Design Lead (12 months)

The opportunity

At Vanguard, we’re passionate about giving UK investors the best chance of investor success. We do this by creating intuitive digital experiences that inform, compel, and delight our clients. In this role, you’ll be working in and leading a specific value stream within our customer’s end-to-end lifecycle. You’ll be collaborating with a multi-disciplinary team (Product Manager, Content Designer, Data analysts, UX researchers, scrum teams). Your job will involve understanding what our clients need/want, solving problems, and designing compelling client experiences.

Core Responsibilities

Your Design skills

• You’re familiar with the gov.uk content guidelines, you know content best practice and you’re an expert at writing for accessibility
• You’re comfortable working with Design Systems (Storybook & Figma) and readily able to build prototypes & designs from these building blocks
• You’re able to execute on the end‑end design process from initial framing through to exploration, insights, hypotheses, texting and design delivery
• You are familiar with, and ideally have experience using, Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) for content management, as well as analytics tools such as Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics
• You have the ability to translate complex financial/investments concepts into simple, plain English language
• You contribute and can lead research activities with research plans, discussion guides, building prototypes and insight synthesis
• You autonomously drive the production of design work and lead the sign‑off process with Product, business stakeholders, legal and compliance
• You’re an energetic storyteller, able to engage an audience in workshops, facilitate design critiques and co‑creation workshops
• You’re a natural partner of Tech, Compliance, Marketing and all key stakeholders
• You proactively engage with your immediate stakeholder group (PM, Marketing, Designers, Developers) but also other relevant SMEs (legal, compliance, business strategy, customer services, etc)
• You understand UX, the Double Diamond and the Agile delivery mindset
• You’re highly proficient in Figma – this is our workspace and where you’ll need to execute all design work
• You work off hypothesis and problem statements

Your Leadership skills

• You love to champion our diverse disciplines and skillsets to bring Designers together around client problems and get the best of the team in designing solutions
• You demonstrate servant leadership, your primary approach is to empower & elevate your team and our Design practise to help Vanguard & our clients achieve their goals
• You’re comfortable giving clear & valuable feedback, demonstrating care & coaching to support Designers in your pod
• You welcome feedback, are a great listener and are able to tune in to your audience to get the best from stakeholders & senior leaders
• You know when to lean in and when to take a step back to empower others
• You’re comfortable working with vague briefs and have a disciplined approach to creating definition in design requirements
• You’re able to work across multiple initiatives at once through a balanced project management approach
• You love partnering with other Designers and Leads to come together around problems and ensure alignments and consistency in ways of working
• You’re able to think strategically about our products to ensure Design can do what it does best and deliver a coherent, consistent, easy & simple experience for clients.

Experience

• Proven experience in the design space (ie, writing for journeys, app, public website, dashboards, etc)
• Experience in finance, asset management or other regulated industries essential.
• Experience as either a Senior Designer or Design Lead preferred
• Experience of mentoring and/or coaching others is a must
• Strong work ethic. Demonstrated willingness to contribute to the overall success of the unit and Vanguard.

Special Factors:

Vanguard is not offering sponsorship for this position.

This is a hybrid position and would require you to work in the office Tuesday‑Thursday.

Why Vanguard?

Vanguard is a different kind of investment company. It was founded in the United States in 1975 on a simple but revolutionary idea: that an investment company should manage its funds solely in the interests of its clients.

It has helped millions of people around the world to achieve their goals with low‑cost, uncomplicated investments.

It’s what we stand for: value to investors.

Inclusion Statement

Vanguard’s continued commitment to diversity and inclusion is firmly rooted in our culture. Every decision we make to best serve our clients, crew (internally employees are referred to as crew), and communities is guided by one simple statement: “Do the right thing.”

We believe that a critical aspect of doing the right thing requires building diverse, inclusive, and highly effective teams of individuals who are as unique as the clients they serve. We empower our crew to contribute their distinct strengths to achieving Vanguard’s core purpose through our values.

When all crew members feel valued and included, our ability to collaborate and innovate is amplified, and we are united in delivering on Vanguard\’s core purpose: to take a stand for all investors, to treat them fairly, and to give them the best chance for investment success.

How We Work

Vanguard has implemented a hybrid working model for the majority of our crew members, designed to capture the benefits of enhanced flexibility while enabling in‑person learning, collaboration, and connection. We believe our mission‑driven and highly collaborative culture is a critical enabler to support long‑term client outcomes and enrich the employee experience.