Experience Lead

Are you ready to chart your own career path? At SJP we need talented individuals like yourself to support our evolving culture. If you’re seeking an employer that is passionate about excellence, innovation and autonomy, SJP could be the place for you.

**At a glance**:
**Location**: Cirencester Office

**Workplace Type**: Hybrid

**Employment Type**:Permanent

**Seniority**:Mid-Senior Level

The Architecture, Design & Experience Division is responsible for shaping the strategic design of SJP’s technology, processes, and customer experiences to ensure all change initiatives are aligned to business priorities and deliver meaningful, client-centric outcomes. The division brings together architecture, service and user experience design, and business analysis into a centre of excellence that guides projects from idea to execution. It ensures designs and solutions are focussed on customer outcomes, quality and consistency of experience across SJP's digital and operational landscape, while remaining well governed, cost effective and scalable.

The Design & Improvement team leads SJP’s user-centred design approach, ensuring that services, systems, and experiences are built around the needs of clients, advisers, and internal users. By combining service design, user experience (UX), business improvement, and digital insight, the team tackles inefficiencies and enhances service quality across the business. They shape strategy through research, testing, and data-driven insight, and ensure that SJP’s digital products are inclusive, intuitive, and continuously evolving. Working closely with architecture, analysis, and strategic programmes, they drive customer-centric innovation that improves outcomes and reduces complexity across the organisation.

As Experience Lead you are responsible for the day-to-day practice of User Centred Design (UCD). You create and implement the guidelines for the practice of Experience in SJP, ensuring the UCD framework is being practiced correctly to deliver measurable value to users and the business. Working with Architecture, Experience, Product & Service leaders to ensure users are at the heart of the entire design process. You’ll ensure design workshops are facilitated with the right skillset and findings are recorded and replayed to the right audience.

**What you’ll be doing**:

- Working with multi-disciplinary skillset to ensure solutions are User-centred and meet needs of both user and business.
- Collaborating with Service Designers, Architecture, Business Improvement, Product, Development, and Business leaders to define the overall Experience strategy for our products and services.
- Implementing the function of User Research including testing, and analysis to inform design decisions.
- Communicating design decisions and rationale effectively to cross-functional teams and stakeholders.
- Ensuring that designs are accessible and inclusive for all users.
- Staying up-to-date with the latest design trends, tools, and technologies.
- Creating a common set of UX principles to be applied to SJP’s digital estate. Ensure UX uses consistent methods, tools and approaches.
- Being responsible in leading creation and implementation of user personas.
- Ensuring all new UX initiatives are tested appropriately with users.
- Providing effective design feedback and mentor UX Designers and UX Researchers on practice of UCD, helping them to develop the technical and interpersonal skills needed to achieve their career goals.
- Working with Agile development team leaders to ensure solutions are delivered as designed.

**Who we’re looking for**:
An experience UCD professional seen as a go-to person for User Experience within SJP, sharing your experience with the team, striving for excellence and championing the team and our principles throughout St. James’s Place.

**Essential Criteria**:

- Extensive experience in implementing and running User Centred Design and a passion for creating engaging and intuitive user experiences.
- Digital product experience (web/app), either B2B or D2C for software or standalone products
- Experienced in accessibility design techniques and practices
- Proficiency in design tools such as Axure, Sketch, Figma, InVision, etc.
- Highly experienced coaching and mentoring junior team members

**Desirable Criteria**:

- Bachelor's or Master's degree in design, human-computer interaction, or a related field and/or equivalent experience.
- Highly experienced in conducting user research, testing, and using the insights to inform design decisions.

**What's in it for you?**

**We reward you for the work you do,**whether that’s through our discretionary annual bonus scheme that reflects both personal and company performance, competitive annual leave allowance (28 days plus bank holidays, with the option to purchase an additional 5 days), or online rewards platform with a variety of discounts.
We also have benefits to support whatever stage of life you are in, including:

- Competitive