Freelance Principal Product Designer

Red Badger

Principal Product Designer at Red Badger providing leadership in delivering high-quality product designs. Collaborating with teams to define and execute winning product strategies in a hybrid work environment.

Posted 6/9/2026contractLondon • 🇬🇧 United KingdomLeadWebsite

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Successfully delivering client outcomes across multiple teams and programmes
Consulting the client to define and execute a winning product strategy
Ensuring the quality of digital product development using Human-centred, Lean and Agile methodologies
Empowering, coaching, mentoring, and supporting product designers
Product Discipline Leadership
Lead and support the design strategy and implementation from discovery through to delivery
Focus on delivering value with your designs, while balancing agility in delivery with holistic thinking
Design and facilitate business value proposition and other creative workshops and design sprints
Work within a cross-disciplinary digital team on design and front-end implementation through creation of design systems, style guide, prototypes and other assets to bring product ideas to life
Work in Agile/Lean methodologies to experiment and make data-driven decisions for your designs
Drive continuous improvement and quality by championing design principles and the value they bring
Engage clients and your team to ensure the proposed design balances business goals and technical constraints in addition to user needs
Seed and scale design strategy and systems across a programme of work.
As a leader and consultant, you inspire and influence to take people on a journey and get shared and early buy-in for the design process and the outcomes
Contribute at a leadership level to the overall success of the Red Badger client engagement with commercial awareness and input into account strategy
Coach and align your team and your clients on Design Thinking, Lean, and Human-Centred Design
Guide and support colleagues and stakeholders through the divergent and convergent cycles in the process and make them feel safe in the ambiguity and discomfort through tact, empathy and conviction
Work with Directors on sales activities supporting shaping and closing new sales opportunities
Collaborate with the Principal Delivery and Technology roles to give delivery teams space and autonomy to thrive
Support product roadmap activities to shape user-centric backlog and high-value delivery outcomes.
As an influencer, you collaborate with clients and stakeholders to deliver business and user value through great product strategy and exceptional designs that delight the users
Communicate with confidence about your designs and decisions with a broad range of stakeholders to successfully influence long-lasting change
Set and implement a product design strategy and framework to solve large-scale and complex problems for our clients
Align and actively manage a broad range of stakeholders on the product strategy and desired outcomes through influence and diplomacy
Advocate and introduce user-centred, lean/agile processes to your clients
Able to break down complex concepts to communicate the value of design and recommended approach to a wide range of stakeholders.
Active contributor to developing the product design discipline within Red Badger
Care for people’s careers and wellbeing
Line-manage, support and inspire designers and motivate them to develop
Support recruitment and growth of the design disciplines
Proactively share knowledge with the rest of the team and elevate the design discipline within Red Badger
Support the development of Red Badger’s design approach and strategy
Fostering and facilitating a culture of valuable design criticism and feedback
Elevate the role of design within the company and the industry.
Provide product and design discipline thought leadership and contribute to the growth of the Red Badger brand in the industry
Write and speak publicly about our design work and practices
Champion Red Badger’s ways of working: cross-functional teams, continuously delivering value, building quality
Be an ambassador for Red Badger, and an advocate for ‘doing the right thing’, ‘doing the thing right’ by supporting and enabling others to do so.

Requirements

What you’ll need

Strong experience working in lean/agile methodologies, including with Scrum and Kanban
Strong working knowledge of industry-standard tools, such as Figma, plus aptitude to learn and introduce new tools and methodologies
Experience leading product design implementation and practices as part of a cross-functional team or programme working closely with engineers, data insights, user research and quality assurance disciplines
Consulting experience working with clients, presenting design concepts and leading on product strategy development and implementation
Extensive experience in all digital product lifecycle phases from discovery and influencing product backlog to delivery, bringing digital user-centric products to life
Experience designing complex digital product solutions across multiple channels like mobile-first responsive web applications and mobile native apps
Hiring and line management experience including coaching and mentoring
Ability to contextualise your product design decisions and recommendations to persuade clients through empathy and diplomacy
In-depth knowledge and strong practitioner experience of
Human-Centered Design
Design Thinking
User Experience Design
Visual Design
Business value proposition
Deep understanding of
Brand application
UI design
Design systems such as Atomic design
Good working knowledge of
User research
User testing

Benefits

Comp & perks

Annual £2,000 training budget
Enhanced pension with employer contribution of up to 5% of your salary
Group Life Insurance
Income Replacement Benefit
Critical Illness Cover
Private Medical Insurance
Your choice of hardware and mobile phone
£2,000 home-office set up budget and contribution to home broadband
Matched (pre-tax) charity GAYE donations
Cycle to work
Enhanced parental leave

ATS Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

Human-Centered DesignDesign ThinkingUser Experience DesignVisual DesignDesign systemsUser researchUser testingLean methodologiesAgile methodologiesProduct design implementation

Soft Skills

CoachingMentoringEmpathyDiplomacyCommunicationLeadershipInfluencingCollaborationProblem-solvingContinuous improvement