UX / UI Design Lead (12 Month FTC)

Location: Haywards Heath, Home Office (Remote) or Manchester

Salary: £50,000 - £60,000 depending on experience

Department: Commercial

We’re First Central Insurance & Technology Group (First Central for short), an innovative, market-leading insurance company. We protect the things customers love so they can get on with what matters to them in life.

Data drives us. It fuels our outstanding distribution, finance, technology and legal services. Our underwriting skills are built on data expertise; it creates the insights we need to give the right cover to the right customers at the right price. But, it’s the people inside and outside our business that power us. They make us stand out, help us succeed. We’re ambitious. We’re growing. We’ve won awards.

Are you skilled in problem-solving, attention to detail, and empathy? We're looking for a great communicator with an analytical thought process and a curious, inquisitive mind. If you have these core skills, we want you to be a part of our team!

We’re looking for a UX / UI Design Lead to join our Commercial & Marketing team either working remotely or based in our Salford Quays, Manchester or Haywards Heath, West Sussex office.

This role is a 12 month fixed term contract with potential to extend, but this cannot be confirmed at this stage.

As a UX/UI Design Lead you’ll be responsible for supporting in the shaping of our user experience strategy across all First Central products. You'll help in designing and refining customer journeys, from initial idea to final implementation, ensuring alignment with our overarching business goals.

We’re all about people and we’re passionate about continuous improvement, so you’ll champion best practices, drive innovation, and help establish the UX function within our organisation. You’ll champion high standards in UX design and be passionate about developing beautiful experiences for customers in line with our brand strategy, standards and principles and be the go-to subject matter expert for all UX requirements and a promoter of best practices.

Core skills we’re looking for to succeed in the role:

• Problem solving
• Empathy

Nice to have skills, but optional:

• Analytical thought process
• Curious & inquisitive mind

What’s involved:

• Clearly define design problems to ensure teams are aligned to a common goal and work collaboratively to realise an effective outcome.
• Understand user’s needs, business objectives and constraints to kick start the ideation process in the right direction, bringing about clarity and focus to the design.
• Information Architecture (IA) expertise – able to define the structure, organise and label the content of a web page, in a sustainable and effective way that ensures users can find information and complete tasks with ease.
• Produce prototypes and interactive design assets of varying fidelity to capture design concepts and test on users, continuously refining until ready for business/brand to launch with customers.
• Lean UX expertise, able to lead collaborative processes (such as a Design Sprint) with a large group of stakeholders to help the team focus on “value” and kill features to define “MVP”.
• UX copywriting to a limited degree only to support basic concept mock-ups/prototypes or to add copy provided by others into designs.
• Conduct observational user research to understand user behaviours, needs and motivations and other feedback methodologies to improve usability and guide design.
• Maintain and add to a design system to improve the efficiency of the design process and assets for other stakeholders (e.g., business analysts, developers and future UX/design colleagues).
• Product knowledge – building an in-depth understanding of the insurance industry, the market and competitors as well as the product you are working on at any given time.
• Support UX workshops in collaboration with stakeholders to identify and solve problems to feed into the UX design process.
• Conduct user research using various methodologies like user interviews, focus groups or prototype usability testing.
• Able to produce accessibility-friendly design and carry out accessibility testing and auditing.
• Support and help mentor junior members of the team.

Experience:

• Proven track record of success in a senior UX role.
• A portfolio of high quality UX work.
• Understanding of regulatory environment and requirements (e.g., FCA and ASA).
• Knowledge of car insurance, home insurance and motor telematics insurance across direct and Price Comparison Website channels highly desirable, but not required.

Skills:

• Someone that lives and breathes user experience, keeps up to date with the latest and best practices in UX.
• Expert use of UX tools and platforms such as Figma, Sketch and Invision.
• Passionate about creating an outstanding user experience for customers.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, agile environment – providing UX solutions at pace.
• Influencing and negotiating skills.

Behaviours:

• Passionate about putting the customer at the centre of all activity.
• Commercially aware and driven with a mentality to deliver results.
• Highly collaborative with excellent stakeholder management skills.
• Fantastic communication skills.
• Project management, time management and coordination skills.
• Critical thinking and problem solving.
• Strategic thinking.

So, if you’re up for the challenge and would like to join our vibrant and busy team, we want to hear from you today.