Principal Design Ops Manager

Role OVO-View

Team: Experience Design

Salary banding: 75k - 90k 

Experience: Expert

Working pattern: Full-Time

Sponsorship: Unfortunately we are unable to offer sponsorship for this role.

This role in 3 words: Operations, Collaboration, Community

Top 3 qualities for this role: Influential, Proactive, Resilient

Where you’ll work:

At OVO, we understand that a one size fits all approach doesn’t work for everyone. That’s why we created the OVO Way of Flexibility.

All our roles are hub based (Bristol, Glasgow or London), providing a dedicated space for collaboration, connection and teamwork. You’ll also have the flexibility to work from home.

Everyone belongs at OVO

At OVO, we are on a mission to solve one of humanity's biggest challenges, the climate crisis. And we know it takes all of us to change the world. That's why we need diverse people from all gender identities, ethnicities, ages, sexual orientations, life experiences and backgrounds to join us.

Teamworking for the planet

Everything we do here spins around Plan Zero. So, naturally, the team you’ll be joining plays a gigantic role in making that happen. Here’s how:

The UX team are the DNA that exists to connect our customers, business and brand. We play a pivotal role in helping and supporting our customers on our Zero Carbon journey by crafting experiences that power the movement today and lead the path to the future. 

This role in a nutshell:

We’re looking for a Principal Design Ops Manager to join our Experience Design (XD) team and lead operational excellence across Product Design, Content Design, UX Research, and Service Design. With a growing team of 60+ design professionals, this senior role is critical to ensuring we collaborate seamlessly, execute with impact, and consistently deliver value.

What you’ll do

You’ll partner closely with the XD Leadership Team and stakeholders across the business to scale our people, processes, and impact. Your key responsibilities will include:

Strategy & Processes

• Collaborate with the XD Leadership team to optimise and scale our people processes and ways of working.
• Standardise and promote OVO’s end-to-end design and research processes, ensuring consistency and quality across all teams.
• Introduce and implement metrics to measure design quality and track the impact of our work over time.
• Own and maintain regular  reporting for key metrics such as CSAT, Customer Effort Score and Complaints.

Community & Collaboration

• Foster a sense of community within the XD team through events, workshops, and engagement initiatives that keep everyone connected, informed, and inspired.
• Partner with cross-functional teams (e.g., Product Management, Creative Studio, Brand) to build strong relationships and enhance collaboration.
• Mentor and support XD team members, helping them navigate the organisation and succeed in their roles.

Team Enablement

• Develop and implement onboarding practices that set up new team members for success.
• Partner with design leadership to establish learning and development programmes, supporting growth across the team.
• Build career development tools and standardise approaches to talent growth within the XD community.

Visibility & Impact

• Create and manage communication plans to increase the visibility, value, and impact of XD across the organisation.
• Define and champion the use of design signals and metrics to demonstrate the impact of the team’s work.
• Leverage tools like Jira, Confluence, Miro, and Figma to ensure smooth workflows and address operational gaps.

You’ll be successful in this role if you…

Experience:

• Have a proven track record in leading Design Operations. Bonus points if you’ve been a designer, researcher, or creative in the past.

Skills:

• Are insanely structured, and can bring a sense of order with exceptional organisational abilities with a knack for simplifying complexity.
• Are highly proficient in collaboration and work management tools (e.g., Jira, Confluence, Miro, Figma).
• Have expertise in scaling teams and fostering culture within creative or design-led environments.
• Analytical, comfortable with numbers, metrics and data, manipulating to understand root causes.

Attributes