At OakNorth, we’re on a mission to empower the UK’s most ambitious businesses. Since 2015, we’ve lent over $18 billion across the UK and US, helped create more than 58,000 new homes and 36,000 new jobs, and supported hundreds of thousands of personal savers — all while fuelling the UK economy.
The Role 👋
OakNorth is looking for a Senior Product Designer to play a key role in shaping and delivering digital experiences within our Digital Lending programme.
This role sits within the Lending business unit and is focused on designing intuitive, compliant, and effective journeys across OakNorth’s digital lending products. You will work closely with Product Managers, Engineers, and other designers to turn complex financial and regulatory requirements into clear, usable experiences that support both user outcomes and business performance.
This is a hands-on design role with meaningful ownership: you will lead design work across key lending journeys, contribute to discovery and delivery, and help raise the quality and consistency of product design within the programme.
What we're looking for 👀
- Resolving highly complex user problems
- Lead end-to-end design for features and journeys within the Digital Lending programme, from discovery through to delivery.
- Translate complex lending concepts, data, and regulatory constraints into intuitive, accessible user experiences.
- Maintain a high bar for usability, accessibility, and clarity.
- Produce clear design artefacts (flows, wireframes, prototypes, specs) that support efficient engineering delivery.
- User-centred, evidence-led design
- Use qualitative and quantitative insight to inform design decisions, validate ideas, and iterate solutions.
- Plan and conduct research and usability testing where appropriate, knowing when deeper research support is required.
- Balance user needs, business goals, and regulatory requirements in day-to-day design decisions.
- Product partnership and delivery
- Work as a close partner to Product Managers and Engineers within the Digital Lending programme.
- Contribute and lead discovery activities, helping shape problem definitions, solution options, and prioritisation.
- Support delivery teams by ensuring design intent is clear, feasible, and aligned with technical constraints.
- Design for scalability. Balance longer-term experience improvements with near-term delivery goals.
- Experience consistency and design systems
- Apply OakNorth’s design system consistently across lending products and journeys.
- Contribute to the evolution of the design system by identifying gaps, proposing improvements, and sharing patterns that emerge from delivery work.
- Ensure new designs align with established standards while solving real user and business problems.
- Help shape and define the internal tool design patterns
- Ensure your design solutions contribute to a unified internal user experience users across products and geographies
- Help the business visualise the future, identify business opportunities and translate them into a vision that stakeholders can understand
- Collaboration and design culture
- Act as a strong design advocate within your product team, raising the quality of discussion around customer experience.
- Be the custodian of user needs when quick delivery MVP scoping happens, always striving for MLP (minimum lovable product).
- Share knowledge, patterns, and learnings with other designers to improve consistency and efficiency across the Lending unit.
- Provide constructive feedback in design critiques and support the development of more junior designers through collaboration and example.
- Tools, technology, and emerging practices
- Use modern design and prototyping tools to work efficiently and collaboratively.
- Explore how emerging technologies (including AI) can improve design workflows, prototyping, and decision-making—within regulatory and data constraints.
- Apply new tools pragmatically, focusing on delivery quality and speed rather than novelty.
What success looks like 🏆
- Digital lending journeys are easier to understand, faster to complete, and result in fewer errors or support needs.
- Product teams deliver consistently, with design intent clearly reflected in shipped experiences.
- User feedback and behavioural data show measurable improvements in usability and business impact.
- The design system is actively used and incrementally improved through real delivery work.
- You are seen as a trusted design partner within the Digital Lending programme, becoming a critical element of the team driving product outcomes.
About you 🫵
- Have experience owning design work end-to-end on complex product areas or journeys.
- Enjoy resolving and designing for web first internal tools, where usability has a great impact on the day to day of our users.
- Are comfortable working with complexity, ambiguity, and constraints—and turning them into clear solutions.
- Can balance user needs, business goals, and regulatory requirements without losing sight of usability.
- Are confident collaborating with Product Managers and Engineers and influencing decisions through evidence based design.
- Enjoy resolving puzzles and seeing the outcomes of your work quickly materialise.
- Are comfortable conducting research and using insight to inform decisions, without over-engineering the process.
- Take ownership, follow work through to delivery, and continuously look for ways to improve quality and efficiency.
What makes working here better 😍
- This is a truly hybrid role, offering engineers and Product the flexibility to work from home while also providing opportunities to collaborate in person with the team when it adds value. There’s no fixed requirement for days in the office, instead, we focus on creating space for engineers & Product to engage meaningfully, whether that’s in-person for whiteboarding sessions or remote for deep focus work.
- Work-life balance 🌴 - 25 days holiday (plus bank holidays) each year, and enhanced family leave allowances.
- Competitive salary & equity 🏦 - We want people to have a serious stake in the business.
- Good kit 💻 - Your choice of the best laptop, running macOS or Ubuntu.
- Team socials 🎉 - The opportunity to get to know each other outside of work.
- Company socials 🥡 - A chance to catch up and meet new colleagues weekly over informal office breakfasts and dinners on OakNorth - or at our free barista bar every day.
- Commuter support 🚲 - We offer the cycle to work & EV scheme.
