Strategic Service Designer at Handelsbanken, Manchester, £Competitive Day Rate

• Job Reference hbuk/TP/158/2315
• Contract Type Day Rate Contractor
• Closing Date 14 March, 2026
• Job Category Tech, Data and Digital
• Business Unit Handelsbanken Digital (UKC)
• Location London or Manchester, United Kingdom
• Posted on 12 February, 2026

Main Responsibilities 

Discovery and Research

• Lead discovery across the current Wealth Digital Platform, including understanding existing customer journeys, touchpoints, constraints, and dependencies.
• Plan and conduct qualitative research with Wealth customers to understand how they currently view portfolios, funds, and performance, and where pain points and unmet needs exist.
• Conduct competitive research on current wealth digital platforms to inform future state
• Synthesize research findings into clear insights, problem statements, and opportunity areas that align customer needs with business objectives.
• Collaborate with internal stakeholders across Wealth, Digital, Risk, and Compliance to ensure shared understanding of current-state challenges and constraints.

Definition and Ideation

• Facilitate structured ideation and co-creation workshops to explore solution directions and prioritise problems to solve.
• Translate insights into clear experience principles, design hypotheses, and target outcomes.
• Define the scope and ambition of the future-state Wealth customer experience, ensuring it reflects Handelsbanken’s relationship-led proposition.

Design and Prototyping

• Design end-to-end future-state customer journeys for the Wealth Digital Platform.
• Create low- and high-fidelity UX and UI designs using Figma, aligned to Handelsbanken’s brand and design system.
• Develop interactive prototypes that demonstrate key user flows, information architecture, and visual direction.
• Ensure designs balance usability, clarity, accessibility, and visual quality.

Testing and Iteration

• Plan and conduct usability testing and concept validation sessions with customers.
• Iterate designs based on feedback and evidence, clearly documenting rationale and trade-offs.
• Use insights from testing to refine both the experience and the underlying problem framing.

Final Outputs and Handover

• Deliver a validated target-state Wealth customer portal Figma prototype that can be used to support third-party vendor sourcing and evaluation.
• Produce clear design artefacts, narratives, and supporting documentation that enable stakeholders to understand the vision, customer value, and design intent.
• Support internal teams by clearly articulating how the future-state experience addresses customer needs and aligns with regulatory expectations.

Governance and Risk

• Ensure all design work aligns with Consumer Duty principles and delivers good customer outcomes.
• Operate in line with the Bank’s Risk Management framework, escalating risks or concerns in a timely manner.
• Work collaboratively with control functions to ensure designs consider legal, risk, and compliance requirements from the outset.

Ideal Candidate

Research (by Harvard University) shows that women are particularly likely to second guess themselves and not apply - so if you are worried you don't meet all the criteria, get in touch anyhow and let us do the worrying…

• Strong end-to-end experience across service design, user research, UX design, and visual/UI design.
• Proven ability to lead double diamond discovery and design processes independently.
• Experience designing complex digital products or platforms, ideally within financial services or another regulated industry.
• Excellent research and synthesis skills, with the ability to translate insight into clear design direction.
• Advanced proficiency in Figma.
• Strong workshop facilitation and stakeholder engagement skills.
• Solid understanding of accessibility standards and inclusive design practices.
• Familiarity with agile ways of working and multidisciplinary team environments.