Lead Designer
Position type: Permanent
Location: London, Hybrid
Starting: Immediately
We are ...
We’re an independent digital transformation consultancy with clients across public and
private sectors. We help our clients solve complex technical problems and provide
human-centred solutions that lead to positive outcomes. We do this with multidisciplinary
teams of strategists, architects, developers, designers and analysts working closely
alongside client stakeholders and end users.
We operate as a flat organisation, and believe in trusting and supporting our team to operate
independently, making the most of their expertise. We believe in giving everyone an
opportunity to continually learn and grow in the direction they choose, and we actively help
people to shape the career they want. We take work-life balance seriously, enabling people
to work flexibly where possible and we strive to create a fun and relaxed working
environment allowing our team to thrive.
We believe diversity makes us a stronger company and we seek to employ people with
different ideas, styles and skill sets, each able to contribute in unique ways. This diversity
engenders a richer, more creative environment – one in which our people, clients and
end-users can all benefit.
The role
We’re looking for a Lead Designer to join our multidisciplinary team designing and delivering
innovative digital products and services for our Government and Private Sector clients.
● You will work in multidisciplinary teams, often blended from Solirius, client and
partner staff. You will help those teams create products and services that both meet
the needs of the different people who will use and be affected by them, and help our
clients achieve their intended outcomes.
● You will need to be a strong design generalist (content, interaction, UX and service
design) to lead and have experience using a wide range of design methods in line
with the Government Service Standard and Solirius’ practices, and support other
designers to do the same. You will guide teams through external and internal service
assessments.
● As a Lead Designer, alongside working on more complex projects, you will be a line
manager. You’ll support the Head of Design with building and managing Solirius’
design community and ensuring a consistent approach to produce the highest quality
work.
● You will help us strengthen our design practice through hiring, coaching and
mentoring others. You will help to improve the way we work, developing and
documenting our practices to ensure the work we do has integrity and provides
value.
● You will regularly share your experiences with the team and the wider design
community to develop your own skills and help others improve across Solirius.
● You will lead and support activities to develop new client relationships and accounts
for both the Design practice and wider Solirius team.
Skills and experience required:
User-centred design
● You understand user-centred design activities at all levels, from the ‘big picture’
through to detailed interaction, visual, content and information architecture design.
● You’re experienced in planning and leading design workshops at all stages of a
project, from gathering initial user insights through to testing the usability of a product
or service.
● You’re experienced in user research, utilising different research methods as
appropriate, synthesis of qualitative and quantitative research data and findings, and
are able to communicate insights in an engaging and concise way to engage
stakeholders in data-informed decisions.
● You’re able to understand, facilitate and communicate a vision of change from both
business and user perspectives.
● You’re experienced in creating hypotheses and mapping service experiences from
insights, and defining changes to meet user and business needs.
● You’re experienced at rapid prototyping to test, iterate and validate solution designs.
● You’re experienced at producing concise artefacts (e.g. personas, journey maps,
service blueprints, user stories) to help communicate user and business needs.
● You’re experienced at working with agile development teams and stakeholders to
co-design products and services to meet user needs.
● You’re able to support and coach teams and stakeholders in the use of user-centred
design and agile methodologies.
● You advocate for and ensure high standards of usability, accessibility and inclusivity
for products and services.
● You have a detailed understanding and experience of working to the Government
Service Standard. (essential)
Consulting, communications and productivity
● You’re able to understand client needs and both participate and lead in bid writing
and client presentation activities to generate new business. Prior experience working
within a consultancy or agency setting is desirable.
● You have experience with client account management and are able to work with
client stakeholders to ideate and define new projects, develop statements of work
and are confident in leading large-scale projects to successful completion.
● You have excellent verbal/written, listening and facilitation skills and are confident in
communicating with stakeholders at all levels.
● You have the technical literacy to understand (at a high-level) technical processes,
concepts and constraints.
● You naturally recognise and work within project constraints, supporting colleagues to
ensure delivery of value to the client and their users.
● You’re instrumental in supporting the development of Solirius’ internal culture, tools,
processes and growth opportunities.
The ideal candidate will share our values and be aligned with our ways of working and as
your career progresses, you can expect to work across all areas of the development
lifecycle, from strategy to implementation, and to take on assignments in different sectors.
This will provide you with a broad base of experience from which to continue building an
outstanding career.
Candidates should be open to working in different locations for different clients. Although
most of our work is remote, candidates should be happy to meet regularly in our London
office and travel as client needs dictate.