even if you don't feel that you meet every single requirement, we still encourage you to apply.

SC Eligibility

An increasing number of our customers are specifying a minimum of SC (security check) clearance in order to work on their projects. As a result, we're looking for all successful candidates for this role to have eligibility.

Eligibility for SC requires 5 years UK residency and 5 year's employment history (or back to full-time education). Please note that if at any point during the interview process it is apparent that you may not be eligible for SC, we won't be able to progress your application and we will contact you to let you know why.