About the role
Permanent
Up to £90,000+ Pension + BUPA + ShareSave + 6.6 weeks holiday + Hybrid Working (2 days per week in the office)
Southampton, Store Support Office
We believe anyone can improve their home to make life better. From our Southampton Store Support office (SSO) we equip our stores, our people, and our whole business with everything it takes to help our millions of customers create a home they’ll love. Join us as a Product Design Manager and you’ll be a big part of this.
Role Purpose: As a B&Q Product Design Manager, you will be leading development of our digital experiences across web and apps. This is a fantastic opportunity to establish design ways of working in a relatively new team in a business with ambitious growth plans. You will be leading the relatively new design and research team in B&Q with a focus on skills, culture, prioritisation and the standard/timeliness of outcomes.
Key responsibilities
Key Accountabilities / Responsibilities:
- Lead and develop the Design and Research team in B&Q Technology
- Shared accountability with Product and Technology for driving speed to value
- Establish design led, product ways of working with product teams to ensure we stay close to the user.
- Drive the team to create effective, user-centric solutions and be part of a leadership team that fosters innovation and creativity within the team.
- Guide the team to champion new user experience concepts and ideas, using methods & tools that illustrate the journey, components and touchpoints of the service.
- Apply conceptual and strategic thinking, bringing together and balancing user needs with commercial value and technical realities.
- Support teams to understand how their work relates to the overall proposition, ensuring the features and components they design are suitable, crafted to the highest quality and are consistent with other brand (product) experiences.
- Establish the flow of work in and out of the design/research team backlog to ensure quality briefs, constant flow of work, good documentation, high standards and stakeholder management.
- Work with the Head of Product, Product Manager, Product Owners and wider business stakeholders to understand requirements for the design/research team.
- Work with a variety of data sources (stakeholders, qual, quant etc) to establish testable hypothesis on the user experience/new proposition concepts.
- Communicate at all levels of the business with a variety of tools including prototypes to demonstrate the value of design to the user and business.
- Support design team through the testing process; helping them identify when testing will be valuable, what format is suitable and translate findings into creative approaches where appropriate.
- Oversee the design process and suitability of deliverables across your team, being responsible for the completeness, suitability/accessibility and overall standard of design output for your service.
- Champion the Design System in B&Q to drive cohesive digital experiences and future speed to value
- Set individual and team objectives, supporting and coaching the team to achieve them.
- Foster and develop good team culture and work ethic, which contributes to a great working environment for the Kingfisher Designers; Motivate the design team and contribute to a positive morale.Influence and promote effective feature team structure, planning and resourcing.
Required skills & experience
Required Skills & Experience:
- A deep knowledge & keen interest in design and UX principles across channels
- Experience in coaching teams to deliver world class digital design
- A self-starter who identifies opportunities and potential problems (happy to challenge established thinking and promote new ideas)
- Experience representing design at a strategic / leadership level
- Experience in managing designers with different specialisations and focus areas
- Developing Product ways of working
- Management of design/research specialists in a scaled ecommerce environment
- Experience of managing teams designing and launching digital services (particularly hand-held devices including native apps & responsive web design)
- Ability to simplify complexity
- Comfortable with encouraging experimentation but clear when to use defined solutions
- Strong knowledge of design process and project management including experience managing multiple projects simultaneously
- Understand progressive ways of working to drive both commercial and design value
Desired:
- Training or certification in Agile methodology (preferable)
- Experience in A/B testing and iteration as tools to transform digital experiences.
- End-to-end experience as a product design lead in a digital product lifecycle
Career progression
What's in it for me?
As part of a great team, you’ll be valued for who you are.We’re committed to making B&Q more diverse and representative of the communities we serve, where everyone can feel they belong and have equal opportunities. You will have access to a range of networks that represent our colleagues and allies and help us to continue to put diversity and inclusion at the heart of our business.
We also recognise that wellness means different things to different people, and we want to help colleagues be at their best and feel well by offering a range of benefits to help you. As well as a competitive salary, our benefits package includes an award-winning pension scheme, bonus, ShareSave options, 6.6 weeks holiday, payroll giving, an Employee Assistance Programme, shopping discounts, colleague wellbeing benefits and lots more!
So we can support you during the application or interview process, please contact recruitment@b-and-q.co.uk for any recruitment adjustments.
We want to ensure that all employees, future employees and applicants to all Kingfisher companies are treated equally regardless of age, gender, marital or civil partnership status, colour, ethnic or national origin, culture, religious belief, philosophical belief, political opinion, disability, gender identity, gender expression or sexual orientation.
If you require any additional support or adjustments to help you make an application, please contact us at recruitment@b-and-q.co.uk.
