Design Lead in London

Leading design delivery, workflow efficiency and quality standards across print and digital.

Location: London WC2N

Salary: £50,000 per annum, plus company benefits

Contract: Permanent, full time

Shifts: 37.5 hours per week Mon-Fri between 8am-6pm with a 30-min unpaid lunch

Work model: Hybrid (3 days onsite, 2 remote once the probationary period has been successfully completed)

Purpose of Role

The Design Lead is responsible for setting the creative standard across all brand, marketing and client-facing communications, ensuring that every output is visually compelling, strategically effective and delivered to the highest quality. This is a hands-on leadership role with 3 direct reports (designers), suited to an experienced designer who enjoys remaining close to the work while guiding and developing a small team. Working across digital and print channels, the successful candidate will contribute directly to design projects, provide art direction and ensure consistency across all visual touchpoints.

Alongside leading design delivery, the Design Lead will oversee production processes and quality standards, ensuring work is executed accurately, efficiently and in line with brand guidelines. This is a hands-on design and leadership role, where you will use your experience to create design work and guide the team to ensure quality of output.

Key Responsibilities

• Leadership & Design Delivery
  • Lead the development and delivery of design projects across digital and print channels.
  • Remain actively involved in design execution, producing high-quality creative work and leading by example.
  • Offer coaching and constructive feedback to designers, helping elevate the capability and output of the team.
  • Champion strong visual design principles across typography, layout, branding, storytelling and user engagement.
  • Ensure all creative output delivers against business objectives while maintaining exceptional design standards.
  • Present creative concepts and work confidently to stakeholders, incorporating feedback effectively.
• Brand & Visual Consistency
  • Own and maintain brand standards across all customer, colleague and client-facing materials.
  • Drive the implementation and evolution of a consistent visual identity system across multiple channels and formats.
  • Ensure consistency of design execution across marketing campaigns, social media, presentations, data visualisation, thought leadership and print communications.
• Production & Quality Excellence
  • Oversee the production and implementation of all creative assets across digital and print channels.
  • Establish and maintain robust quality assurance processes to ensure accuracy, consistency and attention to detail.
  • Review work at key stages, ensuring deliverables are fit for purpose and meet agreed standards before release.
  • Identify opportunities to improve production workflows, templates and processes to enhance efficiency and effectiveness.
  • Work closely with the wider team to manage deadlines, priorities and resource allocation without compromising quality.
• Team Leadership
  • Lead, organise and support a small team of designers, fostering a collaborative and high-performing environment.
  • Manage workloads and priorities across multiple concurrent projects.
  • Encourage knowledge sharing, continuous learning and awareness of emerging design trends, tools and technologies.

Skills & Experience

• Experience in a senior design role, with responsibility for both creative delivery and team leadership.
• Strong portfolio demonstrating strong design craft across digital and print channels.
• Proven experience maintaining brand systems across multiple touchpoints.
• Strong understanding of creative production processes and best practice across both digital and print.
• Experience mentoring, managing or leading designers while remaining hands-on in design delivery.
• Visual communication skills, including typography, layout, composition and brand application.
• Attention to detail and commitment to delivering consistently high-quality work.
• Ability to manage multiple competing priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• Confident stakeholder management and presentation skills.
• Advanced proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite and good working knowledge of Microsoft Office.
• Experience producing data visualisation and presentation design.

Using AI in your application

We’re happy for you to use AI tools to research us, polish your cv/cover letter, and practice interviews. Please make sure everything you submit reflects your authentic skills and experience. To keep things fair, please don’t use AI to invent or exaggerate achievements, complete assessments (unless we say it’s allowed), or to generate live interview answers.

Rewards and Benefits

We believe in supporting our employees in both their professional and personal lives. As part of our commitment to your well-being, we offer a comprehensive benefits package, including but not limited to:

• 25 days holiday, plus bank holidays (pro-rata for part time roles)
• Salary sacrifice schemes, retail vouchers – including our TechScheme which can be used on a range of gadgets such as Smart TVs, laptops and computers or household appliances.
• Life Assurance
• Private Medical Insurance
• Dental Insurance
• Health Assessments
• Cycle-to-work scheme
• Discounted gym memberships
• Referral Scheme

You will also have the opportunity to work for a global employer who is dedicated to offering each and every employee an enjoyable, challenging and rewarding career with future career development prospects!

Equality and Diversity

The Company values the differences that a diverse workforce brings to the organisation and will not discriminate because of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race (which includes colour, nationality and ethnic or national origins), religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation (each of these being a “protected characteristic” in discrimination law). It will not discriminate because of any other irrelevant factor and will build a culture that values openness, fairness and transparency.

If you have a disability and would prefer to apply in a different format or would like to make a reasonable adjustment to enable you to make an interview please contact us at careersatWL@williamslea.com (we do not accept applications to this email address).

Please note: Due to the high volume of responses received for this role we will not be able to contact all applicants directly. If you have not heard from us in four weeks please consider your application unsuccessful.