• Location: UK-Based – (this is a UK home based role, although you may be required to attend meetings at client offices or Snook/NEC sites once in a while)  
• Salary: UK From £46,000 London From £50,000 
• Additional requirements: Right to work in the UK 
• This role requires our staff to go through the government’s Security Clearance process. In order to be eligible for this, applicants will need to have been a continuous resident in the UK for the past 5 years. 

Snook are on a mission to design a world that works better for people. 

We work with organisations to design more effective services which help people thrive. We do this by engaging with users, building digital products, training our clients, and much more. 

Snook started as a service design company in 2009. In the past five years, we have become a multidisciplinary team and scaled to more than double our original size, when we started up in Scotland. We are now based in Glasgow and London and our team is approaching 100 people. And we’ve worked with brilliant clients — from Cancer Research UK and Tesco to Hackney City Council and the Scottish Government. 

As an Interaction Designer at Snook, you will be responsible for helping to design the best ways in which users can interact with services. Whilst the core of our work is designing intuitive, inclusive and accessible interfaces, our designers understand that often the most important part of this is communicating and collaborating with others. 

You’ll be embedded in a team alongside other user-centred disciplines such as service designers, user researchers and content designers. Given the large scale of the projects we work on, you’ll also have the opportunity to work closely with other disciplines such as analysts, software engineering teams and policy experts too.  

As an agency, we work with a broad range of clients and not everyone has experience of user-centred design. You’ll play a key role in championing the importance of this approach by working in the open and frequently sharing the thinking and evidence behind your work. 

 We strive to ensure that human needs are at the centre of government services’ design and delivery. We are the User-Centred Design partner for multiple government agencies, including Home Office, Department for Education, NHS Digital and NHSX. Recent projects our Interaction Designers have worked on include; 

• Working with the Department of Education to launch a BETA service that provides training to early career teachers, to better prepare them better for the job and help address the falling retention rate in the profession 
• Working with Camden Council to design a tool that supports people with disabilities and mobility concerns when traveling around the borough 
• Working with the Home Office, to use research and evidence to  improve the design of critical internal case working systems that help to keep our country safe 

Working in these sectors will give you valuable experience of applying Government Service Standards and preparing for Government Service Assessments. We also work with local government and third and private sector organisations too.  

This role provides the opportunity to work across these sectors while receiving knowledge and support from other Snooks. When possible, we rotate people from one sector to another after 3 to 12 months (depending on the project), enabling people to develop in-depth knowledge of a variety of sectors. 

You’ll be part of a growing team, working alongside 7 other like-minded and highly skilled Interaction Designers. Whilst we may not all be working on the same projects, we host weekly remote meetups where we share our work, discuss its wider implications and provide support to one another. We mix with the other disciplines in the Digital team too, meaning you’ll have access to Accessibility specialists, Developers and Content Designers to help broaden your skills. You’ll have no trouble finding someone to help you navigate a new situation, receive constructive feedback on some work or most importantly provide enthusiastic advice on where to get lunch if you’ve decided to work from one of our studios. 

All of our Interaction Designers are assigned a coach. Your coach will look after your wellbeing, help you set goals and objectives and provide feedback to help you grow. 

You should be able to demonstrate that you have experience in all of the following: 

• Interaction / UX Design: you are a highly experienced practitioner with a proven track record of delivering interaction design work in varied environments. You understand how people interact with technology, the different ways they access it and why and when to use common design patterns. 
• User-centred / evidence based design: you’ve designed new or iterated existing products based on quantitative and qualitative evidence. For example, you’ve used research from interviews with users, or data from analytics platforms to inform and continually make improvements to your designs. 
• Agile practices: you are confident leading projects that follow Agile or Lean methodologies. You understand their limitations and how to bring flexibility to them when needed. 
• Technology: You have a nuanced understanding of how the internet works and the technology constraints we need to consider when designing digital products. 
• Front end development: you know how to use front-end programming languages such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript to make basic prototypes or websites. 
• Accessibility: you’re familiar with the WCAG 2.1 guidelines and can design to meet AA standards. 
• Research and analysis: you’ve helped with the running and analysis of usability tests (e.g heuristic evaluations and A/B testing), and perhaps used analytics to pull together some insights too. 
• Industry standard software; you know your way around design packages such as Figma, Sketch and Miro, and understand their limitations. 
• Project leadership and communication: you have experience leading the design phase of a variety of projects which vary in scale and complexity. You understand how to operate under constraints, and manage clients and stakeholders. 
• Workshops: you’ve designed and facilitated workshops with team members, clients or other stakeholders. 
• Self managing: you’re able to manage your own time and budget on both client and internal projects, and understand how to prioritise tasks. You are able to understand the needs of projects that are less defined or without leadership and can help guide others in this area too. 
• Presenting your work: you’re comfortable in presenting your design work and explaining the rationale behind it. 

