The posting
We’re building the UK’s next generation engineering powerhouse, providing critical technology that strengthens national security and resilience.
We specialise in turning advances in sensing, AI, and communications into operational capability for the edge, where connectivity may be degraded or denied. Our work focuses on accelerating the deployment of technology, improving decision-making for frontline teams, and protecting people and critical assets in demanding environments.
Headquartered in Bristol, Rowden employs around 200 people and operates over 20,000 square feet of engineering and manufacturing facilities. We have a growing international footprint and are one of Europe’s fastest-growing engineering businesses.
About the role
Rowden’s products work in environments that push technology to its limits: degraded connectivity, high-stakes decisions, complex operational contexts. Designing for that isn’t like designing a consumer app. The problem spaces are genuinely difficult, the users have demanding jobs, and the margin for poor design is low.
We’re looking for a UX Designer who thrives in that kind of complexity. Someone who can take a loosely-defined, ambiguous problem, build a clear understanding of what’s actually going on, and turn it into a well-reasoned design approach that holds up under scrutiny.
This is a high-autonomy role. You’ll work closely with product and engineering, with real influence over how problems are defined, not just how solutions are shaped. You’ll work directly with front-end engineers during implementation, conduct your own user research, and take genuine ownership of the quality of what ships. Priorities shift and delivery cycles move quickly. That’s part of how Rowden works, and the right person will find that energising.
Candidates must be eligible for SC clearance.
More information about security clearance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/united-kingdom-security-vetting-clearance-levels
Key areas of responsibility
- Owning end-to-end UX design: from early problem framing and research through to implementation, with real accountability for the quality of what ships.
- Making sense of complex, ambiguous problem spaces, building structured understanding, identifying options, and communicating clear recommendations with honest trade-offs.
- Producing design artefacts at the right fidelity for the moment: flows, wireframes, prototypes, whatever moves the work forward most effectively.
- Planning and conducting user research, including interviews, surveys, and moderated usability testing, and translating findings into concrete design decisions and product direction.
- Working directly with front-end engineers during delivery: refining designs in context, resolving edge cases, and ensuring what gets built matches intent.
- Designing with accessibility in mind, applying relevant standards (WCAG) so products work for users with diverse needs and abilities.
- Contributing to a coherent product experience across the platform, establishing scalable patterns where appropriate.
- Communicating design thinking clearly across the business, to engineers, product stakeholders, and senior leadership alike.
- Representing the user throughout the organisation and contributing to the development of the wider product and design team.
Key skills, experience and behaviours
What we’re looking for
We’re looking for someone with strong experience designing complex digital products, not just UI, but the full UX problem: understanding users, structuring systems, making decisions under uncertainty. You should bring:
- A portfolio showing end-to-end design work on technically complex products, with evidence of your thinking as well as your output. We want to understand how you approach problems, not just what they looked like when finished.
- Proven ability to take a loosely-defined problem and turn it into structured understanding, viable approaches, and clear recommendations with honest trade-offs.
- Strong skills across interaction design, workflow design, and structuring complex systems into usable interfaces.
- Experience setting up and running user research, including interviews, surveys, and moderated usability testing, and using insights to drive real decisions without over-indexing on process.
- Proficiency in Figma as your primary design and prototyping tool.
- The communication skills to present design thinking confidently to stakeholders at every level, and to translate between technical teams and end users.
It’s a bonus if you’ve worked on:
- Operationally complex tools: configuration, system management, or multi-device and multi-role environments.
- Design systems and scalable interaction patterns.
- Building or contributing to the growth of a design function.
About you
- You’re comfortable with ambiguity. You don’t need a fully-defined brief to get started, and you’re good at building clarity where there isn’t much.
- You’re self-directed and proactive. You manage your own priorities and output, and you move work forward without waiting to be told what to do next.
- You care about the rigour of your thinking as much as the finish of your output. You show your work.
- You’re pragmatic about research. You use it to make better decisions, not as a process to follow for its own sake.
- You communicate with clarity and confidence, and you’re as comfortable in a conversation with an engineer as you are presenting to a senior stakeholder.
- You want to understand the problem space deeply. Rowden’s work is complex and high-stakes, and you see that as something to lean into, not work around.
Working at Rowden
We are committed to building a flexible, inclusive, and enabling company. Our aim is to create a diverse team of talented people with unique skills, experience, and backgrounds, so please apply and come as you are!
We also recognise the importance of flexible working and support this wherever we can. We typically operate a flexible, hybrid-working model, with an average 3 days in the office each week (dependent on the role). We welcome the opportunity to discuss flexibility, part-time working requirements and/or workplace adjustments with all our applicants.
Rowden is a Disability Confident Committed company, and we actively encourage people with disabilities and health conditions to apply for our roles. Please let us know your requirements early on so that we can make sure you have everything you need up front to help make the recruitment process and experience as easy as possible.
Finally, if you feel that you don’t meet all the criteria included above but have transferable skills and relevant experience, we’d still love to hear from you!
