UX/UI Lead - Haken at Omnicom Production

Tokyo, , Japan -

Full Time

Start Date

Immediate

Expiry Date

04 May, 26

Salary

0.0

Posted On

03 Feb, 26

Experience

5 year(s) or above

Remote Job

Yes

Telecommute

Yes

Sponsor Visa

Skills

UX/UI Design, Website Delivery, Figma, User Flows, Wireframes, Visual Design, Design Systems, Collaboration, Mentoring, Project Management, Quality Assurance, Accessibility, Front-End Technologies, Scope Management, Process Improvement, Team Leadership

Industry

Advertising Services

Description

Job Title: Lead (Hands-On, Website Delivery Focus) Department: Digital & Experience Location: Tokyo, Japan (Hybrid) Reporting Line - Reports to: Head of Digital / Director, PMO & Digital (TBC based on structure) Role Summary We are looking for a hands-on Lead who deeply understands how websites are delivered end-to-end and who is ready to grow into a people leadership role to lead the team to help achieving the divisional goal. In the first 9 months, your primary mission is to: Internalize UI work that is currently outsourced, Establish clear UX/UI standards and a design system, and Put in place practical workflows and checklists that protect the team from overwork and the business from revenue loss. As those foundations stabilize, you will gradually transition into formal line management, building and leading a small team of UX/UI designers over the course of the first year. This role is ideal for a senior UX/UI designer who has been leading projects or mentoring others informally and now wants to step up into a Lead position, while still being very involved in day-to-day design and delivery. Key Responsibilities Hands-On UX/UI Design (Core of the Role) Design end-to-end website experiences: structure, flows, wireframes, high-fidelity UI, responsive layouts. Produce user flows, IA sketches, low-fi wireframes, and high-fi visual designs primarily in Figma. Prepare developer-ready handoffs (components, tokens, interaction states, annotations) and support implementation questions. Conduct pragmatic UX activities as needed (heuristic reviews, quick validation, stakeholder interviews) to keep projects moving. Website Delivery & Operational Discipline Map and continuously refine the standard delivery steps for website projects (from brief → IA → wireframes → UI → handoff → QA → launch). Coordinate closely with the Creative team to clearly define each group's responsibilities, ensuring there is no overlap or duplication of efforts. Identify where vague requirements or late changes will drive scope creep, overtime, or margin erosion, and flag these early with PMs and Account. Define “definition of done” for UX/UI at each project stage so handovers are clear and reduce rework. Contribute to post-mortems: analyze where design workflow caused overwork or defects and propose concrete fixes. UI Internalization & Design Standards (First 9 Months Focus) Audit existing UX/UI work (internal and vendor): What types of work are currently outsourced? Where are the quality or consistency gaps? Define and document UI standards: grid, typography, color tokens, spacing scale, motion rules, accessibility basics. Build and maintain a Figma-based design system (components, patterns, templates) and ensure it aligns with front-end implementation realities. Develop vendor/internal usage guidelines so external teams can plug into the same standards when needed. Create UX/UI QA checklists for: Responsive behavior (breakpoints, layouts) Interaction states Content overflow/edge cases Basic accessibility considerations Cross-Functional Collaboration Partner with Digital PMs, Developers, Producers, Creative, and Account to ensure UX/UI solutions are feasible, scoped correctly, and support the commercial goals of the project. Collaborate with front-end developers to maintain design–code parity, resolve implementation questions, and adjust designs pragmatically when needed. Support new business by creating UX flows, UI concepts, and pitch-ready visuals for proposals and RFPs. Help PMO refine estimation templates and WBS items for UX/UI tasks based on your experience of actual effort. Gradual People Leadership (Months 6–12) Start by mentoring junior/mid-level designers: design reviews, feedback, pairing on complex tasks, sharing ways of working. Help define skill matrices and growth paths for UX/UI designers in collaboration with the Head of Digital / PMO. Over 9–12 months, take on formal line management for 1–2 direct reports: Regular 1:1s Goal-setting and development plans Input to performance evaluations Provide input to resource planning and hiring decisions, based on a realistic understanding of what the team can deliver without burnout. Process, Governance & Continuous Improvement Align UX/UI activities with our standard project gates and workflows (intake, scoping, design, build, QA, launch). Create and maintain reusable templates, checklists, and playbooks for recurring UX/UI tasks. Track simple quality and efficiency indicators (e.g. design defects, rework due to unclear specs, design-related delays) and use them to improve processes. Pilot AI and automation tools that can help with layout checks, content fitting, accessibility checks, or documentation generation. First 12-Month Success Roadmap 0–3 Months Deliver several key website or page-level projects hands-on, demonstrating reliability and quality. Document the current “real” steps used to develop websites in our environment and identify pain points. Agree an MVP UI standards set and introduce basic checklists for design handoff and design QA. 3–9 Months Launch and use a design system in Figma on priority projects; demonstrate reduced rework and faster delivery for standard components. Clearly define which types of UI work should be internal vs vendor and successfully internalize a meaningful portion of that work. Show measurable improvement in overwork and rework linked to UX/UI through clearer scoping and better handoff. 9–12 Months Take on formal line management of 1–2 designers (or equivalent structured mentoring where HR structure requires). Demonstrate that the internal team can support multiple concurrent website streams with consistent quality and manageable workload. Present a simple Year 2 plan (team structure, scope of work we can internalize, advanced UX capabilities to build). Qualifications & Experience Must-Have 6+ years in UX/UI or product/digital design, with a strong emphasis on website UI and visual craft. Proven track record of shipping multiple end-to-end website projects (not just isolated pages or conceptual work), ideally in an agency or multi-stakeholder environment. Clear understanding of the full website delivery lifecycle and the impact of design decisions on scope, timeline, and budget. Expert-level Figma skills (components, variants, auto-layout, shared libraries). Solid working knowledge of front-end technologies (HTML/CSS, responsive behavior, design tokens) and the constraints of common frameworks/CMSs. Experience working with or building design systems and applying them consistently across projects. Demonstrated ability to work with PMs and engineers to estimate UX/UI effort and avoid rework. Nice-to-Have Experience internalizing work previously done by vendors or offshore teams and setting standards for them. Familiarity with CMS-based sites (AEM, Sitecore, WordPress, headless CMS) and component-based design for content authors. Exposure to analytics and UX optimization (e.g. GA4, Hotjar, A/B testing) and using data to inform design. Experience with global brands, automotive, or other complex, regulated categories is a plus. Language Japanese: Business level (JLPT N2+ or equivalent) – able to communicate with local stakeholders and understand requirements / feedback in Japanese. English: Business level – able to join global calls, read/write documentation, and present work in English when needed. Mindset & Culture Fit You genuinely enjoy designing and don’t want a role that is purely managerial or “deck-only.” You think in flows and processes, not just screens; you care how work moves from brief to launch. You are sensitive to team workload and business impact: you don’t treat overtime and rework as “normal.” You’re comfortable pushing back constructively when requests will blow up scope or timelines, and you can propose pragmatic alternatives. You enjoy coaching and levelling up others, and you’re ready to formalize that into a Lead role. You’re comfortable in a multi-cultural, bilingual environment and open to learning continuously (tools, methods, and domains). ご応募いただく場合、弊社のプライバシーポリシーにご同意いただいたものとみなします／Please note that applying to this role will mean you have read, understood, and agreed to our privacy policy: https://omnicomproduction.jp/privay_policy.html

Responsibilities

The role involves hands-on UX/UI design, focusing on delivering end-to-end website experiences and establishing UX/UI standards. Additionally, the Lead will gradually transition into a people leadership role, mentoring and managing a small team of designers.