Principal Designer

What you'll bring to the team

Principal Experience Designer

Location:London/Hybrid

Hours: 37.5 hours per week

Contract:Permanent - Salaried

Merlin is embarking on an exciting business transformation focused on sustainable growth, underpinned by technological leaps in capability. The key responsibilities of this role are to lead the entire design process of the customer identity and account experience. This foundational ecosystem connects millions of guests to our attractions, brands, and digital products. You will define the long-term vision for how guests create accounts, sign in, manage their information, and build deeper relationships with Merlin.

Collaborating closely with teams from Product, Engineering, Security, Growth, Legal, and Operations, the Principal Experience Designer influences the design direction for the identity domain from the initial discovery phase through to refined execution.

This role requires strategic thinking, a strong command of interaction design, and the ability to create clarity within a complex cross-functional environment, while placing trust, convenience, and connection at the centre of the guest experience.

Responsiblities:

• Define a clear, compelling vision for a seamless guest account experience and turn it into actionable journeys, principles and decision frameworks.
• Lead the experience design for the customer identity and account domain, covering registration, authentication, account management, preferences, personalisation and connected digital touchpoints.
• Stay ahead of industry trends and evolving customer expectations, integrating new ideas and innovations to advance the identity experience.

• Provide design leadership across the identity domain, ensuring consistency across flows, states and micro‑interactions.
• Lead and conduct user research, gathering qualitative and quantitative insights to inform design decisions.
• Navigate complex Legal, Privacy, Security and Operations requirements while maintaining an exceptional guest experience.
• Deliver hands‑on design throughout the full lifecycle: insight synthesis, information architecture, journey mapping, interaction design, prototyping and visual refinement.
• Oversee and guide work delivered by agencies or contractors, ensuring clarity, quality and alignment.
• Contribute to the development of Merlin’s Experience Design practice, modelling collaboration, craft excellence and core values.

• Partner with product managers, engineers and key stakeholders to define and prioritise user experience requirements.
• Work with Growth and Operations teams to deepen customer relationships and remove friction from identity‑related moments.
• Balance business needs, operational realities, security requirements and guest expectations to deliver simple, trustworthy experiences.
• Collaborate with developers to ensure accurate implementation and solve technical or UX challenges as they arise.
  
  Communicate design decisions effectively, presenting research and rationale to both technical and non‑technical audiences.
• Engage senior stakeholders to align identity experience goals with broader business strategy.
• Provide regular progress updates, presenting solutions and collecting feedback.
• Manage budgets and delivery milestones related to the identity experience, operating autonomously and identifying risks early.

• Proven experience designing identity, authentication, login, account management, loyalty, or related systems across large-scale consumer environments.
• At least 5 years of experience leading complex, end-to-end journeys across multiple products, brands, or touchpoints.
• Proven track record collaborating with Product and Engineering teams to define problems, align on solutions, and drive execution in an agile framework.
• Strong portfolio demonstrating high craft in interaction design, prototyping, systems thinking and refined execution.
• Demonstrated expertise in conducting and integrating user research into design processes.
• Proven ability to incorporate legal requirements, security considerations and accessibility standards into design work.
• C…