Lead UX & Design Manager

The Lead UX & Design Manager is the senior design leader for Business Digital, responsible for defining and driving the design vision, user experience strategy, design standards and operating model across all digital products and channels. The role ensures design delivers exceptional customer experiences while supporting commercial objectives and long-term business goals.

As the subject matter expert for Design within Business Digital, the Lead Design Manager shapes the future design capability, drives design maturity and embeds user-centred design principles across the organisation. Leading a multidisciplinary team of UX and UI specialists, they establish best practice in research, interaction design, visual design, accessibility and design systems.

The role acts as the primary point of connection with Consumer Digital design teams and strategic design technology partners such as Figma, ensuring Business Digital benefits from emerging capabilities, shared assets, innovation and industry-leading practices.

What you'll do

• Design Capability, Innovation & Industry Leadership – Act as the senior design authority for Business Digital. Define design principles, frameworks and ways of working. Build strong design capability across the organization and monitor industry trends, AI-enabled design approaches and emerging technologies. Identify opportunities to improve customer experience, efficiency and design maturity. Represent Business Digital design in senior governance forums, influencing investment decisions, roadmap priorities and experience strategy.
• Design Systems & Tooling – Define the Business Digital design system strategy and roadmap. Partner with Consumer Digital to evolve shared components and design standards. Build strategic relationships with Figma and other design technology partners to maximise platform value, influence future capabilities and improve efficiency and consistency.
• UX Strategy & Experience Vision – Define the long-term user experience strategy for Business Digital, ensuring customer needs, commercial objectives and business priorities are translated into a coherent experience vision and roadmap.
• Experience & Interaction Design – Lead the UX and UI design of end-to-end digital journeys across web, app and portals to deliver best-in-class digital customer experiences. Ensure experiences are user-centered, intuitive, and optimised for conversion and self-service. Translate product requirements into clear UX flows, wireframes and high-fidelity designs, ensuring customer experience is at the head of all design decisions..
• Design Leadership & Standards – Define and evolve the design operating model, establishing and maintaining design standards, patterns and best practice across Digital. Drive alignment with Consumer design teams, leveraging shared patterns, components and best practice, working closely to evolve the design system for Business to ensure consistency and scalability. Ensure all design outputs meet accessibility and usability standards.
• User Insight & Testing – Establish UX performance measures and success criteria, using customer insight and behavioural analytics to demonstrate the impact of design investments and prioritise future improvements. Ensure continuous validation of designs before and after release.
• Design Advocacy – Own the strategic relationship with Consumer Digital design leaders to ensure Business Digital benefits from shared design systems, experimentation outcomes, tooling enhancement, design standards and emerging best practice. Represent Business Digital design requirements within wider Digital forums and influence future design direction across VodafoneThree.
• Team Leadership – Lead, coach and develop UX and UI designers, building a high-performing design organisation. Set clear direction and priorities, aligned to the Business Digital quarterly roadmap and ensuring design capacity is planned effectively. Ensure high-quality outputs across the team through coaching and review. Build capability in user-centered design and modern design practices.
• Cross-functional Collaboration – Partner with Product Owners and Product Managers to shape solutions. Work closely with Consumer Digital UX and Technology Digital Engineering to ensure designs are feasible and implemented as intended. Support alignment across Digital, Marketing and Commercial teams. Ensure work is effectively showcased to stakeholders, with clear visibility of progress and outcomes.