Lead UX/UI Designer

As our Lead UX/UI Designer, you will champion design excellence in every aspect of our work and firm. You will spearhead challenging, complex, fast-paced, and innovative projects across various clients and sectors, shaping design strategy and implementation, whilst solving complex business and design challenges.

This role demands a blend of vision and pragmatism—a leader capable of navigating complex challenges, fostering strong client relationships, and inspiring a global design community. As an outstanding and highly skilled design practitioner with deep-rooted expertise in end-to-end service design across industries and sectors, you will help to define our design future.

What You'll Do

Lead and Deliver: Lead complex design projects from strategy to execution, managing medium sized assignments, taking complex client challenges and structuring workstreams, outcomes and deliverables, identifying and managing risk in the process, building and maintaining strong client relationships while fostering high-performing and motivated teams.

Design Excellence: Produce exceptional design deliverables across the entire design spectrum. Drive innovation, ensure quality, and consistently meet project deadlines.

Strategic Leadership: Build teams that work on complex projects. Shape design approaches, influence client decisions, and mentor design colleagues. Contribute to business development by creating new client offers and enhancing existing ones.

Consulting: A consultant with design at your core, balancing internal projects with client deliverables, and ensuring seamless integration of design and business objectives. Take clients on a journey through design decisions and rationales to achieve excellent outcomes. Build strong relationships with senior clients, working with PA teams to grow accounts. Lead and contribute to proposals, pitches and senior client conversations.

Design Expertise:

• Expertise in end-to-end service design tools and techniques, including service blueprinting, swimlane development, journey, ecosystem, stakeholder and service mapping.
• Design and launch of digital products & services.
• Service and Human-Centred Design Principles.
• Design Strategy and Implementation.
• User Research and Usability Testing.
• Prototyping and Wireframing.
• UX/UI Design.
• Visual Design.
• Interaction Design.
• Design Thinking and Innovation.
• Foundational knowledge of how to deploy AI technologies to achieve business needs & strategies.
• Use of AI technologies to help with administrative tasks and idea generation/innovation.

Flexible working: We are guided by our client work and needs; however, you have autonomy to manage your time and diary to suit your work/life balance.

Qualifications

What We’re Looking For:

• A visionary and pragmatic Lead UX/UI Designer with a proven track record in creating and delivering successful services for private and public sector clients.
• Experience in a client facing role, either with an agency or consultancy, where you have built strong client relationships and owned assignment outcomes. Experience of leading proposals.
• Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to influence senior stakeholders and present complex ideas in a structured, intuitive way.
• Strong analytical skills, with the ability to synthesise data, research, and insights into clear, actionable recommendations.
• Experience leading cross-functional teams, ensuring alignment across disciplines and delivering high-quality outcomes.
• A collaborative and empathetic leadership style, with a focus on mentoring, developing others, creating inclusive environments within teams and harnessing a culture of excellence.
• Comfortable working across all PA industries including Consumer & Manufacturing, Public Sector, Defence & Security, Energy & Utilities, Financial Services and Transport.
• Familiarity with current trends in service design and emerging technologies, such as AI, automation, and digital transformation. Experience with the UK Government Service Standard is a bonus.
• Strong business acumen, with the ability to identify new opportunities, contribute to business development, and build PA’s reputation as a leader in product management and service design.
• Strategic thinking and innovation skills are essential, along with proficiency in industry-standard design tools and methodologies.
• If you are passionate about driving design excellence and delivering impactful solutions, we want to hear from you.

Hybrid Working

We believe in collaboration and are guided by our client's work and needs; however, we value flexibility too. Our hybrid working model lets you balance work and life, with most roles requiring at least three days a week in the office or on client sites. Your schedule will be shaped by your role, team needs, and discussions with your manager to ensure the right mix of face-to-face and independent work.

We know the skill-gap and ‘somewhat need to tick every box’ can get in the way of meeting brilliant candidates, so please don’t hesitate to apply – we’d love to hear from you.

Apply today by completing our online application.

Additional Information

Life At PA encompasses our peoples' experience at PA. It's about how we enrich peoples’ working lives by giving them access to unique people and growth opportunities and purpose led meaningful work.

We believe diversity fuels ingenuity. Diversity of thought brings exciting perspectives; diversity of experience brings a wealth of knowledge, and diversity of skills brings the tools we need. When we bring people together with diverse backgrounds, identities, and minds, embracing that difference through an inclusive culture where our people thrive; we unleash the power of diversity – bringing ingenuity to life.

Find out more about Life at PA here.

We are dedicated to supporting the physical, emotional, social and financial well-being of our people. Check out some of our extensive benefits:

• Health and lifestyle perks accompanying private healthcare for you and your family.
• 25 days annual leave (plus a bonus half day on Christmas Eve) with the opportunity to buy 5 additional days.
• Generous company pension scheme.
• Opportunity to get involved with community and charity-based initiatives.
• Annual performance-based bonus.
• PA share ownership.
• Tax efficient benefits (cycle to work, give as you earn).

We recruit, retain, reward and develop our people based solely on their abilities and contributions and without reference to their age, background, disability, genetic information, parental or family status, religion or belief, race, ethnicity, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity (or expression), political belief veteran status, or other by any other range of human difference brought about by identity and experience. We are on a journey towards ensuring our workforce is diverse at all levels and that our firm is representative of the world around us. We welcome applications from underrepresented groups.

Adjustments or accommodations: Should you need any adjustments or accommodations to the recruitment process, at either application or interview, please contact us on [emailprotected].