Lead Product Designer

The role

As a Lead Product Designer you’ll play a pivotal role in designing products and services for IF’s diverse range of clients. You’ll be a senior individual-contributor on projects and lead design and user research efforts from discovery through to delivery, ensuring we’re creating high-value outcomes for our clients and their users.

- Develop high-fidelity design concepts and prototypes that align with project goals, and IF’s philosophy and methodologies.

- Integrate design solutions into user research activities, such as qualitative interviews and usability testing, to test hypotheses and assumptions early and fast.

- Work closely with the team to plan and deliver design activities, workshops, and co-creation sessions.

- Oversee the creation of projects outputs and assets, including the creation of high-quality reports and presentations.

- Manage project plans on smaller projects to gain that experience if new to you, and collaborate with a project lead for more significant sized projects.

- Identify risks and unintended consequences of proposed design concepts and prototypes and suggest adequate mitigation strategies.

- Identify trust gaps and opportunities and suggest design interventions to earn and maintain trust, working closely with technical, data and policy teams to further understand constraints and opportunities to take into the design work.

- Maintain strong, trusted client relationships and ensure expertise and perspective is brought to the forefront at the right time, ensuring clear communication, compelling storytelling, and alignment.

About you

- Hybrid design experience, across user experience, interaction and research.

- A comprehensive understanding of how products are built, and bonus points if you have designed and delivered a product from opportunity identification to production and into customers’ hands.

- Worked with emerging technologies and navigated complex data usage.

- A strong interest in the areas of expertise IF covers, teamed up with relevant experience of designing products while navigating these topics.

- Curious to learn. You’ll quickly represent IF’s collective expertise to our clients, and a curiosity to learn and evolve your thinking is needed.

- Strong communication skills. You’ll present yours and IF’s thinking regularly and with conviction, and this needs to be done in such a way that we maintain strong, trusting relationships with our clients.

- Strong collaboration skills. While we bring expertise to the table, our clients hold far more context than we ever could and we closely partner with them along the way to shape the right direction forward.

Your location

IF is based in London and we’re looking for someone based here or within commutable distance. We’re largely a remote-first team and currently spend Wednesdays together in a studio next to Hoxton Overground station. We also spend some time with clients but plan this to be infrequent and valuable. Client-facing work requires flexibility but we’re designing a setup to enable deep-work and balance.

The hiring process

You’re likely to meet one member of the team at each stage because we’re a small team. We may use an AI notetaking service to assist your interviewer in capturing the conversation.

We will ask that you walk us through some work at each stage, varying in depth and focus depending on the stage and who you’re meeting. We’ll share more during the process so that you can prepare.

1. An initial 30 minute introductory call to discuss the role, your experience and ensure alignment.

2. A 60 minute interview to discuss your background in more detail. We’ll dig into your work and also ask some questions based on real-world IF context.

3. A 60 minute interview to have a final chat about your work, as well as your ways of working, motivations and working at IF.

Salary and benefits

The salary band for this role is £90-110k. We’ll assess experience throughout the interview process to determine where within this band you would join. Our benefits also include:

- A time off allowance of 25 days each calendar year, in addition to bank holidays (which typically tops this up to around 33 days).

- Christmas closure. The dates for this differ each year but we’re offline between Christmas and New Year to enjoy this busy holiday season.

- We also aim to schedule a week-long summer closure each year, to all be offline during the warmer months, putting on the collective breaks and pausing all notifications.

- 5 days of paid emergency carers leave. Last minute caring responsibilities need to be prioritised and this leave is there to support you taking the time you need.

- Enhanced parental leave for all genders and routes to becoming a parent.

- A proactive and considered approach to balancing work and life. You can read more about our team-wide practices below, and this is teamed up with an openness to understanding and supporting individual needs.

Working at IF

We encourage a balanced way of working. We’re ambitious, hardworking and constantly juggling the demands of our work. However, we also offer flexibility and a deep appreciation of life outside of work. We’re creating an environment where you will do some of the most fulfilling work of your career and with that comes a deep commitment to our collective network’s care and wellbeing.

- Core hours. We’re online and schedule meetings 10:00-16:00. Outside of that, we encourage you to to start and end your day between 07:30-19:00, allowing you to design your working day around your needs and preferences.

- Flexible Fridays. We try to keep this day meeting free to facilitate a sense of calm and completion to end the week. And once work is finished, clock off. There’s no expectation to work the whole day if the work is done.

- Thoughtful approach to sync vs. async work. To deliver our expertise we must carve out time for deep-work. How we communicate, document and spend time together is thoughtfully designed and iterated upon.