Product Designer

Starling is the UK’s leading digital bank on a mission to make banking better! Our vision is fast technology, fair service, and honest values. All at the tap of a phone, all the time.

We are about giving customers a better way to spend, save and manage their money while taking better care of the planet which has seen us become a multi-award winning bank that now employs over 2,800 across five offices in London, Cardiff, Dublin, Southampton, and Manchester. Our journey started in 2014, and since then we have surpassed 3.5 million accounts. We are a fully licensed UK bank but at the heart we are a tech first company with a platform that enables our brilliant products.

Product is part of the technology team at the very heart of Starling. We work in a fast-paced environment that is all about making progress and building things that keep us on the cutting edge of fintech. We operate a flat structure to empower you to make decisions. Innovation and collaboration will be at the core of everything you do. Help is never far away in our open culture, you will find support in your team and from across the business.

The way to thrive at Starling is to be someone who is motivated and inquisitive, keen to help us understand problems and work collaboratively to design and build smart, pragmatic things that deliver the best possible results for our customers. Our purpose is underpinned by five Starling values: Listen, Keep It Simple, Do The Right Thing, Own It, and Aim For Greatness.

Hybrid Working

We have a Hybrid approach to working here at Starling - our preference is that you're located within a commutable distance of one of our offices so that we're able to interact and collaborate in person.

Our Product Environment

At Starling we spend our time building products that we’re really proud of. We focus on the experience, often delivering things with real polish but sometimes making a fast strategic move. We’re always working closely and collaboratively with our engineers to solve problems, build new products and improve existing ones. We focus on what is right for our customers and stick to our values.

We think being great at product design requires clear communication, a sense of focus, and to challenge the conventional ways of doing things. We’re open-minded when it comes to hiring, we care more about skills and attitude than specific experience or qualifications. If you care about finding elegant solutions to difficult problems and advocating for the customer, we’d love to hear from you.

We’re looking to expand our design team to help us build products and features across our app, online bank and even our internal tools. There’s a wide variety of things we work on and we’re a small team that spends our time working alongside engineers, research, content designers and product managers to make our products the best they can be. There’s lots of scope to get involved in all aspects of Starling and we’re looking for someone who is keen to get stuck in and work collaboratively.

Applications close on 2nd of January 2025, but we encourage you to apply as soon as possible if you are interested in the role. Interviews will begin early January 2025.

What you’ll do:

• Rely on user-centred design methods to craft industry-leading user experiences for new products and features, from concept all the way to execution across our iOS, Android and Online Bank platforms
• Lead the design of major new strategic products and features, alongside tactical fixes and iterations of existing experiences
• Take full ownership of your work, taking into consideration existing insights and research, technical constraints and business needs
• Participate in regular design reviews to seek specific feedback on your work and share feedback on other peoples work 
• Evolve and grow our internal tooling and design systems across mobile and web
• Advocate for and design inclusive and accessible solutions to complex problems
• Collaborate closely with other designers, researchers, writers, engineers and more

This job might be for you if:

• You have 5 to 10 years of professional experience in a digital product design role.
• You are highly collaborative, with experience working cross-functionally with different teams.
• You thrive working with ambiguous problems, and are able to distil complex flows into highly considered user experiences that keep the user’s and business needs at the heart. 
• You have a high level of attention to detail and craft, with strengths in visual design and pixel perfect execution. 
• You have experience working with and evolving design systems, across iOS, Android and responsive web.
• You place research and validation at the core of your process. You champion the voice of the user and you have experience planning, executing and actioning user research. 
• You are a proactive, confident and effective communicator. You are able to present your work, and articulate your design decisions clearly and confidently to a range of stakeholders.
• You have a portfolio of well crafted case studies that showcases a mixture of research, user experience and user interface design skills, clearly describing outcomes, results and impact of your work.

Interview process:

Interviewing is a two way process and we want you to have the time and opportunity to get to know us, as much as we are getting to know you. Our interviews are conversational and we want to get the best from you, so come with questions and be curious. In general you can expect the below, following a chat with one of our Talent Team:

• Skills and experience (60 mins): Interview with a member of our team to discuss your professional experience and skills.
• Portfolio review (90 mins): Interview with two team members of our team where you will be asked to present two case studies of your previous work.
• Executive interview (45 min): Interview with our Head of Product and an executive member of the team.

• 25 days holiday (plus take your public holiday allowance whenever works best for you)

• An extra day’s holiday for your birthday
• Annual leave is increased with length of service, and you can choose to buy or sell up to five extra days off
• 16 hours paid volunteering time a year
• Salary sacrifice, company enhanced pension scheme
• Life insurance at 4x your salary
• Private Medical Insurance with VitalityHealth including mental health support and cancer care. Partner benefits include discounts with Waitrose, Mr&Mrs Smith and Peloton
• Generous family-friendly policies
• Perkbox membership giving access to retail discounts, a wellness platform for physical and mental health, and weekly free and boosted perks
• Access to initiatives like Cycle to Work, Salary Sacrificed Gym partnerships and Electric Vehicle (EV) leasing

You may be put off applying for a role because you don't tick every box. Forget that! While we can’t accommodate every flexible working request, we're always open to discussion. So, if you're excited about working with us, but aren’t sure if you're 100% there yet, get in touch anyway.

We’re on a mission to radically reshape banking – and that starts with our brilliant team. Whatever came before, we’re proud to bring together people of all backgrounds and experiences who love working together to solve problems.

Starling Bank is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster diversity & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment at Starling Bank are considered without regard to race, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

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