Job Description
Product design at Taylor & Francis is a creative and strategic discipline that shapes our platforms and user experiences. As a Product Designer reporting to the Head of Product Design, you'll own end-to-end design from problem discovery to production-ready solutions, creating meaningful experiences for the people who use our products.
This role goes beyond traditional UX design. You'll bring product thinking to design and design thinking to product, understanding both why and how something should be built. You'll actively use research, data and direct customer contact throughout your design process, while maintaining a high standard of interaction design and visual craft.
As part of a growing design function, you'll also help shape how we approach design across Taylor & Francis, contributing to shared standards, collaborative practices and a culture of continuous improvement.
Discovery & Problem Shaping
You'll be an active participant in discovery, not simply a recipient of its outputs. You'll help define which problems are worth solving and shape how teams investigate them.
- Engage directly with customers and users, conducting your own qualitative research, exploring behavioural data and bringing a designer's perspective to understanding user needs.
- Partner with design and research team to plan research activities and translate findings into actionable design opportunities.
- Contribute to problem framing and opportunity definition alongside Product Managers, using journey maps, service blueprints and experience principles to make complex problems tangible.
- Identify the moments in user journeys that matter most and advocate for the design investment those moments deserve.
- Bring an informed design perspective to prioritisation, balancing user needs, business goals and technical considerations.
Design Craft & Execution
You'll bring strong interaction design expertise and attention to detail, creating experiences that are usable, accessible, consistent and thoughtfully designed.
- Lead the design process end-to-end, from early sketches and conceptual exploration through wireframes, interaction design, prototyping and high-fidelity production-ready designs.
- Explore multiple design directions for significant problems, using creative exploration and evidence to inform decisions rather than converging too quickly on a single solution.
- Design thoughtful interactions that consider feedback, states, transitions, error handling, accessibility and edge cases.
- Build and test prototypes at the fidelity appropriate to the question, from quick sketches to detailed interactive prototypes.
- Work closely with Engineering and Product teams to understand technical constraints, business rules and the full range of scenarios designs need to support.
- Contribute to the development and continuous improvement of our design system, helping create consistent, accessible and reusable experiences across products.
Research-Informed Design
Strong design at Taylor & Francis is grounded in genuine user understanding. You'll be an active contributor to research, not just a consumer of its findings.
- Plan and conduct lightweight research activities, including usability testing, concept evaluation and exploratory interviews, as a natural part of your design process.
- Collaborate with UX Researchers on more complex studies, contributing to research questions, synthesis and the translation of findings into design decisions.
- Combine qualitative research, behavioural analytics and customer intelligence to inform and evaluate design decisions.
- Identify assumptions and uncertainties early, determining what needs to be tested before committing to solutions.
- Maintain an understanding of user behaviours and needs through regular engagement with research, data and direct customer contact.
Cross-Functional Partnership
The best experiences at Taylor & Francis come from close collaboration across Design, Product, Engineering, Research and Data.
- Work with Engineering from early in the design process, involving technical colleagues in problem exploration and solution development.
- Partner with Product Managers to shape what gets built, not just how it looks, contributing to roadmap discussions, trade-offs and definitions of success.
- Collaborate with Data and Customer Intelligence teams to understand behavioural patterns and how data-driven features can be expressed through useful, understandable experiences.
- Work with Business Analysts and Engineering to ensure requirements and acceptance criteria reflect the intended user experience.
- Communicate design decisions clearly, presenting the rationale, evidence and trade-offs to colleagues and senior stakeholders.
Building Our Design Practice
As part of a growing design function, you'll help establish how design operates across Taylor & Francis.
- Contribute to shared design principles, standards and ways of working that support consistent, high-quality experiences.
- Share your expertise through constructive critique, mentoring and collaborative problem-solving, while developing capabilities beyond your core discipline.
- Advocate for the value of design and research, helping teams understand how evidence-led design contributes to better product and business outcomes.
Qualifications
- Strong experience in product design or UX design, with a portfolio demonstrating end-to-end ownership of complex digital product experiences.
