Principal Design Ops Manager

Role OVO-View

Location: Hub based! Bristol, London, Glasgow or Remote! But you have the flexibility to work wherever suits you best 

Team: UX

Salary banding: £75-95k 

Experience: Expert

Working pattern: Full-time

Reporting to: James Ferguson

Sponsorship: Unfortunately we are unable to offer sponsorship for this role.

This role in 3 words: The Glue, Navigator, Structurer

Top 3 qualities for this role: Organisation, Communication, Design-led

In the words of the team, you should leave your current role for this one because….

We’re on a mission to build the most effective and impactful UX team on the planet!

Everyone belongs at OVO

At OVO, we are on a mission to solve one of humanity's biggest challenges, the climate crisis. And we know it takes all of us to change the world. That's why we need diverse people from all gender identities, ethnicities, ages, sexual orientations, life experiences and backgrounds to join us.

Teamworking for the planet

Everything we do here spins around Plan Zero. So, naturally, the team you’ll be joining plays a gigantic role in making that happen. Here’s how:

The UX team are the DNA that exists to connect our customers, business and brand. We play a pivotal role in helping and supporting our customers on our Zero Carbon journey by crafting experiences that power the movement today and lead the path to the future. 

This role in a nutshell:

We’re looking for a Principal Design Ops Manager to join the team to lead operations across our Product Design, Content Design and UX Research teams.

Your key outcomes will be:

• Collaborate with the UX Leadership team to scale people and product processes as well as ways of working.
• Standardise and promote OVO's end-to-end design and research processes.
• Partner with UX Managers to implement learning and development programs across the team.
• Manage strategic design projects, coordinate work, build alignment between UX disciplines
• Establish consistent hiring and onboarding practices to set up new team members for success
• Define and align metrics for design quality, tracking those metrics over time
• Create and embed the use of design principles throughout the design process as objective measures
• Highlight, resolve and prevent bottlenecks in the design workflow
• Facilitate design sprints and embed design thinking across teams
• Create communication plans to help increase visibility, value and impact of UX educate business wide 
• Revise career frameworks, conduct skills audits, and standardise our approach to growth across the UX community.
• Take ownership of measuring and advancing design maturity.
• Collaborate with our delivery and tech operation teams
• Build and lead a small team of UX Ops specialists.

Within your first 3 months month you’ll:

• Build out an operations strategy with a view of streamlining how we work across UX
• Develop a single view of work and resources, partnering with the UX Leadership team to increase efficiency and address gaps.
• Partner with finance to build budgets, reports and monitor spend
• Establish a baseline for design maturity and clear steps to advance
• Introduce and promote the use of UX signals and metrics to measure success.

Systems: Google Suite (Docs, Sheets, Slides etc), Jira, Confluence, Miro and Figma

You’ll be a successful Principal Design Ops Manager at OVO if you…

• Have experience in programme management, or project management for tech and UX teams
• Have worked as a designer or producer, building, managing design teams/operations at scale
• Are experienced in measuring the value of design experiences and advancing maturity of growing teams
• Are detail oriented and meticulous
• Bring structure and organisation in everything you do
• Are a numbers person and a whizz with spreadsheets
• Are comfortable juggling multiple things at once, with a view on the now as well as the future

You won’t like this role if you…

• Dislike ambiguity, change and conflicting priorities
• Don’t live for order, structure and organisation
• Haven’t worked in fast-paced tech environments

Let’s talk about what’s in it for you

We’ll pay you between £75k and £95k, depending on your specific skills and experience. If your expectations are a little different, have a chat with us!

We keep our pay ranges broad on purpose to give us, and you, flexibility to match your experience to our zero carbon mission.

You’ll be eligible for an on-target bonus of 15%. We have one OVO bonus plan that focuses on the collective performance of our people to deliver our Plan Zero goal. 

We also offer plenty of green benefits and progressive policies to help you feel like you belong at OVO…and there’s flex pay.  It’s an extra 9% of your salary on top of your core pay to use as you like. You can take it as cash, add to your pension, or choose to spend it on a huge range of flex benefits.

Here’s a taster of what’s on offer: 

For starters, you’ll get 34 days of holiday (including bank holidays).

For your health
With benefits like a healthcare cash plan or private medical insurance depending on your career level, critical illness cover, life assurance, health assessments, and more

For your wellbeing
With gym membership, gadget, travel and cyber insurance, workplace ISA, will writing services, DNA testing, dental insurance, and more

For your lifestyle
With extra holiday buying, discount dining, culture cards, tech loans, and supporting your favourite charities with give-as-you-earn donations

For your home 
Get up to £300 off any OVO Energy plan (when you pay by Direct Debit), plus personal carbon offsetting and great discounts on smart thermostats and EV chargers

For your commute
Nab a great deal on ultra-low emission car leasing, plus our cycle to work scheme and public transport season ticket loans

Want to hear about our full range of flexible benefits and progressive people policies? Our People Team can tell you everything you need to know.

For your Belonging

To find better ways to support our people, we need to listen to each other’s experiences and find ways to build a truly inclusive and diverse workplace. As part of this, we have 8 Belonging Networks at OVO. Led by our people, for our people - so when you join OVO, you can play a part - big or small - with any of the Networks. It's up to you.

Oh, and one last thing...

We’d be thrilled if you tick off all our boxes yet we also believe it’s just as important we tick off all of yours. And if you think you have most of what we’re looking for but not every single thing, go ahead and hit apply. We’d still love to hear from you!

If you have any additional requirements, there’s a space to let us know on the application form; we want to make the process as easy and comfortable for you as possible..