Freelance Principal Product Designer

Role Overview

• Successfully delivering client outcomes across multiple teams and programmes
• Consulting the client to define and execute a winning product strategy
• Ensuring the quality of digital product development using Human-centred, Lean and Agile methodologies
• Empowering, coaching, mentoring, and supporting product designers
• Product Discipline Leadership
• Lead and support the design strategy and implementation from discovery through to delivery
• Focus on delivering value with your designs, while balancing agility in delivery with holistic thinking
• Design and facilitate business value proposition and other creative workshops and design sprints
• Work within a cross-disciplinary digital team on design and front-end implementation through creation of design systems, style guide, prototypes and other assets to bring product ideas to life
• Work in Agile/Lean methodologies to experiment and make data-driven decisions for your designs
• Drive continuous improvement and quality by championing design principles and the value they bring
• Engage clients and your team to ensure the proposed design balances business goals and technical constraints in addition to user needs
• Seed and scale design strategy and systems across a programme of work.
• As a leader and consultant, you inspire and influence to take people on a journey and get shared and early buy-in for the design process and the outcomes
• Contribute at a leadership level to the overall success of the Red Badger client engagement with commercial awareness and input into account strategy
• Coach and align your team and your clients on Design Thinking, Lean, and Human-Centred Design
• Guide and support colleagues and stakeholders through the divergent and convergent cycles in the process and make them feel safe in the ambiguity and discomfort through tact, empathy and conviction
• Work with Directors on sales activities supporting shaping and closing new sales opportunities
• Collaborate with the Principal Delivery and Technology roles to give delivery teams space and autonomy to thrive
• Support product roadmap activities to shape user-centric backlog and high-value delivery outcomes.
• As an influencer, you collaborate with clients and stakeholders to deliver business and user value through great product strategy and exceptional designs that delight the users
• Communicate with confidence about your designs and decisions with a broad range of stakeholders to successfully influence long-lasting change
• Set and implement a product design strategy and framework to solve large-scale and complex problems for our clients
• Align and actively manage a broad range of stakeholders on the product strategy and desired outcomes through influence and diplomacy
• Advocate and introduce user-centred, lean/agile processes to your clients
• Able to break down complex concepts to communicate the value of design and recommended approach to a wide range of stakeholders.
• Active contributor to developing the product design discipline within Red Badger
• Care for people’s careers and wellbeing
• Line-manage, support and inspire designers and motivate them to develop
• Support recruitment and growth of the design disciplines
• Proactively share knowledge with the rest of the team and elevate the design discipline within Red Badger
• Support the development of Red Badger’s design approach and strategy
• Fostering and facilitating a culture of valuable design criticism and feedback
• Elevate the role of design within the company and the industry.
• Provide product and design discipline thought leadership and contribute to the growth of the Red Badger brand in the industry
• Write and speak publicly about our design work and practices
• Champion Red Badger’s ways of working: cross-functional teams, continuously delivering value, building quality
• Be an ambassador for Red Badger, and an advocate for ‘doing the right thing’, ‘doing the thing right’ by supporting and enabling others to do so.

Requirements

• Strong experience working in lean/agile methodologies, including with Scrum and Kanban
• Strong working knowledge of industry-standard tools, such as Figma, plus aptitude to learn and introduce new tools and methodologies
• Experience leading product design implementation and practices as part of a cross-functional team or programme working closely with engineers, data insights, user research and quality assurance disciplines
• Consulting experience working with clients, presenting design concepts and leading on product strategy development and implementation
• Extensive experience in all digital product lifecycle phases from discovery and influencing product backlog to delivery, bringing digital user-centric products to life
• Experience designing complex digital product solutions across multiple channels like mobile-first responsive web applications and mobile native apps
• Hiring and line management experience including coaching and mentoring
• Ability to contextualise your product design decisions and recommendations to persuade clients through empathy and diplomacy
• In-depth knowledge and strong practitioner experience of
• Human-Centered Design
• Design Thinking
• User Experience Design
• Visual Design
• Business value proposition
• Deep understanding of
• Brand application
• UI design
• Design systems such as Atomic design
• Good working knowledge of
• User research
• User testing

Benefits

• Annual £2,000 training budget
• Enhanced pension with employer contribution of up to 5% of your salary
• Group Life Insurance
• Income Replacement Benefit
• Critical Illness Cover
• Private Medical Insurance
• Your choice of hardware and mobile phone
• £2,000 home-office set up budget and contribution to home broadband
• Matched (pre-tax) charity GAYE donations
• Cycle to work
• Enhanced parental leave