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.

This year we're ten years old. In the past five years, we've scaled to more than double our original size when we started up in Scotland. We've opened a London office and our team is approaching 40 people. And we've worked with brilliant clients - from Cancer Research UK and Tesco to Hackney City Council and the Scottish Government.

About the role

We are looking to recruit a Head of Digital to provide strong leadership, direction and coaching within our digital design department.

Our digital design team is composed of interaction designers, full-stack developers, technical leads, content designers and data experts.

We're looking for someone to take a lead in growing our capacity, developing the service offer, supporting the tech leads, and ensuring we've got the right skills and tools to do the job.

We are looking for someone with previous senior developer experience, who is keen to move to a more strategic management position.

You should have proven experience of growing, nurturing and running a digital product design and delivery team. You will have the authority and experience to make key decisions on technical matters such as code base, architecture and hosting.

The role will ensure the team does their best work, maintaining consistency of high quality delivery across our projects. You will help push us to meet our mission by designing services that have real impact on people's lives.

You will work with our Head of Design to grow and develop our product development and design practice across Snook's studios and our partners.

You will help set a digital product approach for Snook that ties in with our aims and principles, and sets direction for the way that we design digital services and products across the wider team.

Requirements

You should be able to demonstrate that you are able to meet some, or all, of the following requirements:

Lead and develop a team capable of building best in show products and services.
Lead technology teams to run projects from discovery through to live.
Work with delivery teams to create reusable code, patterns, platforms and components to support design consistency and efficiency.
Develop and enforce Snook design principles and quality standards.
Take strategic decisions on choosing the right technology for the right project, considering contextual constraints.
Build a diverse technical team.
Have knowledge and interest in the wider digital economy and advances in technology.
Capable of making and guiding effective decisions, thinking at both systems and detailed experience levels.
Able to define, assess and improve upon our existing digital design and development practice, process and methodologies.
Able to train and support the development of our digital design team practitioners and identify skill gaps and areas of opportunity to expand and improve upon.
Capable of providing leadership across the digital design team, and of contributing to the wider strategic aims of the company.
Provide critique of digital design and development work, identifying areas of concern and opportunity, and coach project teams to successful outcomes.
Coach and mentor interaction designers, tech leads and developers in Snook. Run meaningful appraisal processes and support their development, identifying training needs and opportunities.
Be a voice of Snook's values and story on the outside of the organisation to push the development of our practice.
Bring an optimistic and entrepreneurial mindset to our work, supporting directors to spot and enable new business opportunities, and provide support with creating proposals and pitching for new business.
Support the senior leadership team to grow and develop the organisation in line with our company strategy.
Support our Head of Delivery in resourcing and assigning project teams and ensuring projects have a clear scope and goals, and are delivered to agreed time and quality standards.
Your skills and experience

We're keen to hear from a range of applicants who can demonstrate some, or all, of the following skills and experience:

Considerable experience in technical development and product design
Knowledge and experience of working with open standards, APIs and building interoperable systems
Experience of managing and guiding teams on best practice in decisions on code, architecture and platforms.
Senior developer experience, showing range of experience across different code bases,
Expertise of managing and guiding teams on best practice in decisions on code, architecture and platform.
A strong portfolio, showcasing building inclusive and accessible digital products and services to WCAG2.1
Experience of user-centered design and development.
Experience of line-managing developers and/or designers
Experience of being responsible for the budget of a project and/or departmental team.
Experience of managing the training needs of a multidisciplinary digital team
Demonstrable experience of interpreting and analysing data to make informed design decisions.
Demonstrable experience of A/B, guerilla and multivariate testing.
Knowledge and experience of manual and automated testing procedures. Able to work with Technical Leads to deliver best in class QA solutions.
Familiarity with a variety of design tools (such as Figma, Sketch, Zeplin, Adobe CC, etc). Understanding of design patterns and systems.
Considerable experience in using a variety of prototyping tools and methods.
Demonstrable experience of using agile methodologies
Experience of working with government, local authorities and charities (desirable).
Detailed understanding of legislative, financial and reputational risk and experience of putting in working practices to prevent and mitigate errors
Recognition of individual and departmental duty with regards to confidential information, exhibiting a duty of care across both.
Experience of writing new business proposals and pitching for new client work