Back to all jobs

AKQA Leap are hiring a

Senior Product Designer

Senior Product Designer

Location: London
Permanent/Full Time
Department: Design
Reports to: Head of Design
Salary: £60,000 - £70,000 per annum
Closing date: 12th September 2025

We are looking for a talented and experienced Senior Product Designer to join our team and take the lead in crafting user-centric designs that elevate our clients' products. As a Senior Product Designer, you will drive end-to-end design processes, mentor junior designers, and collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to deliver exceptional user experiences. Your ability to combine creative problem-solving with a strong understanding of user needs will play a crucial role in shaping our product’s success.

About Us
AKQA Leap are digital product specialists within the AKQA Group network (WPP), with studios in London and Bristol.

We believe that quality is the fastest path to success. So whether we're launching, fixing, or scaling a product, we get it right the first time. Some call it the magic touch. We call it quality at speed.

For over a decade, we’ve been designing, developing, and launching quality digital products for businesses like Google, HSBC, PSG, Nestle, Gripable & Vodafone.

People-focused. Curious. Always growing. These are just some of the values AKQA Leap upholds to cultivate an open, committed, and inclusive studio where you can be you. From the moment we meet, we’ll do our best to get to know you and understand what drives you. Our goal? To empower you to thrive and develop.

To find out more about us visit https://www.akqa.com/leap/

About the Role
Our purpose in the Design team is to help our clients design meaningful experiences for their audiences. We do that by:

  • Combining our expertise with experimentation, to balance user needs, best practices & innovation.
  • Co-creating and continuously learning, to design with empathy, insight and confidence.
  • Supporting, challenging and learning as a community, to accelerate our professional growth.

As a Senior Product Designer, you'll play a pivotal role in our dynamic team, driving the design vision and design strategy for client projects. You will leverage your extensive expertise in Visual and Experience Design to deliver high-quality, innovative design solutions. You'll lead the crafting of thoughtful design deliverables such as wireframes, user flows, UI, and prototypes, contributing to our commitment to purposeful, human-centred products.

Accountabilities

Design Delivery

  • Own end-to-end design execution for assigned client projects, delivering high-quality, thoughtful design artefacts including UI designs, visual assets, user flows, and interactive prototypes for web and mobile platforms.
  • Independently manage day-to-day design workflows, balancing multiple priorities and ensuring timely delivery of project milestones.
  • Define and execute comprehensive design solutions, addressing complex user needs while aligning with business objectives and technical constraints.
  • Lead design reviews, providing strategic feedback and guiding discussions to refine and improve design quality.
  • Maintain, evolve, and advocate for design systems, ensuring consistency across products and incorporating best practices into design standards.
  • Utilise advanced design tools (e.g. Figma, Miro) for efficient creation, prototyping, and collaboration, ensuring deliverables are production-ready.

Collaboration

  • Serve as the senior design representative on client projects, building trusted relationships with clients and key stakeholders through confident presentation and clear articulation of design rationale.
  • Lead and facilitate collaborative sessions, including workshops, design sprints, and co-creation activities, to define product direction and gather stakeholder insights.
  • Align cross-functional teams (product managers, engineers, and designers) on design strategies that meet business, user, and technical requirements.
  • Provide mentorship and constructive feedback to product designers and junior team members, fostering a culture of design excellence and continuous improvement.

Human Centred Design

  • Run user research activities, such as interviews, surveys, and usability testing, to gather insights and validate design solutions.
  • Move research findings into actionable design recommendations, ensuring that user needs are central to product decisions.
  • Create and leverage user flows, journey maps, and personas to guide design decisions and enhance user experiences.

Design Impact

  • Design for accessibility and inclusion, ensuring products meet relevant standards (e.g. WCAG) and deliver equitable experiences for diverse user groups.
  • Apply interaction design principles, incorporating micro-interactions and motion design to create seamless, engaging user experiences.
  • Evaluate and measure design impact, aligning design outcomes with business goals and demonstrating how design decisions contribute to project success.

