Senior Designer in London

Salary from £56,364 depending on experience. Closing date for applications: 3rd July 2026. Location: London based/hybrid working - will require 2/3 days per week in the Unboxed office.

About the company

Unboxed is an established and well-respected design and digital product development agency based in London. We help our clients solve knotty problems, increasing business agility and improving user outcomes. Our multidisciplinary teams combine core expertise in design and software development with specific domain knowledge to deliver positive change and create meaningful impact. In recent years, we’ve focused on delivering technology-enabled services in the public sector, working with organisations across healthcare, housing, planning and local government. Our strategic aim is to expand our influence and address systemic problems in areas where good digital delivery genuinely changes lives.

About the role

As a Senior Designer at Unboxed, you’ll work across the full design lifecycle, from shaping early discovery through to shipping high-quality digital products. You’ll deploy a range of design skills, from user research and insights-gathering to collaborative codesign and prototyping. You’ll be embedded in cross-functional teams alongside developers, delivery managers and user researchers, bringing design rigour and creative problem-solving to complex, ambiguous challenges. This is a role for someone who can operate autonomously, lead design on a project, and contribute meaningfully to how we work as a practice. You’ll mentor more junior designers, help shape our ways of working, and play an active role in our design community.

The role will combine design delivery on client projects with contributions to the following outcomes:

• Thoughtful, user-centred design that delivers real impact: Our clients operate in complex environments where good design can genuinely change how people experience products and services. As a Senior Designer, you’ll lead the design process on projects, from identifying user needs and testing ideas early, to producing high-quality prototypes and refined interfaces ready for development. You’ll bring rigour and judgment to UX decisions, advocate for users throughout delivery, and help teams build the right thing.
• A collaborative, high-performing team environment: Great design at Unboxed happens through close collaboration with developers, delivery managers and clients, not in isolation. You’ll work openly, involve the whole team in research and design thinking, and help create the conditions for collective ownership of outcomes. You’ll find creative ways to bring clients and other stakeholders into the work, such as storytelling and visualisation. You’ll also mentor less experienced designers, sharing your knowledge generously and helping others grow through doing.
• A visible, embedded design culture: We’ve created something unique at Unboxed. We expect all of our Designers to contribute to our culture and practice. You’ll bring ideas to how we work, help evolve our processes, and represent design with confidence internally and externally. Whether through workshops, show and tells, writing or public speaking, you’ll help us articulate the value of design and attract the kind of work and people we want.

Key activities

Delivery of these outcomes will include the following key activities:

• Planning and conducting user research. Identifying what needs to be learned, engaging users directly, and synthesising insight into clear, actionable direction.
• Producing a broad range of design assets, from early sketches and wireframes through to high-fidelity prototypes and polished UI assets.
• Facilitating workshops and collaborative sessions with teams and clients, helping groups make decisions and move forward together.
• Leading UX thinking on projects, mapping user journeys, identifying pain points, testing assumptions, and iterating based on evidence.
• Communicating design decisions clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders, including through visual storytelling and narrative.
• Working closely with developers to understand technical constraints and opportunities adapting where appropriate and ensuring designs are implemented well.
• Helping to frame and reframe problems, zooming out from detail to ensure the work connects to broader user and business goals.
• Mentoring and coaching other designers, offering feedback, sharing knowledge and helping them develop their craft.
• Contributing to our design practice, improving how we work, maintaining design standards, and representing Unboxed in the wider design community.
• Demonstrating behaviours consistent with Unboxed’s values of openness and transparency, care and attention, healthy relationships, learning by doing, delivering value and continuous improvement.

Your knowledge and experience

You will have substantial experience working as a designer in a digital agency, consultancy or in-house product team, with a strong grounding in UX practice. You should be able to demonstrate:

• Deep experience in UX design, user research, journey mapping, interaction design, usability testing and iterative refinement.
• Ability to produce high-quality design assets across the full fidelity range, from rough concepts to production-ready prototypes and UI specifications.
• Confidence working within multidisciplinary, agile teams and contributing to delivery across the full product lifecycle.
• Strong facilitation skills, planning and running workshops, design studios and collaborative working sessions.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal, with the ability to tell a clear and compelling story about design decisions to a range of audiences.
• Experience mentoring or coaching other designers, formally or informally.
• Comfort with ambiguity, the ability to make progress and bring clarity when problems are ill-defined.

It would be great, but not essential, if you also have:

• Experience delivering in a public sector or mission-led context.
• Familiarity with government digital service standards or GDS-style delivery.
• Skills in service design, content design or systems thinking.
• Experience contributing to or leading a design practice.

Core competencies and behaviours

We expect everyone at Unboxed to be:

• Naturally collaborative.
• Good communicators (written and verbal).
• Adaptable.
• Comfortable with uncertainty and complexity.
• Curious and questioning.
• Active listeners.
• Empathic, humble and generous.
• Open and honest.
• Always learning.
• Passionate about our work.
• Reflective, on yourself and the situation.

How we work

Flexible, hybrid working: We’ve adapted our working practices and London office space to support hybrid working. The whole team works in our London office a minimum of two days a week. We trust our team to do the work they need to do and to collaborate closely. If you need to flex around caring responsibilities or other commitments, we’ll work with you to find the right balance.

Inclusion and wellbeing: At Unboxed, we strive to create an inclusive workplace where people can thrive and feel they belong. We believe career progression is most powerful when it’s owned by you. As part of your development, you can expect monthly reflection sessions, six-monthly director check-ins, and an open, coaching-led approach to growth. We are an equal opportunity employer committed to increasing diversity within Unboxed. We welcome applications from UK residents who may have felt excluded from such a role in the past, whether due to age, gender, ethnicity, visible or invisible disability, neurodivergence, education, religion/belief, sexual orientation, or family and care commitments.