Design Director

Job title: Design Director,

Location: London, Bristol, Lisbon or Edinburgh (including hybrid)

Kaluza wants to power a world where net-zero is within everyone’s reach, by building the platform that will accelerate a sustainable, affordable and resilient energy transition. It’s a huge challenge, but often the toughest problems are the most rewarding to solve.

Since launching in 2019, Kaluza’s technology has been empowering some of the biggest energy suppliers to better serve millions of customers.

From revolutionising billing to smart electric vehicle charging, our real-time cloud platforms transform energy retailer operations, reducing cost to serve and boosting engagement. And most importantly, they enable suppliers' customers to drive decarbonisation with smart, low carbon technologies.

Where in the world of Kaluza will I be working? 

You’ll be joining the Kaluza Platform Design community. We’re made up of squad embedded Product Designers and cross-functional practices in Brand, Content Design, Design Ops, Research and Service Design.

We’re dedicated to forming partnerships with Product and Engineering to solve complex problems. For us that means everything we do, we apply platform thinking — going beyond user centred design — looking at the big picture of ecosystems, designing for interconnectedness and simplifying services.

We're looking for a Design Director to lead our Platform Design team. This is a distributed, multidisciplinary team (London, Bristol, Edinburgh, Lisbon) consisting of Product Designers, Content Designers, Service Designers and User Researchers.

You’ll partner with Product, Engineering and Data to solve complex problems and simplify our services, bringing a human-centred approach to developing Kaluza’s products, services, and technologies. You’ll drive design thinking across the organisation, always considering the bigger ecosystem in which we operate. 

Following two years of rapid growth, our 30+ person design team is now entering an exciting new chapter as we accelerate our global B2B SaaS business.

What will I be doing?

Reporting to our VP of Product,  you’ll lead the Platform Design team to help Kaluza power a clean energy future. As a member of the leadership team, you’ll make strategic decisions that impact the business as a whole. You’ll support and develop the Platform Design team by increasing its influence and impact in Kaluza and beyond. You will drive an exceptional design team culture where you mentor, coach and grow future leaders.

You will be: 

• Playing an active role in the Kaluza leadership team, co-creating vision and leadership strategies to drive customer value in a B2B space, in collaboration with your product, data and engineering counterparts.
• Working closely with our Heads of Design and Design Leads to take our practices to the next level. 
• Working on projects ranging from the delivery of long-term large-scale change programmes, to fast-paced delivery of experimental new products.
• Line managing Heads of Design, developing and mentoring them to maximise their potential and facilitate growth.
• Creating the opportunities for your team to operate as world-class designers and researchers, removing barriers and opening doors.
• Inspiring others to build brilliant, human-centred products and services for a diverse range of users and customers 
• Developing a diverse and evolving toolbox of methods to enable teams to solve both business and customer problems.
• Helping to create a happy, safe working culture which nurtures and keeps hold of our design and research talent. 
• Being an ambassador for our Kaluza Values within Design and the wider business
• Defining how we track and measure our impact as a team to deliver real change
  
  

Is this the job for me?

Ideally you will have experience in:

• Setting strategies and translating them in ways that resonate with senior stakeholders in technical and non-technical teams.  
• Growing and mentoring design teams and culture. 
• Building meaningful relationships and influence across a complex organisation.
• Agile, lean, evidence-based and human-centred design. 
• Visualising problems, then developing and testing solutions using a diverse toolbox of methods and techniques.
• Simplifying complex experiences and journeys. 
• Showing excellent organisational skills, clear communication, and attention to detail.
• Making analytical and data-driven design decisions.
• Managing varied and sometimes competing priorities. You are comfortable taking decisions quickly in dynamic contexts.
• Building high-performing B2B SaaS products and services with a global reach.

• Have a passion for understanding the real-life problems of real people 
• Enjoy coaching others
• Enjoy tackling complex problems and thinking laterally
• Recognise biases and assumptions (including your own), and seek ways to understand and address them
• Are empathetic with colleagues as well as with customers
• Recognise there’s always more to learn
• Thrive in a fast moving environment

Kaluza Values

Here at Kaluza we have five core values that guide us as a business: 

We’re on a mission, We build together, We’re inclusive, We get it done, We communicate with purpose.

Our values are not words on a wall — they are at the heart of our culture. They are how we make decisions and how we treat each other. They are concrete and clear, and reflect what we as people, and as a business, really care about.

Kaluza’s vision is to power a world where net-zero is within everyone’s reach. Would you be interested in joining us to help achieve this?

From us you’ll get

• An additional 9% of your salary to spend on a wide range of benefits, including your pension, a selection of lifestyle, health and green benefits, or simply take it as cash!
• Private Medical Insurance and Life Assurance
• 26 days holiday, including a day off for your birthday you can take at any point
• Flexible bank holidays, 5 of which you can choose to take whenever you like (3 are fixed days)
• Progressive leave policies with no qualifying service periods, including 26 weeks full pay if you have a new addition to your family
• Discretionary annual bonus
• A dedicated personal learning budget
• Flexible working — we trust you to work in a way that suits your lifestyle
• And more...

Even better? You’ll have access to these benefits from day 1 when you join.

We want the best people

We’re keen to meet people from all walks of life — our view is that the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be. We want to build teams which represent a variety of experiences, perspectives and skills, and we recognise talent on the basis of merit and potential.

We understand some people may not apply for jobs unless they tick every box. But if you're excited about joining us and think you have some of what we're looking for, even if you're not 100% sure, we'd still love to hear from you.

Find out more about working in Kaluza on our careers page and LinkedIn.