Continuous Learning and Community Contribution

  • Demonstrate deep expertise in Visual and Experience Design competencies, while proactively expanding capabilities in Method, Research and other specialisms aligned with career ambitions.
  • Collaborate with your line manager to define personal development goals and actively utilise Learning & Development time and budgets for courses, events, and personal projects.
  • Contribute thought leadership by sharing knowledge, presenting at design critiques, and authoring content for internal and external channels.
  • Actively engage in the Design Community, participating in initiatives, guilds, and Labs projects that push the boundaries of design practice and foster collective growth.

Mentorship, Onboarding, and Hiring

  • Support the onboarding of new team members, ensuring smooth integration into project workflows and design culture.
  • Participate in hiring processes, including conducting interviews and offering insightful feedback to ensure the recruitment of top design talent.

About You

You are a detail-oriented and experienced designer with a proven track record of creating user-centred design solutions. You excel in taking complex problems and translating them into clear, effective design solutions using common design patterns, established brand guidelines, and service flows. You thrive in collaborative environments where you can lead and inspire your colleagues, generating multiple solutions and choosing the most appropriate based on a user-focused rationale. The design artefacts you supply are usable, accessible, and consistent down to the letter, fact, and pixel. You are committed to continual growth, both personally and for your team, and you uphold the highest standards of reliability and accountability.

You Should Have

  • A portfolio showcasing your design thinking skills and previous projects.
  • Extensive experience in creating UX design artefacts and high-fidelity designs for digital products.
  • Proven experience leading design projects and collaborating with other designers and developers.
  • Experience leading activities that help your team, stakeholders and users align on design routes.
  • Experience with running research activities (e.g user testing) and designing with available insights.
  • Strong understanding of design systems, brand guidelines, user flows, and wireframing.
  • Confidence in presenting design rationale that considers business, user, and technical requirements to clients and team members.
  • Expertise in Figma, Miro or similar design tools.
  • Minimum 2 years of agency experience.

Ideally Also

  • Deep understanding of web/mobile technologies.
  • Examples of visual assets such as illustrations, iconography or pictograms.
  • Experience with Agile, Sprints, and Lean UX methodologies.
  • Leading and supporting other designers with their project work.
  • Authored a new design system or design language on a project.
  • Supported a team moving from understanding (discovery) and into delivery.

Qualifications & Skills Required

  • Proven experience in product design, UX/UI design, or a related field.
  • A strong portfolio showcasing your design process, problem-solving skills, and impactful design solutions.
  • Proficiency in design tools such as Figma, Miro, or similar.
  • Strong understanding of UX/UI principles, interaction design, and visual design.
  • Experience with user research methodologies and data-driven design.
  • Ability to manage multiple projects and priorities in a fast-paced environment.
  • Excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to articulate design decisions.

Bonus Skills:

  • Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Fine Arts, or a related field.
  • Familiarity with front-end technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) is a plus.
  • Experience with motion design, 3D modelling, or other specialised design disciplines.

We know that no candidate will be the exact match for all we’ve listed, so we would encourage you to apply if you feel you might be close but not a perfect match for all of the role’s requirements.

What We Offer
We work hard to be a great employer - a place where our people are proud to work. In the past, we were officially recognised as a Best Company to Work For, named within the Top 100 Best Small Companies to Work For.

Here are some of the benefits we offer:

  • Flexi leave (within reason), plus Birthday Off
  • Enhanced Maternity & Paternity Pay
  • Paid Parental Bereavement leave
  • Volunteering Days
  • Flexible benefits package (cash sum per month)
  • Private medical and dental insurance
  • Enhanced competitive pension scheme
  • Annual learning budget
  • A financial contribution to a tech purchase
  • Mental Health and Wellbeing Support
  • Employee Assistance Programmes
  • Occupational Sick Pay
  • Life Assurance
  • Income Protection Insurance

What Happens Next
If this role and AKQA Leap sounds like a good fit please apply and someone from our People Team will be in touch shortly.

Inclusivity
We want to make our hiring as inclusive as possible; this job description has been reviewed by a range of employees and has passed a neutral language check. We have also reviewed our hiring process to make sure it offers flexibility to candidates who need it.

We welcome you to inform us confidentially at peopleteam@akqaleap.com if you require any accommodations to be able to fully participate in our recruitment process.

We're trying to do better and would love your feedback. If you think there's anything we could improve or places you think we should advertise, then please let us know.