UX Manager

UX Manager

About the Springer Nature Group

Springer Nature opens the doors to discovery for researchers, educators, clinicians, and other professionals. Every day, around the globe, our imprints, books, journals, platforms, and technology solutions reach millions of people. For over 175 years our brands and imprints have been a trusted source of knowledge to these communities and today, more than ever, we see it as our responsibility to ensure that fundamental knowledge can be found, verified, understood, and used by our communities – enabling them to improve outcomes, make progress, and benefit the generations that follow.

About the role

The UX manager is responsible for ensuring that the outcomes we need to achieve are deliverable, meet our design standards and can be measured. UX managers ensure their designers can work at a healthy cadence, are connected to the wider UX team and feel able to grow and develop in their careers.

This includes:

• line management, coaching and mentoring the UX designers in their domain

• delivery planning for UX work, in collaboration with their peers in SN Digital (SND) and Product, Platforms and Solutions (PPS)

• ensuring design delivers the required experience outcomes by supporting design practice and other enablers, e.g. supporting experience measurements and reporting.

• surfacing experience performance insights and delivery constrains

• ensuring the quality of design is delivered according to agreed standards

• maintaining alignment, quality and delivery effectiveness

• contributing to cross-department community of practice initiatives
  

The role sits with SN Digital, reporting into the Technology Director for their domain.

You will be required to develop and maintain close partnerships with PPS, and the Customer Insights and Experience Design team, who are responsible for design quality and standards, experience strategy and design direction.

Working with leads in PPS and Customer Insights, you will ensure that strategic and conceptual design is able to be delivered, customer insights and information flow freely, and that they are aligned to common goals, practices and a shared community of practice. You will be expected to raise risks when you see problems that could compromise the experience we are collectively aiming for. You will be a key bridge between the departments, ensuring work can flow smoothly and delivered in an appropriate time. You will be expected to get involved with planning, reviewing work and QA processes to help support the quality of delivery overall, as well as supporting your designers to do this with their teams.

With a deep understanding of design and design processes you will appropriately advocate for design within your domain, and domain leadership team, ensuring timelines and outcomes are feasible.

Responsibilities

Design Execution & Quality

• Ensure UX design quality against the UX design quality standards/guidance

• Create appropriate feedback mechanisms to monitor experience improvements over time and ensure experience outcomes are being delivered – to a consistent and reportable standard.

• Run regular design critiques and coach designers

• Ensure work is aligned to Design System standards and approach and support updates to design patterns

• Champion the design people, process and outcomes

• Collaborate with UX design leads to regularly review experience performance, raise risks and issues, and share information

• Partner with others in SN Digital in your domain to ensure work is planned and delivered to the right standard from start to finish.

Design Operations & Process

• Collaborate with PPS design and SN Digital to maintain healthy ways of working for designers within team

• Oversight of the design workload

• Define how problems/opportunities are iterated and scheduled.

• Establish processes to ensure there is a culture of evidence-based design

• Collaborate with UX leads to establish a regular cadence of effective communication, design reviews and join planning.

• The team runs appropriate validation, testing and feedback loops.

Team Leadership & Growth

• Develop the craft and progression of SND Designers

• Identify skills gaps and how to fill them

• Drive team health and retention

• Get actively involved with the wider UX community of practice, help to build it and shape it to support you and your domain designers

Management

• Provide UX Leadership as part of the domain leadership team

• Line management of SND UX Designers, and by extension their performance.

• Liaise and collaborate with SND Domain colleagues to unblock issues

• Ensure alignment with PPS design team to ensure design strategy and priorities can be delivered effectively

What’s expected

In 1–3 Months:

People & Team

• Build strong relationships with designers in your domain; understand their strengths, growth goals, and current workload.

• Establish regular 1:1s, coaching rhythms, and a predictable cadence for design critiques.

• Assess team health, skills gaps, and immediate support needs.

Ways of Working & Process

• Understand all existing design processes, design system standards, and workflows within SN Digital and PPS.

• Review current delivery pipelines with engineering, product, and PPS partners to understand how work currently flows.

• Begin shaping how evidence‑based design is practiced by auditing current research, insights, and measurement capabilities.

• Implement basic feedback and QA loops, even if lightweight.

Planning & Prioritisation

• Ensure visibility of all UX work in your domain (pipeline, active work, constraints).

• Partner with PPS leads to understand strategic design direction and upcoming priorities.

• Participate in domain planning and begin advocating for feasible timelines and realistic UX requirements.

Influence & Alignment

• Become recognised as the UX leadership voice within the domain leadership team.

• Start surfacing risks, blockers, and gaps that may compromise intended experience outcomes.

By 3–6 Months you will:

People & Team

• Put in place targeted development plans for designers, including training, mentoring, and career progression pathways.

• Begin actively improving team health and engagement scores through culture‑building practices.

• Address early skills gaps — via training, hiring, or cross‑team support.

Design Execution & Quality

• Establish a repeatable, structured design QA process aligned with PPS design quality standards.

• Run regular, effective design critiques that contribute to visible improvements in the quality and consistency of work.

• Ensure all work adheres to design system patterns and contribute updates back where needed.

Ways of Working

• Strengthen collaboration rhythms: joint planning, experience reviews, measurement updates, and cross‑department forums.

• Implement an evidence‑based design culture: insights incorporated into planning, designers using research feedback loops, measurable outcomes tracked.

• Create predictable delivery patterns where design contributes effectively to project planning.

Measurement & Insight

• Introduce consistent UX outcome reporting (experience metrics, performance insights, design quality indicators).

• Surface meaningful experience risks and constraints to domain leadership and PPS.

By 6–12 Months you will:

People & Team

• A high‑performing, healthy design team operating confidently with strong craft standards.

• Clear progression pathways in place; improved retention and designer satisfaction.

• Highly capable individual designers who contribute meaningfully across squads and cross‑functional initiatives.

Design Quality & Experience Outcomes

• Demonstrable improvements in customer experience metrics linked to design interventions.

• Domain‑level design quality consistently meeting or exceeding PPS standards.

• Strong contribution to the design system — patterns, guidelines, and strategic improvements.

Cross‑Department Leadership

• Trusted bridge between SN Digital and PPS, ensuring strategic and conceptual design is delivered effectively.

• Actively shaping cross‑department community of practice initiatives and helping enhance how UX works at org level.

• Known advocate for design as a strategic partner in the domain; influencing priorities, timelines, and roadmap decisions.

Operational Excellence

• Mature UX processes that integrate smoothly with engineering and product ways of working.

• Predictable, transparent design planning and workload management across the domain.

• An established feedback, testing, and measurement ecosystem supporting continuous improvement.

SN Skills Associated with the Job Profile

SN-Process & Systems Design​, SN-Global Perspective, SN-Customer / User Requirements Discovery​, SN-Communicates Effectively, SN-Product Design, SN-Manages Complexity, SN-Customer-Focused, SN-Cultivates Innovation, SN-Balances Stakeholder, SN-​Product Strategy & Execution​

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