Freelance Senior Designer

We are seeking an experienced Senior UX Designer to join our development team for a new website build project. The successful candidate will lead the UX/UI design efforts for a new publishing website for a major financial institution.

As the Senior Designer, you will be responsible for creating a cohesive and engaging user experience, developing design solutions, and collaborating with engineering to communicate implementation details.

This role requires a deep understanding of editorial design, a strong grasp of current design trends, and the ability to translate complex requirements into intuitive and visually compelling interfaces, as outlined in the below responsibilities:

• Lead the UX/UI design process from concept to implementation. Take ownership at a project level for not only your own work, but work that interacts or impacts your own.
• Collaborate closely with stakeholders in a professional and respectful way, including editorial teams, developers, and project managers, to gather requirements and understand the project’s vision. Work with clients and their expectations, navigating the relationship and taking ownership of client satisfaction.
• Create wireframes, prototypes, user flows, and high-fidelity mockups to communicate design ideas effectively.
• Conduct user research, usability testing, and analyse feedback to inform design decisions and ensure the best user experience.
• Design responsive and accessible interfaces that work seamlessly across various devices and platforms.
• Develop a consistent design language and style guide for the project, ensuring a cohesive look and feel across all digital touchpoints.
• Work with the development team to ensure that designs are technically feasible and implemented as intended. You should be able to adapt the designs to ensure they're feasible and able to be implemented within timeline and budget.
• Stay up-to-date with the latest design trends, tools, and best practices, and apply them to the project.
• Present design concepts and rationale to clients and internal teams, articulating the value of design choices in relation to business goals.

• Deliver work on time and according to specifications.
• Regular communication with both your team and the rest of the company. Willingness to check-in with your team throughout the week and notify them if you are struggling or need guidance on assigned tasks. Proactively address technical issues as they arise. Ability to prioritise tasks and to communicate issues to your team.
• Helping others on your team when asked for assistance.

Requirements

• 5+ years of proven experience in UX/UI design, with a strong portfolio showcasing editorial, publishing, or media-related projects.
• User Interface (UI) Design: Strong ability to create visually appealing, intuitive, and functional user interfaces.
• Systematic Design Approach: Understanding of design systems, reusable UI components, and pattern libraries to maintain consistency.
• Responsive Design: Experience designing responsive interfaces that adapt to different screen sizes and devices.
• Prototyping and Wireframing: Skilled in creating detailed wireframes and interactive prototypes using tools like Figma or, Sketch, or Adobe XD.
• Typography and Layout: A keen eye for typography, layout, and composition, particularly in the context of editorial design.
• Attention to Detail: Meticulous attention to detail, ensuring that designs meet the highest standards of quality.

• MVP thinking: Understanding of how to break down designs into an MVP and phased enhancements. Ability to prioritize design features based on user impact and scale back functionality to align with development constraints when needed.
• Scalability & Maintainability: Ability to design with future extensibility in mind, ensuring that UI components are modular and adaptable.

• CMS experience: Familiarity with modern WordPress or other CMS platforms.Understanding of how blocks and patterns work in the WordPress editor.
• Accessibility: Knowledge of accessibility standards (WCAG).
• Animation: Understanding of basic motion design principles and micro-interactions.
• Software Proficiency: Advanced proficiency in design tools such as Figma, Sketch, or the Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator).
• Web Technologies: Familiarity with front-end technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) and how design translates into code.
• User Research: Experience conducting user research, usability testing, and data analysis to inform design decisions.
• Design Systems: Experience in developing and maintaining design systems and style guides.
• Leadership: Proven experience leading design projects and collaborating and guiding development teams.
• Iterative Approach: Experience in an agile environment, working in short feedback loops rather than waterfall-style delivery.
• Familiarity with WordPress or other CMS platforms, knowledge of accessibility standards (WCAG), and experience with animation and micro-interactions.
• Upper Intermediate use of English (we use the British Council’s level B2 as a guide) and Japanese (JLPTN2)

Project Specific Skill Set Requirements

Project Summary: New corporate website build for a joint venture between two global financial institutions. requiring a world-class, trust-building design that works across English and Japanese audiences.

Target launch: October 31st 2026.

Timezone requirement: Client is based in Japan (JST) time.

Project Specific Skillset Expectation for Design:

• Experience designing for financial/institutional clients
• Bilingual layout experience (English + Japanese typography)
• WCAG 2.2 AA+ accessibility compliance
• Familiarity with WordPress Full Site Editing and block-based design systems
• Ability to work with evolving brand guidelines

Project technical setup:

• Hosted on: WordPress VIP
• Codebase: WordPress with Full Site Editing (FSE) / block editor
• Other specifics: Multisite, multilingual (EN + JA), responsive design required

Benefits

Whether you are a freelancer, or a permanent member of the team, we want all Humans to have a fantastic experience, and benefit from Human Made’s people focused approach to work.

• Gain experience working in an agency, without a long term commitment
• Competitive day rates
• Work alongside some of the WordPress industry’s top engineers
• Access to Slack channels which will open up plenty of opportunities to network with other WordPress peers at Human Made
• The opportunity to explore Human Made with the potential of becoming a full-time employee