Senior User Experience (UX) Designer in Manchester

Are you passionate about creating outstanding, accessible digital experiences that truly put users first? At Transport for Greater Manchester, this Senior User Experience (UX) Designer role is your chance to make a real impact simplifying journeys, encouraging sustainable travel choices, and improving safety for millions of public transport users. At TfGM, what you do and how you do it is important - whatever type of role you work in at TfGM - and even small behaviours and actions can have a really big impact. Our behaviours bring to life our values of Deliver, Care and Adapt.

Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) is looking for a Senior UX Designer who has the skills to deliver outstanding digital experiences to over half a million users per month. This is a fantastic opportunity to work on an exciting vision to better our community by helping to make it easier and safer for people to plan and make their journeys on the 'Bee Network' and drive behaviour change towards more sustainable public transport, cycling and walking choices. We are committed to delivering the 2040 Greater Manchester Transport Strategy and its goals to support sustainable economic growth, protect the environment, improve the quality of life for all, and develop an innovative city region.

Beyond designing exceptional experiences, you will help grow our UX community of practice, establishing UX principles, processes, tools and techniques to deliver best in class experiences.

What you’ll do:

• Lead UX design work from discovery to delivery.
• Conduct and own research activities with customers to identify user needs, ensuring solutions are evidence-based and validated through usability testing.
• Build prototypes using the latest tools and techniques to explore and validate design concepts.
• Create experiences that are accessible and inclusive that meet our own internal accessibility standards as well as the WCAG 2.2 AA standard.
• Effectively collaborate with engineering teams ensuring good design hand offs.
• Work collaboratively with product owners and business stakeholders to support product direction as well as actively identify product enhancement opportunities.
• Communicate confidently about design work, effectively explaining design decisions in a way that is understandable.
• Support the Lead UX designer to continue building our UX community of practice, championing user-centred design through demos, workshops and talks.
• Contribute towards the evolution of the Colony design system, ensuring robustness and scalability across our products.

Essential skills and experience:

• Proven experience in delivering complex, data-rich digital products.
• Proficient in applying accessibility standards such as W3C and WCAG 2.2.
• Experience working in an agile product team.
• Delivery focussed, with strong experience in iterative delivery.
• Experience working with different research methods across both qualitative and quantitative.
• Proficient in both design and research tooling - Figma, Usertesting.com, Google Analytics.
• Strong prototyping capability.
• Good experience working with and evolving design systems.
• Strong communication capability, skilled in engaging stakeholders at senior levels.

Who we are:

Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) plays a vital role in shaping the future of transport across Greater Manchester. 2026 is a busy and exciting time for us: under the devolution agreement and with Greater Manchester at the heart of the Northern Powerhouse, transport will play a vital role in supporting growth and prosperity in the UK's largest regional economy outside London. The scale of change, the size of the investment and the dedicated team we have in the business today make it an exciting place to work with a lot of scope to deliver first‑class products and services and continue your own personal development journey.

We have a dynamic working environment and a culture that collaborates, shares, continually learns, challenges and embraces better ways of doing things to continually meet user needs and experiences through technology and data.

What we can offer you:

This is a great opportunity for an experienced professional with a strong background in leading user research and design to take the next step in their career. You will have an opportunity to support our UX team and community of practice within TfGM and deliver impactful solutions that enhance the transport experience for Greater Manchester's residents and visitors. This is a permanent role and comes with a salary of £57,039 - £62,366 per annum depending on experience.

This is comprised of base salary plus market supplement, (£47,539 - £52,866 + plus MFS £9,500, the market supplement is paid monthly and reviewed as required). At TfGM we encourage candidates to discuss flexible working options at any stage of the recruitment process. We are happy to #talkflexibleworking to help colleagues maintain a healthy work life balance.

Our benefits include:

• Generous annual leave starting at 28 days (plus bank holidays), increasing with service, with options to buy more.
• Free travel on buses across Greater Manchester, plus rail or Metrolink travel to and from work.
• Local Government defined pension scheme with life cover of 3x salary and options to boost your contributions.
• Enhanced family-friendly leave policies, including those supporting fertility treatment, alongside flexible and hybrid working and a special leave policy to support a range of unexpected events.

Please note that qualification criteria may apply, including a requirement to have been employed with the organisation for a minimum specified period of time. Discover more benefits including wellbeing support, Personal and Career Development, Flexible working, financial support and more on our website.

What’s next?

If you believe you have the skills and experience required, we’d really like to hear from you. To apply please submit your CV, including a link to your portfolio, and also provide a covering letter providing clear examples of how your experience meets the requirements of the role, all appointments will be based on merit. Our short‑listing process is anonymised, so please do not include your name or contact details on any documents.

If any personal details are included these will be visible to the hiring manager. We embrace AI to enhance our operations and to innovate our services. However, we value human talent and are looking for passionate individuals to join our organisation. Please ensure you personally complete your application and read all the instructions carefully to maximise your chances of success. Applications that rely too heavily on AI may be rejected during shortlisting, however we understand that AI may be used as a reasonable adjustment, if using AI to support your application, please give a brief explanation why to help ensure fair selection process.

Priority Recruitment Scheme for ‘At Risk’ NHS GM Colleagues:

If you are currently employed by a Greater Manchester NHS organisation and have been formally identified as ‘at risk’, please indicate this within your application for the role. If you select ‘Yes’ and provide evidence that your experience meets the essential criteria described in the job advert and role profile, you will be guaranteed progression to the next assessment stage. Please ensure your application clearly demonstrates how you meet these essential requirements, as the guarantee only applies to candidates who meet them.

TfGM is proud to be an equal opportunities employer that encourages and celebrates diversity. We want to recruit and retain a workforce that reflects the communities we serve and welcome individuals from all backgrounds by committing to providing a fully inclusive and accessible recruitment process. We will offer support and reasonable adjustments if required and we also have a Guaranteed Assessment Scheme which you can find out more information on here.

For this opportunity, you must be able to prove you have the right to work in the UK - if in doubt please visit the following link Employers' right to work checklist - GOV.UK www.gov.uk. Please note we are not a licensed sponsor. Please note we may close the advert early if we receive a high volume of applications.

NOTE TO AGENCIES - we will be accepting direct applications only for this role. No fee will be paid if a candidate is hired for this position as a result of an unsolicited agency or search firm referral CV.