Senior UX/UI Designer - 12 month FTC - Unite Students : Job Details

The Role

At Unite Students, we create a Home for Success by leveraging technology to empower students to thrive in their university journey. We`re looking for an experienced Senior UX/UI Designer to join us in our Bristol office for a 12 month fixed-term contract.

As a Senior UX/UI Designer, you will play a pivotal role in crafting exceptional user experiences. Reporting to the Lead UX/UI Designer, you will be part of a dedicated UX team, contributing to innovative projects across internal and external digital solutions.

You thrive on understanding users` needs, behaviours, and emotions to inform product strategy and design. Passionate about quality, usability, and simplicity, you embody a customer-first mindset and excel at delivering best-in-class user experiences.

In this role, you`ll work closely with stakeholders and product owners to understand their business goals and users` needs. Occasionally, you may apply design thinking to help define non-digital user experience flows for our property experiences.

As a senior member of the team, you will independently manage your activities, as there can be multiple projects happening at one time. You will drive UX/UI processes and methodologies, collaborate with the UX Researcher to validate assumptions, and ensure solutions are grounded in insights.

Your responsibilities include running research sessions, facilitating workshops, creating user journey maps and flows, defining information architecture for complex products, and designing wireframes, prototypes, and usability testing strategies.

What You`ll Be Doing

Lead UX/UI Design Projects

• Champion user-centered design principles, ensuring exceptional UX/UI standards across all designs.
• Maintain and enhance brand guidelines and the design system to ensure consistency across digital experiences.

Collaborative Research and Design

• Work closely with Product Owners (POs), Business Analysts (BAs), Developers, and Stakeholders to research, ideate, and conceptualise design solutions.
• Conduct discovery research, user interviews, and usability testing to inform design decisions.
• Share ideas and suggest improvements during peer review sessions.

End-to-End Design Process

• Create user stories, journeys, and flow diagrams to address UX/UI challenges.
• Translate concepts into wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity designs, iterating rapidly based on feedback and testing.
• Use tools like Figma, Adobe XD, or Protopie for design work and Userlytics or similar
• Leverage backlog management tools (e.g., Azure DevOps) to track progress and align with project timelines.
• Design and evolve solutions for mobile apps and occasionally for websites, following a mobile-first approach.
• Manage app design workload independently or with another designer, working proactively with the PO to ensure designs are ready before development begins according to App and Digital roadmaps.

Advocacy and mentorship

• Mentor junior designers, peer review team outputs, and help define UX/UI standards.
• Present insights, prototypes, and solutions to stakeholders and the wider team, keeping them informed during reviews or updates (e.g., Town Hall or Sprint reviews).

What We`re Looking for in You

• Significant experience in UX/UI design, demonstrating expertise in UX principles, UI best practices, and stakeholder engagement.
• A strong portfolio showcasing great digital design skills.
• Communication: Proven ability to communicate design processes, ideas, and solutions effectively.
• Experience leading discovery projects and facilitating workshops.
• Proficient in mobile-first and responsive design, creating low- and high-fidelity prototypes.
• Skilled in UX/UI tools like Figma, Adobe XD, Protopie, OptimalSort, and Userlytics (or similar).
• Strong understanding of accessibility requirements and solutions.
• Adept at working within an Agile development environment.
• Collaborative, excellent communicator, and strong problem-solver.
• Basic knowledge of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript is helpful but not required.

What You`ll Get in Return

• A discretionary annual bonus so you can share in the company`s success
• 25 days` paid holiday and an annual holiday buying scheme, with 5 additional days awarded for long service
• A generous pension scheme - employer contributions between 5% and 11% depending on how much you save
• Various benefits to support your health and wellbeing including a Healthcare Cash Plan, an Employee Assistance Programme, a Wellbeing platform and a Gym benefit that you can share with your family and friends
• Enhanced Family Leave including 18 weeks full pay for birthing parents and 4 weeks for non-birthing parents
• Lots of other great benefits including an annual ShareSave scheme, Employee Life Assurance, a discounts portal and more!

About Unite Students

Founded in 1991, Unite Students is a FTSE 100 business and the UK`s leading provider of purpose-built student accommodation. You can find us in 25 leading university towns and cities, with 74,000 students calling US home! We are driven by our values, culture, and a commitment to develop diverse and inclusive teams, filled with positive energy and new ideas.

Instinctive inclusion. We know that to create and maintain a happy healthy organisation, we have to work hard to ensure inclusion isn`t just what we do but who we are.

People make Unite Students. Employees, students and neighbours all contribute to building environments where we can all thrive.

Room for Everyone

We`re proud to be an employer that embraces individuality, and we`re passionate about building inclusive teams. We focus on creating a collaborative culture where you can be you, where your voice is heard, and where you can truly belong. We take great pride in being rated Gold Investors in People and are constantly striving to provide the highest standard of learning and development opportunities and professional pathways for our people. Building a home for success, for both our employees and students, requires exceptional people with a passion for creating room for everyone, doing what`s right, keeping US safe, and raising the bar. Join us as we build better experiences for students that live with us.

We are US.