Product Designer

THE TIMES  /  PRODUCT DESIGN

Product Designer

London  ·  Hybrid  ·  Full-time

The role

A Product Designer, to work across our digital products and grow into a strong, well-rounded designer at one of the most read publishers in the UK.

You will work on real, shipped products: parts of the reading experience on app and web, subscriber journeys, newsletters, or the tools our newsroom uses every day. You will own pieces of work end to end, with the support of a senior designer alongside you. You will be in the details and you will care about it.

What you will do

• Design and ship. You will take problems from brief to live product, working in Figma, prototyping where it helps, and handing over cleanly to engineering.

• Use the design system. You will work fluently with our tokens and components, contribute back when something is missing, and understand why consistency matters at this scale.

• Talk to readers. You will help run usability sessions, watch session replays, read the data, and use what you learn to make better decisions.

• Collaborate properly. You will work day to day with BAs, engineers, product managers and editorial. You will know when to discuss and when to crack on.

• Get better, visibly. You will share work in critique, take feedback well, and push your own craft forward every quarter.

We are looking for

• Two or more years of product design experience on shipped digital products.

• Strong fundamentals: interaction, layout, typography, accessibility.

• Fluency in Figma and a working understanding of how the web is built (HTML and CSS at a reading level is enough).

• Curiosity about AI in design. We do not expect mastery at this level, but we expect you to be trying things.

• Clear communication. You can explain a decision without hiding behind jargon.

• Care about the details that most people do not notice.

A plus, not a requirement

• Experience in journalism, publishing, or any content-heavy product.

• Subscription product experience.

• Strong opinions about reading on small screens.

This is for you if

You like product design and you like news. You want to work somewhere the work is seen by millions and where the standard is high. You want to learn from people who are better than you at specific things, and you want to be the one who is better at something within a year.

How we work

We design for a newspaper. That means the work goes live next to real journalism, about real events, read by people who came to be informed. Everything we ship sits in that context. The details matter. The decisions matter. Getting it wrong is visible.

We design close to the newsroom, not at a distance from it. We sit with editorial, product, engineering and data. We test with real readers. We ship.

AI is part of how some of us work now, in different ways and at different depths. We are still learning where it adds value and where it does not. We are interested in designers who are exploring it with the same seriousness they bring to the rest of the craft.

About The Times

The Times has been published since 1785. The Sunday Times since 1822. Together they reach millions of readers a day across app, web, newsletter and print, and they remain the most trusted titles in British journalism.

That is the inheritance. The product team exists to build on it. We design the digital experiences that carry the journalism to readers: thetimes.com, the iOS and Android apps, daily newsletters, subscriber journeys, and the editorial tools our newsroom uses to publish. The work is read by people who care about what is happening in the world, and made by people who care about how it is told.

The product design team is around twelve people. We work across reading experiences, subscriber journeys and the editorial tools our newsroom uses every day. The work is varied. The standard is high.

We are News UK : One of the leading media businesses in the UK and Ireland.  Our newsbrands include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun, The Sun on Sunday and The TLS. Our national broadcast brands include talkSPORT, Times Radio, Talk and Virgin Radio UK, and we have market-leading local radio stations across Ireland. Our world-famous brands provide news, analysis, opinion and entertainment to almost 40 million people each month. Spanning print and pixel, audio and video, events and experiences, our multiplatform brands are home to a plurality of opinion, representing the diverse communities we serve. News UK is wholly owned by News Corp.

Life at News

Driven by passion, guided by principles and acting with purpose. We represent, reflect and reach the nation, telling the stories that matter. We inform our audiences so that they can make decisions based on trusted information.

To do this, we believe our employees must represent different backgrounds, perspectives and experiences. We strive to maximise and encourage every individual’s potential and ensure everyone feels valued. We support this through our Diversity Strategy , which focuses on three main priorities - attracting talent from a wider, more representative pool, developing equity programmes to drive better representation in our leadership, and ensuring diversity in our workforce as well as the journalism and content we produce. We also currently have 13 employee led networks and groups that support our strategy and connect like minded employees socially.

Benefits

Some of our benefits include:

• Maternity leave up to 18 weeks full basic salary & paternity leave up to 2 weeks

• Wide range of training available, plus full LinkedIn Learning access

• Private medical insurance including coverage for pre-existing conditions

• Discounted gym memberships , free ClassPass at Home, weekly virtual yoga classes

• ‘Bikes for Work’ and ‘Electric Car’ scheme

• Up to 60% discount on Harper Collins books

• Access to exclusive events and competitions with exciting brands such as talkSPORT, Virgin Radio UK & The Times. Weekly virtual panel chats with top journalists and celebrities

• Access to wellbeing benefits such as EAP, physio/massage and counselling

• A generous pension scheme with employer contributions of up to 5%

• 30 days holiday , plus bank holidays and up to 4 volunteering days per year

We are committed to providing an inclusive recruitment process. If you require reasonable adjustments due to a disability or health condition at any stage of your application or interview, please let us know. You can contact us at to discuss how we can support you to perform at your best.