Principal UX Designer

Parallax•Leeds, ND

1d•£60,000 - £75,000•Hybrid

About The Position

We’re looking for an experienced Principal UX Designer to join our Experience Design team. This is a senior, hands-on role combining deep UX expertise, service design thinking and strong visual craft across websites, mobile apps and digital services. You’ll work from the earliest stages of client engagements, uncovering the real problems, shaping the approach and guiding teams through discovery, design, delivery and optimisation. You’ll connect digital and non-digital touchpoints with the people, processes and technology behind them, improving both customer experiences and how businesses operate. Equally comfortable in the detail and leading client workshops, you’ll set the experience direction across multiple projects while staying actively involved in the work. Our clients span sectors and markets, so you’ll need to adapt quickly, influence roadmaps and help shape new opportunities. You’ll also mentor designers and raise standards across the practice. Your portfolio should showcase polished digital products and experiences, with clear evidence of how your research, strategic thinking and design leadership have improved user outcomes and delivered business results.

Requirements

Substantial experience in UX or digital product design, leading complex engagements, guiding designers and delivering measurable user and business outcomes.
Strong experience shaping experience strategy, facilitating discovery workshops and aligning technical and non-technical stakeholders around clear priorities.
Practical service design experience, including journey mapping, service blueprinting and mapping current and future states to identify improvements across digital experiences and business operations.
Advanced user research skills, including selecting methods, running studies and synthesising qualitative and quantitative evidence into recommendations and measurable outcomes.
Excellent interaction and visual design skills, translating complex requirements into clear IA, flows, interfaces and prototypes.
Advanced Figma skills and experience building and evolving reusable design systems.
Strong understanding of content design, accessibility and inclusive design, with experience embedding these into team practices.
Experience applying brand guidelines to digital experiences, alongside a deep understanding of front-end principles and technical constraints.
Experience collaborating with engineers throughout iterative delivery and using AI tools to improve workflows and create working prototypes.
Experience mentoring designers, improving design standards and presenting recommendations, scopes or proposals to senior stakeholders.

Nice To Haves

Experience within a digital or technology consultancy, working across sectors and client organisations.
Familiarity with Government Digital Service (GDS) approaches and the Service Standard, with the ability to adapt relevant practices pragmatically to shorter consultancy engagements.
Experience with Webflow or other low-code tools, or connecting design systems with code through Git or Storybook.
Experience with experimentation and data-driven optimisation.
Experience designing IoT, AI-native or AI-assisted products.
Experience using agentic workflows to bridge design and development, including contributing small UI/UX improvements directly to a codebase.
Experience on branding projects or establishing new visual directions.
A track record of sharing expertise through writing, speaking or community involvement.

Responsibilities

Lead discovery and research, unpicking complex briefs and aligning stakeholders on user needs, business objectives and success measures. Combine research, analytics, audits and market insight into actionable recommendations.
Use journey mapping and service blueprinting to connect customer-facing experiences with the people, processes, systems and operational dependencies behind them. Identify opportunities to improve digital and non-digital touchpoints, simplify business processes and reduce friction.
Map current-state (“as-is”) and future-state (“to-be”) experiences, establish performance baselines and evaluate the delivered service against intended outcomes to measure success and demonstrate return on investment.
Set and communicate a clear experience vision across projects, translating insight and technical constraints into coherent UX direction, prioritised opportunities and actionable roadmaps.
Balance strategic leadership with hands-on design, creating IA, flows, wireframes, polished interfaces and interactive prototypes. Test and refine solutions throughout delivery.
Raise design quality through clear standards, constructive critiques and reusable design systems. Champion accessibility, inclusive design and effective content, working with engineers to maintain quality through implementation.
Act as a trusted advisor to clients and senior stakeholders, bringing together technical and non-technical teams, presenting recommendations persuasively and navigating competing priorities with confidence and empathy.
Lead design collaboration across squads, anticipating risks and supporting feasibility, documentation and quality through to launch. Work with clients and delivery teams to plan optimisation, further development or handover.
Mentor designers, including senior colleagues, across strategy, research, craft and stakeholder management. Improve our processes, tools and workflows, including practical uses of AI and advanced prototyping.
Shape design approaches, scopes and estimates for proposals and Statements of Work. Balance ambition, feasibility and budget with commercial and delivery colleagues, support pitches and identify further client opportunities.
Represent the design practice through case studies, articles, workshops and industry events, sharing expertise and building relationships.

Benefits

Private medical insurance with Bupa
Private Dental Care
Pension with Salary Sacrifice
Hybrid working (flexible, office time not mandated but required for workshops/team events)
Flexible working
25 days annual leave + bank holidays + enhanced annual leave (For every year that you’re employed, we give you an extra day’s holiday up to a maximum of 5 days)
Enhanced maternity & paternity leave
Enhanced company sick pay
2 subscriptions packages up to the value of £30 in total, on us
Quarterly company Hackathons
Professional Development (PD) days and training
Free lunch in the office every Thursday
Regular team socials