Senior Head of Experience Design – Digital Channels

Job title:

Senior Head of Experience Design – Digital Channels

Company

Sainsbury’s

Job description

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.In Sainsbury’s Tech, we power the UK’s number 1 multi-channel, multi-brand retailer and our Product and Experience Design teams are made up of inspired and multi-discipline individuals who are empowered to solve hard problems in ways our customers love and serve the needs of our business.As Senior Head of Experience design for digital at Sainsbury’s you will lead the digital design function for some of the most loved and recognisable brands in UK retailing. Your team creating market leading digital experiences across all digital online and instore touch points across Argos, Sainsbury’s, Tu and Habitat.This is hugely exciting when you think about the scale of the opportunity you have to influence how so many customers shop to find products they need and want. On any given day you’ll be talking to customers about how we can help their in store shopping through digital services, to working with your team to consider the best way to remove friction from the Argos online experience and then leading across the design community for how Nectar helps customers see more value when they shop with us.To take on this rewarding challenge you’ll be an accomplished leader, driven by insight, with significant design thinking expertise, naturally customer obsessed and able to make connections between customer first thinking, business outcomes and what is possible through technology.Working alongside Directors and Heads of Product, Head of Experience Design, Principal and Staff Experience Designers, Senior colleagues in Engineering, Analytics and Architecture and E2E Service Design in Customer Experience, you’ll be responsible for leading the customer experience that is desirable, viable and feasible and aligning stakeholders at all levels in the business to deliver against this.As a senior design leader, this role will guide the best practice for the design discipline and provide development for colleagues. You will be a master of design/design led approaches, able to coach your team in design thinking in a complex business like Sainsbury’s and adopt lean methodologies, integrating them into Product and Experience Design as a whole.What you need to do:

• Partner the senior leaders of the business to fuse customer, business strategy and technology vision
• Develop an integrated holistic experience vision for how the products across the domain come together focusing on complete end to end customer experiences that deliver multiple strategic priorities, align to our technology strategy and respond to market changes
• Lead the collaboration for experience designers, other product teams and 3rd parties to launch capabilities and services – maximising re-use across the division/business/brands
• Work with the Heads of Product and Director of Product to define outcomes whilst setting and defining metrics and the north star for the product family
• Build, lead, coach and motivate a team of Experience designers; support them with definition of long term priorities, guiding their focus as they build a vision and actionable backlog with associated benefit/investment cases
• With the central CX team identify opportunities to drive consistency across our colleague experiences, bringing designers together across your team to collaborate around common outcomes
• Ensure that experiences for all our colleagues and customers support our vision to be Britain’s most inclusive retailer, making journeys simple and accessible for all
• Articulate and visualise the future state, successfully aligning Product outcomes, development roadmaps and Technology/Architecture strategy to the stated ambition for the development of our digital ecosystem. Strong influence and joint ownership required of a tactical roadmap that plans steps towards the vision, bringing the Product organisation, across our users, to ensure a consistent ambition across customer touchpoints
• Build and maintain relationships with other key practices in the organisation and work to align strategic outcomes, ultimately delivering a seamless omnichannel experience for our customers. Key partners include Product, Analytics and Engineering leadership, E2E Experience Design, Experience Design Guidelines, Standards, Operations and Research/Insight
• Maintain a high level of awareness, understanding and participation in the Experience Design industry, community and trends emerging in future design tools, skills, thinking and methodology, including communicating clearly and coaching others on where and how to develop these so they work seamlessly for customers
• Have a 3+ year plan for how to evolve the Experience Design practice, influence the evolution of design standards, tools, experience principles and design quality, driving the changes to a successful set of measured outcomes and enabling delivery to the vision. Guide Experience Design teams across the division to ensure adoption and evolution of design expertise inline with our ambition
• Be a credible voice to the Product and Experience Design LT to guide the art of the possible

What you need to know and show:

• Indepth / significant experience in senior UX/Experience Design/Product Design leadership roles with demonstrated strong thought leadership on design led thinking and service design within a broad, complex team
• Strong knowledge of design best practices, emerging digital and retail technology trends and someone who is passionate about keeping pace with the industry and craft
• Able to think strategically and join the dots in a complex corporate environment – aligning Digital Experience strategy to the Corporate priorities and vision
• Excellent communicator and able to influence up to C-suite/Operating Board level. A challenger, who can engage and lead at all levels and successfully encourage experimentation and explain experience design in commercial terms
• Comfortable and proven to be effective working in a matrix environment across teams/departments, driving to a common goal. Experience in leading, motivating and directing teams, regardless of reporting line
• Demonstrates our Valued Behaviours, with a strength in Own it and Make it Better – leading from the front, not accepting the status quo and moving from strategy to action
• Demonstrates sound judgement to make sometimes difficult and complex decisions at pace and resolve conflicts as they occur to enable a mature Product and Experience Design function
• Results orientation, with a bias for action that is deeply informed by evidence and data-based decision making
• The willingness to drive business transformation by using design thinking
• Experience of managing creative teams in large scale businesses or agencies
• Strong mentoring and leadership skills
• Extensive knowledge of UX principles, toolkits, heuristics and metrics. Deep knowledge of the end-to-end process of designing and delivering digital user experiences

What decisions I can make including budget:

• Strategy for engagement and alignment to vision
• Approach to vision development
• Team of up to 30 Experience Designers (C4, C5 & C6 grades)
• Experience design community of practice and design competency framework
• Large team of dedicated and matrixed resources in excess of £40m investment
• Learning and development within Sainsbury’s
• Internal product/design expertise and co-learning opportunities within a highly collaborative environment

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. Here are some of them:Starting off with colleague discount, you’ll be able to save 10% on your shopping online and instore at Sainsbury’s, Argos, TU and Habitat, and we regularly increase the discount to 15% at points during the year. 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 65% of salary, depending on how we perform (in cash and shares).Your wellbeing is important to us too. You’ll receive an annual holiday allowance, and you can buy up to an additional week’s holiday, and we provide private heathcare. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, salary 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. You’ll also receive a company car cash allowance unless you are going to travel 10,000 business miles in your role, then you’ll be able to choose a car. And if you ever need it there is also an employee assistance programme.

Expected salary

Location

London

Job date

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 06:21:45 GMT

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