Freelance Principal Product Designer

3-month initial contract duration (likely to extend).

As a Principal Product Designer, you are a discipline expert. You set the benchmark for quality and best practice. You are passionate about what you do and motivate those around you. You are a strong consultant who can foster positive and trusted relationships with our clients. You're comfortable providing end-to-end product design leadership across a multi-team programme, as well as high-value consulting services to shape a client’s digital product strategy or to develop and launch early product initiatives to prove their value to senior stakeholders.

You are a people person and, as a trusted advisor, you develop rapport with your team and clients. You are an integral part of the product team at Red Badger and a client-facing cross-functional team working in Lean/Agile ways of working. You are responsible for coaching and supporting the designers on the project and at Red Badger. You support the definition of Red Badger’s overall product direction and strategy. You're proactive in championing user needs. You take the team on the journey with you, so we’re building the right thing together. You are comfortable working closely and hands-on in the Product and Technology teams to build the thing right, iterating fast and often. You inspire and support the design team in developing their careers and becoming the best versions of themselves.

You will be reporting into the Business Unit (Cell) Product Director, working closely with a cross-functional project or programme leadership team consisting of an Account Director, other Principal roles, Delivery lead and Tech lead to ensure high quality of delivery of what is right for the client and their customers, and to support sales and recruitment activities for the cell. You must be comfortable with a hybrid working environment. Our default working practice will be UK-based remote work, but we continue to see in-person work as an important part of how we work (i.e., not optional), and expect Badgers to be available to attend the office and/or client site with suitable notice. As a consultancy, our remote/in-person balance will change depending on the nature of the work and the clients we work with.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and support the design strategy and implementation from discovery through to delivery.
• Focus on delivering value with your designs, while balancing agility in delivery with holistic thinking.
• Design and facilitate business value proposition and other creative workshops and design sprints.
• Work within a cross-disciplinary digital team on design and front-end implementation through creation of design systems, style guide, prototypes and other assets to bring product ideas to life.
• Work in Agile/Lean methodologies to experiment and make data-driven decisions for your designs.
• Drive continuous improvement and quality by championing design principles and the value they bring.
• Engage clients and your team to ensure the proposed design balances business goals and technical constraints in addition to user needs.
• Seed and scale design strategy and systems across a programme of work.

Collaborative Leader

• As a leader and consultant, you inspire and influence to take people on a journey and get shared and early buy-in for the design process and the outcomes.
• Contribute at a leadership level to the overall success of the Red Badger client engagement with commercial awareness and input into account strategy.
• Coach and align your team and your clients on Design Thinking, Lean, and Human-Centred Design.
• Guide and support colleagues and stakeholders through the divergent and convergent cycles in the process and make them feel safe in the ambiguity and discomfort through tact, empathy and conviction.
• Work with Directors on sales activities supporting shaping and closing new sales opportunities.
• Collaborate with the Principal Delivery and Technology roles to give delivery teams space and autonomy to thrive.
• Support product roadmap activities to shape user-centric backlog and high-value delivery outcomes.

Trusted Advisor to Clients

• As an influencer, you collaborate with clients and stakeholders to deliver business and user value through great product strategy and exceptional designs that delight the users.
• Communicate with confidence about your designs and decisions with a broad range of stakeholders to successfully influence long-lasting change.
• Set and implement a product design strategy and framework to solve large-scale and complex problems for our clients.
• Align and actively manage a broad range of stakeholders on the product strategy and desired outcomes through influence and diplomacy.
• Advocate and introduce user-centred, lean/agile processes to your clients.
• Able to break down complex concepts to communicate the value of design and recommended approach to a wide range of stakeholders.

Active contributor to developing the product design discipline within Red Badger

• Care for people’s careers and wellbeing.
• Line-manage, support and inspire designers and motivate them to develop.
• Support recruitment and growth of the design disciplines.
• Proactively share knowledge with the rest of the team and elevate the design discipline within Red Badger.
• Support the development of Red Badger’s design approach and strategy.
• Fostering and facilitating a culture of valuable design criticism and feedback.
• Elevate the role of design within the company and the industry.

Contribute to Red Badger’s place in the industry

• Provide product and design discipline thought leadership and contribute to the growth of the Red Badger brand in the industry.
• Write and speak publicly about our design work and practices.
• Champion Red Badger’s ways of working: cross-functional teams, continuously delivering value, building quality.
• Be an ambassador for Red Badger, and an advocate for ‘doing the right thing’, ‘doing the thing right’ by supporting and enabling others to do so.

Your experience

• Strong experience working in lean/agile methodologies, including with Scrum and Kanban.
• Strong working knowledge of industry-standard tools, such as Figma, plus aptitude to learn and introduce new tools and methodologies.
• Experience leading product design implementation and practices as part of a cross-functional team or programme working closely with engineers, data insights, user research and quality assurance disciplines.
• Consulting experience working with clients, presenting design concepts and leading on product strategy development and implementation.
• Extensive experience in all digital product lifecycle phases from discovery and influencing product backlog to delivery, bringing digital user-centric products to life.
• Experience designing complex digital product solutions across multiple channels like mobile-first responsive web applications and mobile native apps.
• Hiring and line management experience including coaching and mentoring.
• Ability to contextualise your product design decisions and recommendations to persuade clients through empathy and diplomacy.
• In-depth knowledge and strong practitioner experience of Human-Centered Design, Design Thinking, User Experience Design, Visual Design, Business value proposition.
• Deep understanding of Brand application, Design systems such as Atomic design, Good working knowledge of User research, User testing.

It’d be amazing if you can also

• Manage design stakeholders and clients at multi-team programme level.
• Leverage your understanding of front-end development to inform your design decisions.
• Apply product management principles to support the design and delivery of new digital value propositions.
• Apply Service Design methodologies to surface insights, design and test experiences to inform the development of digital products.
• Influence Product Strategy to develop, build and test new business opportunities.
• Leverage emerging technologies to enhance the user experience.
• Lead, shape and close new sales opportunities.
• Have public speaking or producing content experience on lean and agile product design in the industry.

What we offer

• We make sure our team is well looked after with generous salaries and a great benefits package which includes:
• Enhanced pension with employer contribution of up to 5% of your salary.
• Group Life Insurance.
• Critical Illness Cover.
• Private Medical Insurance.
• Your choice of hardware and mobile phone.
• £2,000 home-office set up budget and contribution to home broadband.
• Matched (pre-tax) charity GAYE donations.
• Cycle to work.
• Enhanced parental leave.

Diversity & Inclusion

Red Badger is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment, and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We hire, employ, train, promote and compensate regardless of gender, gender identity, race, disability, sexual orientation, age, creed and colour. We are fully focused on equality, and we believe that the fascinating differences that make us all unique enable us to continue doing amazing work for our clients.