The Role
At the Financial Times, we're united by a mission to deliver world-class information, news and services to a discerning global audience.
Do you enjoy designing Saas products, web apps and digital tools?
Do you enjoy designing digital products for internal users? Or, would you like to?
We're looking for a Product Designer to join the Editorial Technology team in developing a constellation of tools used in the newsroom. We create our own tech for editors to write, collaborate, coordinate, and craft stories for Financial Times across our digital products including FT.com, FT apps and newsletters.
This uniquely positioned role at Financial Times will suit someone interested in digital products for internal users and passionate about designing high-quality tools to help them be as productive as possible. In this case your users will be editors, journalists, writers and creators whose goals are to tell vital stories important to our diverse subscriber base.
Day-to-day at the FT with Editorial Technology
Empathy and experience mapping. Connect the dots within the newsroom to enable journalists to easily craft their stories and collaborate with other editors and creators. This means understanding the newsroom, the product, the users in the newsroom, and how their roles connect by running lightweight research and analysis.
Research to Delivery. As part of the cross-functional product team, you'll be responsible for the design solution from research to delivery, including user interviews, journey maps, user flows and visual design. You'll also collaborate with a lead designer, PM and engineering lead to help set the direction of the product.
Measuring and Prioritising. Working with the team to deliver the product roadmap and contributing initiatives with long-term benefits and unlocking business value. Measuring experiments with your team. Abandoning unsuccessful concepts, and evolving successful ones.
Design quality. You'll help raise internal product design quality at the Financial Times. Use your craft to ensure we build the thing right so our internal tools are intuitive, effective and usable by any internal user. This means championing accessibility in design with stakeholders and team members.
Advocate and educate. Build a track record with the team for delivering well-designed internal product solutions and experiences. Contribute to our community of practice for products and tools. Educate, consult and participate in design sprints to show teams in different departments how to develop effective products for coworkers.
What we're looking for from you
You enjoy designing high-quality digital products, working in Product Design and UX
You have an interest in the design of digital products for internal users and coworkers
You're highly curious and inquisitive about end users and working with research and data to validate design and interactions
Ability to capture complexity and use a human-centred approach to simplify the problem and make it understandable
You're interested in inclusive design and accessibility, developing design solutions with all our users in mind. Design the thing right!
You are comfortable with both digging into the detail, working on small interactions as much as understanding the bigger picture, and working on larger projects
You're comfortable running workshops, design sprints or leading remote collaboration sessions with cross-functional groups and interested in developing workshop facilitation
Creating high-quality mockups and interactive prototypes to communicate your work
Build partnerships with key stakeholders in the newsroom and engage with them around your work
You like to help people, collaborate and share ideas
Proficient with current design and prototyping tools (Figma, etc)
Ability to work with a low-ego, highly collaborative, cross-functional team
Nice to have but Non-essential
Experience conducting research, user interviews and user tests
Experience designing high-quality Saas products
Accessibility – experience building and testing on the Web with assistive technologies
Career Progression
The Product Design team has a transparent, measurable progression framework. We use this as a basis for your biannual reviews, where you'll self-assess against the progression framework, track progression, and agree on areas of focus with your line manager.
We invest in our people to allow them to grow both personally and professionally whilst working at The FT. We offer:
- Career coaching - Career coaching is time spent focused on you and how you can achieve your career aspirations.
- Mentoring programme - The mentoring programme aims to connect people across the business to support professional and personal growth through knowledge sharing and guidance.
- Learning and development - The FT offers a host of learning and development opportunities that will not only help you build the skills you need to grow in your profession or field, but will also help you improve your own personal development, with courses such as self-coaching, productivity, presentation confidence, research techniques and much more.
About the FT
The Financial Times is a trusted guide to an increasingly fragmented world. We are one of the world's most influential news organisations, recognised internationally for our authority, integrity and accuracy. We help the world make better choices. We influence leaders and shape the leaders of the future. Our fearless, intelligent reporting makes the difference in thousands of decisions around the world every day. Our digital products are in the pockets of prime ministers, presidents and chief executives. We hold powerful institutions to account. We shine a light in dark places. We move markets. We are the FT.
About FT Product and Technology
The FT is as much a product and technology company as it is a journalism company. Much of our recent success has come from innovation in our digital products and services and we know that our future success will depend on it. Product and Technology is composed of 400 people, split across three organisations: product, technology and delivery. Don't expect a stuffy finance environment. We come from all walks of life and all kinds of different backgrounds and we bring ourselves to work.
Learn more about the FT, including announcements and career opportunities, at aboutus.ft.com.
Equal opportunities
The FT is committed to providing an inclusive working environment for all. We are an equal opportunities employer who seeks to recruit and appoint the best talent regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief.
We also promote flexible working and will consider specific requests around flexibility for all roles where it can be accommodated.
Please let us know if you require any adjustments as part of the application process or to enable you to attend an interview. If you would like to discuss your requirements or have any questions, please contact a member of our HR team who will be happy to help.