If you’re unsure how your experience lines up, please drop any questions over to [email protected]. We’re a friendly bunch and here to help. 

Desirable skills and experience 

If you have any or all of the following too, we’d love to hear from you. 

• Coaching: You have experience coaching others in the discipline and know how to support their growth. 
• Public sector: you’ve worked on projects for central or local government, either on their back office platforms, or public facing services 
• Design communities: you’ve helped to set up or run regular sessions that encourage other designs to share processes, learnings and final work. 

What we offer:

• 25.5 days holiday per year, 4 public holidays, plus up to 6 days of Christmas closure.
• A supportive maternity package
• Flexible working hours through discussion to support family friendly working and other commitments you may have
• A bike to work scheme
• Membership to Headspace, the meditation app
• Snook group pension plan
• We support you with a Snook buddy when you join to get you started
• Our ‘all company’ Monday Morning Meeting – where we get updates from the leadership, collaborate on various topics and have 3 min intros from new and existing staff
• We have department check-ins to make sure we are staying in touch with our teams even when we are working on projects
• Weekly learning sessions delivered by Snooks and external speakers covering a wide variety of topics
• Two studios, one in London and one in Glasgow so we can come together and collaborate in person
• Free Tea, coffee and Snacks in the studios
• An annual Away Day for the whole company to share, collaborate and socialise together
• Two Show & Tells Days per year to share and learn about a range of projects delivered by Snook
• Team Away Days where Discipline Teams come together to collaborate and socialise.
• Book clubs – Discipline Teams have regular book clubs where they read and discuss books related to their professional development
• Sessions and Slack groups where fellow Snooks can share their passions and skills – Yoga classes, knitting groups, gardening, obscure cartoons…many more and more always welcome

This is an ongoing campaign so please don’t wait to submit your application. We are sifting and interviewing candidates on a weekly basis. The vacancy will be closed when available positions are filled. 

Please submit a CV, cover letter, your notice period and a portfolio of your work highlighting key projects. If you do not have a portfolio, we have created a simple template that you can use. 

In your covering letter, please tell us a little bit about yourself, why you want to work at Snook and what sort of design problems you’d be interested in tackling with us. 

We strive for diversity in our team. If we’re going to design services for the public we need to ensure our team is inclusive. Snook encourages applications from all backgrounds, abilities or impairments, communities and industries, and are committed to having a team that is made up of diverse skills, experiences and abilities. If you have any questions please get in touch at [email protected]. 

Security Clearance

All offers are subject to satisfactory security vetting and reference checks. As standard, all roles undertake a Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) check. As a provider of services to the UK Government, where necessary we adhere to HMG’s personnel security and vetting policy requiring that minimum personnel security controls are checked as specified in the Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS). Some roles may require national security vetting clearance at the Security Check (SC) level and Non-Police Personnel Vetting (NPPV) Level 3. Where applicable local (non-UK) security checks and vetting schemes will be used to provide sufficient personnel security controls.

Any questions?

If you have any questions please get in touch with us at [email protected]

Remote interviews

Interviews can be held remotely if required. We can offer interview times that suit you including outside of work hours. If you have children, caring during or any other circumstances we’re happy to find an interview time that works for you.

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion 

We strive for diversity in our team. If we’re going to design services for the public we need to ensure our team is inclusive. Snook encourages applications from all backgrounds, abilities or impairments, communities and industries. We’re committed to having a team that is made up of diverse skills, experiences and abilities. Therefore we strongly encourage people from underrepresented groups to apply for this role.