Principal Product Designer - Experience Platform

Job Description

Principal Designers at Tesco operate at a system level. Your primary output is the quality, coherence, and scalability of the customer experience across all digital surfaces — achieved through the platform that teams build on. You own the CX layer: the shared foundations that make experiences feel consistent, usable, and recognisable regardless of which team built them. You work across teams rather than within one — in joint ownership with Engineering and in close partnership with Lead and Principal Designers across propositions.

• Defining the vision and roadmap for the CX platform, balancing immediate delivery needs with long-term system integrity. Owning platform standards components, patterns, interaction principles, and accessibility and evolving them as the product ecosystem grows.
• Co-owning the platform with Engineering aligning on quality, feasibility, and what “done” looks like for shared components.
• Establishing and enforcing the design engineering contract specifications, tooling, and workflows that reduce ambiguity and increase build fidelity.
• Driving adoption of the platform across teams making it the default way of building, not an optional layer.
• Creating clear contribution models enabling teams to extend the system while maintaining quality and consistency.
• Partnering with Lead and Principal Designers supporting them in applying the platform and shaping it through real delivery needs.
• Running cross-cutting critique connecting platform standards to shipped work and closing the loop between system and reality.
• Identifying patterns emerging across teams and codifying them into reusable components and standards.
• Maintaining a high bar for craft ensuring components, documentation, and system usability are clear, usable and reliable.

• Experience defining and leading a design system at scale across multiple teams and products.
• A strong systems mindset able to think in abstractions, relationships, and long-term structures.
• A track record of driving adoption and influencing behaviour across teams without formal authority.
• Strong partnership with Engineering, grounded in shared ownership and mutual respect.
• Experience working across multiple product areas, balancing competing needs while maintaining
• coherence.
• Deep understanding of accessibility as a practice embedded into systems.
• Ability to articulate the value of platform work in terms of delivery speed, quality, and risk reduction.
• Clear, structured communication across designers, engineers, and senior stakeholders.

#LI-FC1 #LI-HYBRID Our vision at Tesco is to become every customer's favourite way to shop, whether they are at home or out on the move. Our core purpose is ‘Serving our customers, communities and planet a little better every day’. Serving means more than a transactional relationship with our customers. It means acting as a responsible and sustainable business for all stakeholders, for the communities we are part of and for the planet. We are proud to have an inclusive culture at Tesco where everyone truly feels able to be themselves. At Tesco, we not only celebrate diversity, but recognise the value and opportunity it brings. We're committed to creating a workplace where differences are valued, and make sure that all colleagues are given the same opportunities. We’re proud to have been accredited Disability Confident Leader and we’re committed to providing a fully inclusive and accessible recruitment process. For further information on the accessibility support we can offer, please click here. We’re a big business and we can offer a range of diverse full-time & part-time working patterns across our many business areas, which means that we can find something that works for you. We work in a more blended pattern - combining office and remote working. Our offices will continue to be where we connect, collaborate and innovate. If you are applying internally, please speak to the Hiring Manager about how this can work for you - Everyone is welcome at Tesco.