Experience Design Manager - Nectar Loyalty

Experience Design Manager - Nectar Loyalty

Location: Holborn Store Support Centre and Home, London, EC1N 2HT

Contract type: Permanent

Business area: Sainsbury's Tech

We'd all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That's waiting for you at Sainsbury's. Think about the scale it takes for us to feed the nation. The level of data, transactions and variety it involves. Then you'll realise that ours is a modern software engineering environment because it has to be. We've made serious investment into a Tech Academy and into setting standards and principles. We iterate, learn, experiment and push ways of working such as Agile, Scrum and XP. So you can look forward to awesome opportunities in everything from AI to reusable tech.

Role: Experience Design Manager

Division/Dept: Retail and Digital / Customer Experience

Reporting to: Head of Experience Design

In a nutshell: At Sainsbury's we believe that the customer should be at the heart of everything we do. Our vision is to create the easiest, most enjoyable experiences that better serve our customers' ever-changing needs. We work across a range of services, products, touchpoints and tools to deliver distinctive, integrated, and consistent experiences for our customers and colleagues across Sainsbury's Group (which includes Sainsbury's Food, Argos, Bank, Nectar, Tu and Habitat).

As an Experience Design Manager in the Nectar Loyalty Experience Design (XD) team, you'll lead a team of Designers to deliver design concepts and solutions for the Nectar Reward, Value and Loyalty stream across products, services, propositions and experiences across multiple brands and channels. This may include our websites, apps, tills, loyalty propositions - or new in-store concepts and services that need to be explored, defined and developed.

You'll manage, coach and develop your team, unblocking challenges and setting high standards for the design of our experiences. You'll set out the vision for the products and services within your portfolio stream and engage and partner with a wide range of stakeholders to shape the design strategy across your area of responsibility. You'll be hands-on where needed and zoom in and out of problem spaces to create effective solutions.

What you need to do

1. Identify, define and deliver solutions and opportunities for new propositions, services, products and experience areas that deliver value to customers and colleagues and are directly aligned with Sainsbury's Group vision and KPIs.
2. Inspire, coach and motivate your team and junior members of the design community using your expertise and experience.
3. Lead and advocate for all phases of user-centred design through a data-informed, test-and-learn approach.
4. Champion the voice of the user through your work and your team's, organising and conducting user research and user testing to inform concepts and validate designs, and bringing stakeholders on the same journey.
5. Consider the wider Sainsbury's ecosystem when designing concepts and solutions that are aligned with our strategic vision of allowing our customers to shop whenever and however they want.
6. Lead and manage stakeholders and project teams through a user-centred design approach whilst balancing business challenges and strategic vision.
7. Run workshops with cross-functional teams to inspire user-centred design thinking.
8. Work with the Guidelines team to continuously evolve our design system and guidelines and champion their adoption and implementation.
9. Consistently embed inclusive design principles in your work and encourage throughout the team.
10. Recruit a diverse and inclusive team.

What you need to know and show

1. You will bring a wealth of knowledge with you as a previous Product, Service, UX or UI design Manager, ideally for a big brand.
2. High level of creativity, problem-solving skills.
3. Experience of line managing designers.
4. Strong people and communication skills.
5. Adept at collaborating with and influencing stakeholders through a range of agile methods, including workshops - championing the voice of the customer whilst balancing business objectives.
6. Utilise a broad range of UX tools and techniques with portfolio evidence of these deliverables.
7. A thorough technical understanding of inclusive design frameworks.
8. Expert skills with Figma, and rapid prototyping tools.
9. Knowledge of best practices and emerging digital and retail technologies and trends.
10. Wide range of experience in user-centred design and usability best practices.
11. Methods and practices of usability research and confidence in conducting research and interpreting results.
12. An outstanding portfolio, showcasing your talent, skills, process and experience.
13. Ability to manage multiple, changing priorities, and work with diverse personalities and complex dynamics.

What decisions I can make including budget: Design decisions that improve the customer's user experience.

Directly or indirectly manages: A team of Senior and Midweight Experience Designers.

Support we will provide: Include the resources available e.g. Sainsbury's intranet (OurSainsburys), generic Sainsbury's L&D, line management support, a thriving design culture, opportunity to discuss and share work with open, collaborative feedback, a mature design system and set of standards to work with, research, accessibility and UX copywriting expertise.

We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer, so you'll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there's always the chance to try something new - whether that's as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working. When you join our team, we'll also offer you an amazing range of benefits.

Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to get 10% off at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat after 4 weeks. This increases to 15% off at Sainsbury's every Friday and Saturday and 15% off at Argos every pay day. We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover. You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 20% of salary, depending on how we perform.

Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance, and you can buy additional holiday. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, interest free car loan of up to £10k, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, pay advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers. And if you ever need it there is also an Employee Assistance Programme, you will also be eligible for private healthcare too.

Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks' pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks' pay for paternity leave.