Leadership

My design leadership style is people first: people are foundational to building great things. With people at the centre, I operate using the four P's of leadership: success for People, Position, Products, and Process.

My leadership principles

People Success

I build high-performing teams by:

 

• Team Leadership: Leading and scaling multi-disciplinary teams (product design, content design, service design) delivering innovative, evidence-based across web and native platforms. Shaping, influence and leading key strategic transformation initiatives and change programmes.

 Vision and Growth: Defining the vision for team development, set clear milestones, and align personal growth with business goals.

• Culture Building: Fostering an inclusive, high-performing culture that attracts, retains, and develops top design talen

Position Success

I influenc strategy and embedding design at senior level by:

• Design Strategy: Owning customer experience, setting a clear vision for world-class digital and assisted journeys.

• Customer-Centricity: Driving a culture where customer insights and behavioural-science-based research guide decision-making at every level.

• Executive Influence: Securing senior stakeholder buy-in through storytelling, impact mapping, and strategic vision-setting.

• Cross-Portfolio Partnership: Partnering with Directors/Heads of Product and Technology to shape long-term plans that balance user, business, and technical needs.

• CX Leadership: Scale customer experience maturity across the organisation.

Product Success

I producing provable world-class digital experiences by:

 

• Experience Vision: Owning the end-to-end digital experience and define strategies that balance business, brand, and customer needs while embracing the future of AI-infused user experiences.

 

• Design Excellence: Elevating visual design, content design, and information architecture to industry-leading standards.

 

• Design System Leadership: Leading the evolution and adoption of design systems, ensuring consistency, quality and scalability across platforms.

 

• Performance Tracking: Defining and monitor CX KPIs and maturity models, ensuring experience design delivers measurable customer and business outcomes.

 

• Accessibility Leadership: Championing inclusive design and embed WCAG 2.2 standards and assistive technology practices across all outputs.

Process Success

I apply scalable UCD methods that drive measurable outcomes by:

• Insight Integration: Embedding research and real customer insight into every stage of product development so strategy and execution are evidence led, not opinion driven.

• Service Design Practices: Making service design a standard way of working for complex problems, running practical workshops, mapping end to end journeys, defining service patterns, and using blueprinting to align teams around reality.

• Operational Excellence: Raising operational standards by working closely with Design Operations to tighten workflows, improve rituals, and create faster, clearer feedback loops across teams.

• Content Strategy: Elevating content design through clear content models, strong information hierarchy, and tone of voice systems that translate brand into meaningful digital experiences.

• Innovation and Tools: Introducing and scaling the right tools, including AI enabled design workflows, integrated analytics, and structured experimentation with emerging technology.

• Data Partnership: Embedding data into everyday design decisions by building strong partnerships with analytics and optimisation teams, ensuring insight informs action.

• Delivery Accountability: Taking full accountability for the quality, risks, and outcomes of design across the portfolio, setting a high bar and making sure we deliver against it.

What people are saying

Director Digital Strategy, CX & Delivery
- Sky

“During a significant digital transformation and frequent competing priorities, David always remained calm and level headed. He has the ability and experience to give leadership in a design practice whilst bringing business pragmatism to design choices. This would then distill into the broader design teams thinking.”

Liam Cadd

CEO
- Castor

“David is knowledgeable and passionate about the intricacies of product and UX. Capable and willing to manage all the other aspects of Design, almost like having a creative director wrapped into the role. Measurable UX output has always been spot on and he is hands-on, which is essential in a startup.”

Derk Arts

VP of Engineering
- Castor

“What impresses me most about David is his ability to instill Design excellence within his teams, adopting best practices and encouraging world-class output all the while being a reliable partner to Product, Engineering and Marketing.”

David Sigley

VP Marketing
- Castor


"We collaborated extremely well during times of limited resources and high-pressure delivery. He always kept an amazing balance of protecting the culture and quality of delivery but also meeting extremely difficult timelines."

Doug Weatherhead

Lead Product Designer
- Castor

“David is the best manager I have had the opportunity to work with. He joined our team at a time when the company was scaling, the process was in chaos and we lacked a systematic approach to design and research. After a few months of his hard work, the situation was unrecognisable.”

Agnieszka Stezycka

Product Design manager
- Bullhorn

“David is an amazing design leader who has experience in many areas of design. He has a great sense of creating a vision and working towards goals, and is not afraid to take a hands on approach.”

Franke Kingma

Lead Service Designer
- Bullhorn

"It's so rare to work for a highly effective leader who is also exceptionally friendly and supportive like David."

Sherry Ladzinski

Head of product
- Invenias

“David had a huge impact when he joined Invenias, transforming our UX processes and tooling for both UX and UI.”

Elliot Lack

Senior UX Designer
- Castor

“His ability to lead and inspire the team to create innovative and user-centered designs was truly remarkable.”

Nikolay Tsanev