Product Design Lead - Digital Design System

We are looking for a design lead who's truly passionate about helping people and producing outstanding work, personally and through others. You will help us realise the next phase of our maturity. This role will see you driving and leading design innovation through rigorous practice and research, working on the design system product itself, and supporting the teams adopting and using it in equal measure. The design system team at Tesco is responsible not only for design consistency and efficiency, but also thought leadership and design innovation which the wider teams help us create and adopt. At Tesco, we believe in taking everyone along on our journey. You will join a team of dedicated professionals who are passionate about their craft and uphold the highest standards of design and design culture. We pride ourselves on being mentors, coaches, and teachers, always seeking opportunities to share our knowledge and expertise in a dynamic, agile environment.

The design system is strategically important to Tesco. We support all our colleagues working on B2B, customer and colleague facing tools across Android, iOS and Web platforms with all manner of products from PDA's, wearables, Tills, websites and native applications. In 2024 alone, we saved Tesco substantial days of effort across Technology.

• This role is both strategic and hands on. You will jump into Figma and work on the libraries, while also working strategically with your peers of design managers, leads and other influential individuals to help teams best use the design system to realise operational efficiency and consistency where possible.
• You will drive design system use across different product types and platforms and varying levels of design system readiness
• You will have deep knowledge of design for web, iOS and android user interfaces
• You will, with the rest of the team support our consumers and community.
• Working hand in hand with our design operations team, you will help create and scale programmes, support material and initiatives that markedly help our teams make the most of the design system, driving ways of working changes across teams and improving cross functional collaboration between design, product and engineering
• You will conduct user research/testing to spot and react to pain-points our users encounter when working with the design system across the end-to-end design process, helping shape a truly user focused design system and improve our CSAT scores
• You will find creative ways to inspire others in the use of the design system, pushing the boundaries of what's possible.
• You will explore and experiment with new technology, such as AI, design trends and movements, and bring this back to the systems team in ways that help us drive and scale output and innovation within design
• You will lead large groups of designers in collaborative learning and creation sessions: from new design directions, implementation of new principles and initiatives from the Brand team, latest iOS and Android technology changes, etc.
• Facilitate partner (business and user) workshops, run appropriate conceptualisation and participatory design sessions.
• Unblock and empower the wider UXDR team in the use of the design system
• You will work with the design manager to form clear strategic and tactical direction for how the use of the design system can be elevated within UXDR 
• You will partner with product, engineering and business stakeholders and influence getting the design system on strategic roadmaps and upward communication of potential initiatives and opportunities 
• Uncover and drive design maturity improvements across the domain for both UX and UI designers considering the design system
• Collaborate with other leads and designers to set design standards for UXDR
• Network and evangelise the design system's achievements across UXDR and the broader Tech community 
• Continuously seek to improve research, design, and development processes to gain efficiency, remove obstacles, and simplify workflows and make the design system product better
• Promote inclusive design practices and help others deliver accessible designs.
• Quantify the effect of your work and contribute to building a culture that makes informed decisions.
• Deliver valuable, high-quality and consistent work without sacrificing speed.

As a natural design leader, you will have gravitas and the ability to inspire and influence those around you, a well-rounded design background and a passion for helping designers, product owners and engineers bolster their processes, skills and mindset. You are a natural problem solver and strategic thinker, and you can see the possibility in every opportunity - from large ground-breaking wins to the small incremental quick wins that will provide hundreds of our colleagues with immediate improvements.

• 7+ years of experience
• Experience working on large design systems and their adoption
• Experience in systems thinking. You can approach design process holistically considering all key touchpoints and details necessary to drive direction.
• Strong strategic thinking and doing, ability to influence and drive change
• Deep understanding of the end-to-end product design process
• Deep expertise in the design system discovery, design, engineering, documentation and release process
• Expertise in appropriate quantitative and qualitative research and design methods to deeply understand the as-is and propose to-be experiences.
• Understanding of web and native technologies, and software development life cycle (no coding required).
• Understanding of purpose-built hardware design would be an advantage.
• Proficiency in interaction design for web (desktop and mobile) and native applications
• Experience of designing with accessibility in mind and meeting WCAG 2.1 level AA.
• Expert with current industry design and collaboration tools such as Figma, Miro, etc.
• A working knowledge of: Jira, Confluence, Adobe Creative Suite.
• Experience in leading & influencing impactful, multi-disciplinary teams
• Experience collaborating closely with multiple fields including product and engineering
• Strategic impact and outcomes led approach
• Proven track record of improving research, design, and development processes for you and your team to gain efficiency, remove obstacles, and simplify problems.
• Exceptional stakeholder management skills and ability to take product, engineering, and business representatives on the journey
• Background in Interaction Design, Human-computer Interaction, behavioural psychology, or any other human-centric field would be phenomenal advantage, healthy empathy is key to succeeding in this team.
• Ability to coach, mentor and set standards for ways of working with all levels of designers.
• Thought leadership and providing design direction and insight
• A passion for new technologies such as AI and trends
• A portfolio that showcases both product design and design system knowledge, including contribution and governance models, training, mentoring and adoption, user-centric design, hands-on and leadership and collaboration skills, and most meaningfully, a strategic impact and outcomes and how the design system and product design work hand in hand.
• Self-motivated and organised with good time management skills.
• A great storyteller, and demonstrate strong written, verbal communication and presentation skills to all levels of seniority and disciplines within the organisation.
• A passion and flare for the visual communication of your ideas
• Appetite for solving complex design, people and process problems
• Outcome and goal orientated
• Excellent collaborator
• Ability to lead in various contexts
• Both a practitioner and leader

#LI-RL1
#LI-Hybrid

We’re all about the little helps. That’s why we make sure our Tesco colleague benefits package takes care of you – both in and out of work. Click Here to find out more!

• Annual bonus scheme of up to 20% of base salary
• Holiday starting at 25 days plus a personal day (plus Bank holidays)
• Private medical insurance
• 26 weeks maternity and adoption leave (after 1 years’ service) at full pay, followed by 13 weeks of Statutory Maternity Pay or Statutory Adoption Pay, we also offer 6 weeks fully paid paternity leave
• Free 24/7 virtual GP service, Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) for you and your family, free access to a range of experts to support your mental wellbeing

Our vision at Tesco is to become every customer's favourite way to shop, whether they are at home or out on the move. Our core purpose is ‘Serving our customers, communities and planet a little better every day’. Serving means more than a transactional relationship with our customers. It means acting as a responsible and sustainable business for all stakeholders, for the communities we are part of and for the planet.

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) at Tesco means that whoever you are and whatever your background, we always want you to feel represented and that you can be yourself at work. In short, we’re a place where Everyone’s Welcome. We’re proud to have been accredited Disability Confident Leader and we’re committed to providing a fully inclusive and accessible recruitment process. For further information on the accessibility support we can offer, please click here.

We’re a big business and we can offer a range of diverse full-time & part-time working patterns across our many business areas, which means that we can find something that works for you.  We work in a more blended pattern -combining office and remote working.  Our offices will continue to be where we connect, collaborate and innovate.