Design Lead (UX/UI) in London

We believe in the power of ingenuity to build a positive human future. As strategies, technologies, and innovation collide, we create opportunity from complexity. Our teams of interdisciplinary experts combine innovative thinking and breakthrough technologies to progress further, faster. Our clients adapt and transform, and together we achieve enduring results. We are over 4,000 strategists, innovators, designers, consultants, digital experts, scientists, engineers, and technologists. And we have deep expertise in consumer and manufacturing, defence and security, energy and utilities, financial services, government and public services, health and life sciences, and transport. Our teams operate globally from offices across the UK, Ireland, US, Nordics, and Netherlands.

Lead Designers are senior practitioners and design leaders who shape and direct complex digital products and services from discovery through to delivery. You will set design direction, lead multidisciplinary design teams and remain close enough to the work to maintain a high bar for UX/UI craft and quality. You will work across a variety of projects, clients and sectors, leading challenging and innovative programmes of work. You will scope projects, formulate and articulate design strategy, develop and implement new processes. You will lead all design aspects of our work, ensuring it is robust, progressive and commercially strong. You will support the Chief Design Officer, with shared responsibility for the welfare, development and performance of the design team. You will also establish and mature design teams and capabilities, shaping the roles, skills, ways of working, standards, tools and governance needed to deliver high-quality user-centred products and services. You will develop strong, long-term strategic relationships with clients and colleagues, deepening their understanding of digital design practice, and lead initiatives and develop propositions that help shape the direction of our global design community.

Digital Design at PA: We are a vibrant service and product design community of experts, with deep specialist practitioner skills across all parts of the design spectrum, covering research, design strategy and service design, UX/UI and IA, through to content, prototyping and movement. We are specialists with a broad understanding of the end-to-end design process, able to work across disciplines while bringing depth in our own craft. We care deeply about what becomes possible when strategy, design and engineering work as one team, with AI tools now part of how we explore, prototype and build. We're embedded in mixed-discipline teams where judgement matters more than ever: deciding what's worth making, what good looks like, and when to trust or challenge what a tool produces. We're deeply collaborative, learn continuously, and rely on peer review to keep our work honest and our standards high.

What you'll do:

• Lead complex digital design engagements, setting the design vision, approach and roadmap from discovery through to delivery.
• Lead multidisciplinary design teams while remaining hands-on in your core UX/UI craft, working closely with product, engineering and delivery teams to turn user needs into high-quality digital products and services.
• Shape and establish design teams for complex programmes, bringing together the right skills, roles and ways of working for successful delivery.
• Establish and mature design capabilities, including design systems, standards, methods, governance and tooling that enable consistent, accessible and high-quality delivery.
• Build strong relationships with clients and senior stakeholders, presenting and challenging design direction and championing user‑centred design.
• Coach and develop designers and support the growth of our design practice through propositions, bids, recruitment and internal initiatives.
• Use emerging tools and techniques, including AI, where they genuinely improve the quality, pace or effectiveness of design delivery.

Qualifications:

As Lead Designer you have extensive experience in solving complex digital ecosystem problems. An outstanding and highly skilled hybrid design practitioner, you can confidently navigate all parts of the design spectrum and demonstrate deep expertise in UX and UI. You combine excellent craft with the ability to lead multidisciplinary design work across UX/UI, service design and user research. You have knowledge of a wide range of tools and techniques and know when to use them. You have experience using AI-enabled tools and techniques to optimise the end-to-end design process, from research and synthesis through ideation and rapid prototyping to testing and shipping high-quality user interfaces and can coach other designers to adopt these approaches effectively.

Design leadership skills:

• Model good practice by building strong client and colleague relationships and delivering high-quality work.
• Combine strong design craft with the ability to set direction and bring others with you.
• Distil complex user, business, operational and technical needs into clear design direction and priorities.
• Lead multidisciplinary design teams and create the conditions for researchers, service designers and UX/UI designers to do their best work.
• Set and maintain a high bar for design quality while balancing pace, technical constraints and delivery priorities.
• Be an approachable design authority who can challenge, critique and guide both client and delivery teams.
• Build and mature design capability, including methods, standards, tooling, reusable patterns and design systems.
• Work confidently alongside product, engineering and technology teams, ensuring design remains connected to what is ultimately built and shipped.
• Identify and introduce emerging design techniques and AI-enabled ways of working where they genuinely improve delivery.
• Accurately scope, estimate effort and define design activities for complex programmes of work.
• Coach and develop other designers, understanding their strengths and helping them grow their skills and confidence.
• Plan and facilitate user research to uncover needs, behaviours, pain points and opportunities.
• Synthesise research, data and insight to reframe problems, form hypotheses and identify opportunities.
• Facilitate design thinking, vision, co-design and innovation activities with users, clients and multidisciplinary teams.
• Translate user and service needs into clear journeys, interactions, information architectures and interfaces.
• Create high-quality low and high-fidelity designs, from sketches and wireframes through prototypes to detailed, development-ready UI.
• Rapidly prototype, test and iterate designs with users, using evidence rather than opinion to drive design decisions.
• Create and evolve accessible design systems, reusable components and patterns for complex digital products and services.
• Establish and embed design capabilities, ways of working and governance within client organisations, helping multidisciplinary teams put user‑centred design into practice and sustain it through delivery.
• Use AI-enabled tools and techniques across the design lifecycle to accelerate research, synthesis, ideation, prototyping, testing and UI delivery.

Robust communication skills:

• Have excellent verbal, written and visual communication skills.
• Communicate complex user, technical and design problems simply and convincingly to different audiences.
• Present and defend design decisions with evidence, while remaining open to challenge and iteration.
• Give and receive constructive critique, creating an open design culture where feedback improves the work.

Additional Information:

Please note that the interview stages may be subject to change based on the specific requirements of the role.

• Quick call with one of our Tech Recruiters - to discuss your application, the role and PA.
• Round 1: Either a competency or technical interview.
• Round 2: A mini case study and discussion around your client-centricity.
• Final round: Meeting with a PA leader.

Life At PA encompasses our peoples' experience at PA. It's about how we enrich peoples' working lives by giving them access to unique people and growth opportunities and purpose led meaningful work. Our purpose guides how we work with our clients and our teams, and support our communities, to deliver insight and impact, solving the world's most complex challenges. We're focused on building a workplace that values human difference and diverse mindsets, and a culture of inclusion and equality that unlocks the potential in our people so everyone can be their best self. We are dedicated to supporting the physical, emotional, social and financial well-being of our people. Check out some of our extensive benefits:

• Health and lifestyle perks accompanying private healthcare for you and your family.
• 25 days annual leave (plus a bonus half day on Christmas Eve) with the opportunity to buy 5 additional days.
• Generous company pension scheme.
• Opportunity to get involved with community and charity-based initiatives.
• Annual performance-based bonus.
• PA share ownership.
• Tax efficient benefits (cycle to work, give as you earn).

We're committed to advancing equality. We recruit, retain, reward and develop our people based solely on their abilities and contributions and without reference to their age, background, disability, genetic information, parental or family status, religion or belief, race, ethnicity, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity (or expression), political belief veteran status, or other by any other range of human difference brought about by identity and experience. We welcome applications from underrepresented groups.

Adjustments or accommodations - Should you need any adjustments or accommodations to the recruitment process, at either application or interview, please contact us.