Lead Designer

Job Description

About Kin + Carta Create (Europe)

Kin+Carta is a global digital transformation business comprised of over 1600 people. We make the journey to becoming a digital business tangible, sustainable, and profitable. Our mission is to create the products, platforms, and services that make the world work better.

Kin+Carta is made up of three core pillar brands; Advise, Create and Connect and we have established presences in Europe and the Americas. At K+C Create Europe we have a mature business – trusted by leading organisations – that creates quality digital solutions delivered by cutting edge software design and engineering. Whilst we operate regionally, we are globally connected and leverage the K+C group network to continuously create the best design, engineering and business practises. The whole of which are responsive to technology trends and market needs in this ever changing digital landscape.

About our Design team

We are a high-performing design team who are passionate about creating amazing human-centred product and service experiences - for some of the world’s biggest brands. We are digital-pioneers. This isn’t a buzz word – as we often are working on ‘digital firsts’ with our clients, whether it’s a new product concept, a new business model or working with new technology or making existing technology work in new ways. We have a challenger mind-set, and we’re on a constant mission to design better – to make things more usable, valuable and delightful.

We are T shaped, most of us having a breadth of design skills and a depth in specific areas that we are passionate about. That means some of our team lean more towards user research and testing and others more towards design systems, visual design and design for production. Wherever possible, we’re involved in the full end-to-end process from research and concept through to production. We thrive in cross-functional delivery teams and work closely with our clients and their customers. We believe in the strategic importance of design and promote it at every opportunity, making sure that design is embedded in K+C Create culture and at the heart of everything we do.

About the role

As a Lead Digital Designer you will have both K+C Create and client/project responsibilities.

As a design lead at K+C Create:

• You’re an active participant in the internal design ‘community of practice’. You contribute to ensuring cohesion and a great design culture, as well as promoting best-practices, current and emerging trends in tech and design.
• You contribute to the design team strategy, structure, resource planning, hiring, career planning and mentoring and other key people functions.
• You’re ambitious and passionate about the role of design in product and service development, helping to shape our approach by strategically developing capabilities and practises.
• You’re active in building strong relationships at a local cross-functional level and at a regional and global K+C connective level.
• You’re proactive in supporting the sales team to identify and shape the right opportunities that creates value for us, our clients and their customers.
• You are keen to help plan and support the careers of the design team members, enabling them to realise their craft and professional ambitions.

As a design lead on client projects you are:

• A master of your craft through passion and perseverance and you inspire and are able to lead and coach others to get to the same level.
• Client facing and may have oversight of numerous projects at once. You will lead, manage and mentor designers and cross-functional delivery teams and help enable client teams.
• Flexible with where you are physically needed to fulfil the client brief, which could be in our office, in the client office or in the field (literally sometimes) with customers testing design and product ideas.
• Hands­-on in project engagements and believe that this is the best way to remain current and to develop your expertise and experience.
• Experienced in consulting to and collaborating with client stakeholders at all levels and willing to take on challenging conversations and situations to ensure the best possible outcome.
• A passionate advocate for the user, helping teams make informed design decisions by placing the needs of the user and the business at the centre of every decision.

About you

You’re passionate about human-centred digital design, backed by a broad knowledge of design theory including design patterns and systems and processes. You may also have a specialism in research, facilitation, innovation or ui design. You can develop concepts and visualise solutions in response to the problems, ideas and opportunities you help extract from users and clients. You drive your design decisions and rationalise them using research data, design principles, prototypes and the resulting user-testing insights.

You’re most effective when you collaborate with engineers, strategists and other team members to respond to the constraints of any project. You are a team player, who is highly personable and can form evidence-based opinions but hold them loosely as you encourage collaboration to work to the optimal solution. Being passionate about your craft you are actively engaged in community discussions and events.

Eligibility

• You have demonstrable, relevant industry experience
• You have experience working in an agency or consulting environment, working directly with client teams to deliver quality outcomes
• You have a experience across a range of different digital touchpoints including web, apps and other devices
• You’re an expert in the core digital design and prototyping tools (Adobe Creative Suite, Sketch, Figma, Miro, Keynote etc) and are always experimenting and learning new ones
• You have experience coaching others in both a design and professional sense
• You have design leadership experience - either directly managing or contributing to the management of design teams
• You are entitled to work in the UK

How to apply

Please include a CV, link to your portfolio and a brief introduction to yourself highlight previous experience that you want us to know about.

We’re interested in the activities you go through as you research, ideate, test and present your thinking and conclusions. For example; use of data, interviews, workshops, sketches, concepts, flows, experience maps, prototypes etc. ‘Finished’ visual designs are not the only focus here. All supplied examples will be handled in complete confidence.

Kin + Carta Create believes in creating a culture where diversity, regardless of its form, is just a part of who we are. We empower every individual to share what matters to them, subsequently creating a culture where every person, regardless of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, or disability status, is treated as a valued member of K + C Create!