Lead Interaction and Product Designer

About The Role

As a Lead Interaction and Product Designer at TPXimpact, you will lead the strategic direction, delivery and growth of our work, helping us on our mission to empower organisations to deliver good design. You’ll creatively solve real problems for real people, progressing our practice positively and developing our shared vision of excellence, whilst creating safe and supportive spaces where people are proud to talk about their work.

On client projects, you’ll be accountable for delivering outcomes, managing commercial responsibilities and ensuring high standards of work across complex programmes. You’ll represent best practice, working directly with clients to define statements of work, leading multidisciplinary teams to navigate complexity and holding uncertainty on behalf of clients. In DT Design, you’ll work alongside the Head of Practice to assure the quality of design work across the practice, mentor others and contribute to business development and growth activities.

Dimensions

Key performance indicators for the role

Individual utilisation: 90%

Problem solving responsibility and complexity

High, leading project delivery and teams. Accountable for managing significant ambiguity, holding uncertainty on behalf of clients and owning commercial responsibilities on complex projects.

Internal / External interactions

Managing delivery and client relationships

Lead practice growth (propositions, coaching, internal impact)

Proactively contribute to business growth (bids, proposals, pitches)

Responsibilities

Leading strategy - defining, implementing and influencing the long-term goals and vision of product strategy, working with clients to design and cost programmes of work.

Creating environments for good design - successfully navigating ambiguity and changing directions, building trust to hold and manage uncertainty on behalf of clients.

Ensuring high standards - maintaining the quality of work across the practice, conducting reviews, and ensuring inclusive and accessible approaches are consistently applied.

Managing commercial outcomes - taking accountability for delivery, strategic direction and commercial responsibilities of projects, including identifying opportunities for good design to be impactful.

Building capability - line managing and mentoring others, identifying skill gaps to build design capability in internal teams and client organisations.

Communicating with clarity - communicating key decisions and client/leadership feedback to teams, maintaining motivation and progress positively.

Driving business growth - proactively bringing specialist knowledge to business development by leading work for bids, proposals and pitches.

Telling the story - effectively owning the story of impact, measuring progress against outcomes and sharing insights with wider audiences to elevate our work through compelling narratives.

Resolving escalations - leading others through challenging situations, demonstrating positive behaviours and owning the escalation of problems that have a wider scope than your team.

About You

Professional knowledge and experience

Essential experience

leading high-level product design strategy, framing and propositions across complex programmes of work

creating environment where good design can happen, successfully navigating ambiguity, changing scope and lower digital maturity

championing inclusive design and accessibility, proactively calling out when clients or teams are not adopting existing standards and working with them to improve

managing commercial responsibilities on projects, including identifying opportunities for good design and defining team shape to be impactful

maintaining high standards of work by assuring quality, conducting reviews and providing constructive feedback to other designers

building capability and skills within internal teams and client organisations, including the line management of senior designers

communicating key decisions to teams effectively without introducing uncertainty and owning the escalation of project issues to lead teams through blockers

telling the story of our work and inspiring a design community environment, increasing engagement and knowledge sharing while making space for everyone to contribute equally

strategically planning and managing time to deliver maximum value to our clients and their users while actively leading and contributing to practice and business growth (bids, proposals, pitches).

Desirable experience

confidence using co-creation and participatory approaches to foster diverse reach and thinking from users and stakeholders

developing learning materials for interaction designers and establishing practice-wide governance processes

Contributing to the public discourse around design via blogging, public speaking or industry events.

Technical skills

Define, implement and influence the long-term goals and vision of product strategy, working with clients to design and cost programmes of design work.

Assure the quality of information architecture, micro-interaction and visual design across projects, providing constructive feedback to elevate the work of other designers.

Direct experimental approaches to prototyping across programmes, guiding teams to applying the right dimensions of fidelity to test ideas and influence strategic decision-making.

Champion proactive ethical and accessibility standards (WCAG), confidently challenging teams or clients not adopting inclusive practices

Create, maintain and contribute to complex design systems (GOV.UK, NHS, etc) including embedding robust governance and contribution processes across organisations

Bridge the gap to technology by conducting code reviews, contribute to code repositories and develop testing plans in collaboration with developers

Influence and guide how emerging technologies (generative AI, large language models) are applied responsibility to interaction design work

Own escalations, collaborating effectively with other leaders to resolve complex blockers and manage significant business risks

Direct the learning and development of others, owning the development of formal training approaches and activities that increase the skills of our teams and clients

Own and communicate the story of the work, engage senior stakeholders in the value of design and successfully lead multidisciplinary teams as a project director when required.

About Us

People-Powered Transformation

We're a purpose driven organisation, supporting organisations to build a better future for people, places and the planet. Combining vast experience in the public, private and third sectors and expertise in human-centred design, data, experience and technology, we’re creating sustainable solutions ready for an ever-evolving world.

At the heart of TPXimpact, we’re collaborative and empathetic. We’re a team of passionate people who care deeply about the work we do and the impact we have in the world. We know that change happens through people, with people and for people. That’s why we believe in people-powered transformation.

Working in close collaboration with our clients, we seek to understand their unique challenges, questioning assumptions and building in their teams the capabilities and confidence to continue learning, iterating and adapting.

Benefits Include:

30 days holiday + bank holidays

2 volunteer days for causes that you are passionate about

Maternity/paternity - 6 months Maternity Leave, 3 months Paternity Leave

Life assurance

Employer pension contribution of 5%

Health cash plan

Personal learning and development budget

Employee Assistance Programme

Green incentive programmes including Electric Vehicle Leasing and the Cycle to Work Scheme

Financial advice

Health assessments

About TPXimpact - Digital Transformation

We drive fundamental change in approaches to product and service development, delivery and technology. Our agile, multidisciplinary teams use technology, design and data to deliver better results, improving outcomes for individuals, organisations and communities.

By working in the open, in partnership with our clients, we not only transform their systems and services but also build the capability of their teams, so work can continue without us in the longer term. Our focus is sustainable change, always delivered with positive impact.

We are committed to having a positive impact on the clients and the communities we serve. We actively encourage applications from all genders, ethnicities, disabled people, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and those from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

Don’t meet 100% of the criteria? We still want to hear from you. Please let us know if you require any adjustments during the recruitment process.