- A portfolio that demonstrates both design thinking and craft, showing how you approached problems, explored alternatives and arrived at solutions.
- Strong interaction and visual design skills, with attention to usability, accessibility, consistency and detail.
- Genuine product instinct, with the confidence to contribute to problem definition, prioritisation and strategic product discussions.
- Practical experience conducting user research and translating findings into design decisions.
- Proficiency in Figma and experience contributing to or maintaining design systems.
- Experience working collaboratively in multidisciplinary product teams, particularly alongside Product Managers and Engineers.
- Comfort interpreting behavioural analytics and customer data to inform design decisions.
- Strong communication and facilitation skills, including the ability to explain and defend design decisions constructively.
- An interest in helping establish and improve design practices within a growing team.
Additional Information
At Taylor & Francis we care about our colleagues, promoting work-life balance, wellbeing, and flexible working. You will be joining a thriving business, working alongside an exceptional group of people. We believe that the skills and experience you bring to Taylor & Francis are invaluable. We want you to have the opportunity to develop your abilities, and to innovate and develop in areas which you are passionate about.
What you should know:
This role is based in the UK and you must have the right to work and live in the UK.
We believe that great things happen when people connect face-to-face. That's why we work in-person with each other, or with customers and partners, three days a week or more. When you’re not spending time together in one of our offices or other workplaces – like at conference – you get the flexibility and support to work from home or remotely.
The successful candidate will be able to utilise our balanced working model. We ask that candidates live within a commutable distance to our Milton Park office or Bengaluru Office to ensure that as a balanced worker they can make it to our office location 3 days per week. Please note that our Milton Park office will be relocating to Oxford city centre in late 2027 / early 2028, offering an exciting new workplace in the heart of the city.
What we offer in return:
- A competitive salary + bonus
- An excellent work/life balance with a fantastic, flexible working culture
- 25 days annual leave
- 3 additional discretionary days off during the holiday season at the end of the year
- 4 volunteering days annually
- Day off for your birthday
- Company funded single cover private medical insurance
- Employee assistance programme – offering 24/7 well-being support
- Share Match – Plan that matches every share purchased with two free shares.
- Pension scheme
- Life assurance, plus optical and medical care
Closing Date: Applications will close on the 31st October 2026
Being Yourself at Taylor & Francis
If you’re excited about working with Taylor & Francis to foster human progress through knowledge, we invite you to apply even if your existing skills and experience don’t fit every item listed above. At Taylor & Francis, we are at our best and most successful when colleagues can be themselves and contribute regardless of their identity or background. As a colleague, you will have the opportunity to further innovate and develop in areas that you are passionate about. Our goal is to empower you with the resources, incentives, and flexibility you need to enjoy success at work and to live a healthy, balanced life.
Taylor & Francis is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We believe in and value diversity of people and thought, fostering a supportive and inclusive environment where all colleagues can learn and succeed as their true selves. Taylor & Francis recruits, develops, and retains colleagues without regard to any protected personal characteristics or other non-merit-based factor.
If you have a disability, or face another barrier, and would like to request an adjustment to assist your participation in the hiring process and/or in the advertised position, please contact liz.southwick@tandf.co.uk. Your request will be reviewed and considered in the strictest confidence.
We genuinely care about our colleagues, promoting work-life balance, wellbeing, and flexible working. We believe that the skills and experience you bring to Taylor & Francis are invaluable. We want you to have the opportunity to develop your abilities, and to innovate and develop in areas which you are passionate about. To find out more about our business and the great career opportunities please go to our Careers Site: http://www.taylorandfrancisgroup.com/careers
Or better yet check out our LinkedIn ‘Life’ Page, highlighting our accomplishments, employees, and company culture. It’s also a good way of meeting our recruitment team, who will be happy to advise you on your journey here at T&F.
https://www.linkedin.com/company/taylor-&-francis-group/life/79e0c27c-afdf-4bbb-84e6-5f8ed5e10bb8/
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