Experience Designer – SmartShop - 12 month FTC
Please note - applications will be reviewed after the 15th due to holidays.
At Sainsbury’s we believe that the customer should be at the heart of everything we do. Our vision is to create the easiest, most enjoyable experiences that better serve our customers’ ever-changing needs. We work across a range of services, products, touch points and tools to deliver distinctive, integrated, and consistent experiences for our customers and colleagues across Sainsbury’s Group (which includes Sainsbury’s Food, Argos, Nectar, Tu and Habitat).
We drive brilliant experiences across all our brands in-store and online, operating in agile teams and squads, working seamlessly with teams right across the business to make the most of the exceptional knowledge, insight and talent we have.
The role:
Join the team behind one of Sainsbury’s most impactful digital products—SmartShop, our in-store shopping companion that powers over 30% of all in-store transactions.
In this role, you’ll focus on evolving the SmartShop handset experience used by millions of customers every day in our stores. Working within a cross-functional product squad, you’ll lead the design of new features and improvements—from early research and concept development through to prototyping, testing, and final delivery.
You’ll spend time in-store observing and speaking directly with customers and colleagues, gaining first-hand insight to shape intuitive, seamless experiences that work in real-world environments. Using a test-and-learn approach, you’ll continuously refine ideas based on data, feedback, and experimentation.
This is a hands-on, end-to-end design role where your work will directly influence how millions of customers shop—making their experience faster, easier and more enjoyable every day.
What you'll do:
Planning: Shape and plan your work and understand how it fits with the work of others in your Product team.
User Research: Conduct user research through interviews, surveys, usability testing, in-store observations and use analytics to understand the needs, behaviors, and pain points of customers and In-store colleagues.
Wireframing and Prototyping: Develop wireframes, prototypes, and user flows to effectively communicate design ideas and interactions.
Information Architecture: Create and organise site maps, content hierarchies, and navigation systems to ensure intuitive and accessible user experiences.
Visual Design: Design engaging and cohesive visual interfaces that align with our brand guidelines and enhance the overall user experience.
Usability and Concept Testing: Plan and conduct testing sessions to gather feedback and iterate on designs based on user insights.
Design Documentation: Produce and maintain detailed design specifications, guidelines, and documentation to support development and implementation.
Storytelling & Playbacks: Translate research and design work into clear, compelling presentations that drive alignment, understanding, and confident decision-making across stakeholders.
Collaboration:
Stay Current: Keep up to date with industry trends, best practices, and emerging technologies to continuously improve our design processes.
Skills we expect to see:
Alongside this, we're looking for certain behaviors and competency skills. These skills will help you thrive in a dynamic team like ours.
Essential criteria
Support we will provide:
Tips and guidance on what we look for in portfolios: https://medium.com/p/1ace9c422d2
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We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you at Sainsbury’s. Think about the scale it takes to feed the nation. The level of data, transactions and variety involved. Then you’ll realise this is a modern software engineering environment, because it has to be. We’ve made significant investment in the standards and principles that shape how we work. We iterate, learn, experiment and champion ways of working such as Agile, Scrum and XP. So you can look forward to exciting opportunities across everything from AI to reusable tech.
We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer, so you’ll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there’s always the chance to try something new - whether that’s as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working. When you join our team, we’ll also offer you an amazing range of benefits. Here are some of them:
Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to get 10% off at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat after 4 weeks. This increases to 15% off at Sainsbury’s every Friday and Saturday and 15% off at Argos every pay day. We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover. You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 10% of salary, depending on how we perform.
Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance, and you can buy additional holiday. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, pay advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers. And if you ever need it there is also an employee assistance programme.
Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks’ pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks’ pay for paternity leave.
Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).
Over 150 years old and still going strong, we’re the UK’s second-biggest retailer. Every day, the nation shops with us because they know they’ll get affordable, good food and excellent service.
We focus on great value and convenient shopping across our family of brands, from Argos, Nectar and Habitat to Sainsbury’s Bank, Smart Charge and Tu.
What’s next for Sainsbury’s?
We've put food back at the heart of our business and we’re taking Sainsbury’s to the next level. We’re investing in technology and people and we’re thinking bigger about how we attract and connect with our customers, while doing everything we can to create a more resilient UK food system.
