Midweight Spatial Designer
Location: East London (hybrid)
Salary: £38,000 to £45,000, dependent on experience
The Snapshot
- Independent spatial design studio working globally with leading brands
- Retail, hospitality, workplace, and experiential projects across the UK and internationally
- Around 3 to 5 years' experience, but your portfolio matters more than the number
- Excellent SketchUp skills are essential, no exceptions
- Retail and brand environment experience is highly desirable
The Studio
We're working with an independent East London spatial design studio that punches well above its weight. Small, ambitious, and with a proper design culture, they create work for leading global brands as well as culturally relevant and emerging clients across retail, hospitality, workplace, and experiential environments.
They deliberately avoid a house style. Every project is treated as a fresh creative problem, with work that responds specifically to the brand, the audience, and the context. Strong creative thinking, backed by the practical understanding to actually get things built.
The Role
This is a hands-on design role for someone ready to take real ownership of their work and grow towards a more senior position.
Working closely with the Creative Director and Senior Designers, you'll be involved throughout the design process, from research, ideation, and concept development through to spatial planning, 3D design, visualisation, materials, detailing, and design-intent documentation.
They're after someone who can respond intelligently to creative direction while bringing their own ideas to the table. You should be comfortable developing a concept rather than simply executing one, and increasingly confident making design decisions on your own.
It's a small studio, so everyone mucks in. You'll be proactive, organised, and engaged with the wider project, with the support and direction of senior team members behind you.
Day to Day, You'll Be...
- Contributing to spatial design projects from initial concept through design development and delivery
- Working closely with the Creative Director and Senior Designers to develop and resolve creative concepts
- Generating ideas and translating them into compelling spatial proposals
- Developing space planning, 3D models, visualisations, materials, fixtures, and design details
- Building and maintaining well-organised SketchUp models, a core part of the studio's design process
- Producing clear, accurate design-intent drawings and documentation
- Creating high-quality presentations that communicate ideas and design thinking clearly
- Researching materials, finishes, fabrication methods, references, and emerging design ideas
- Taking part in internal reviews, workshops, brainstorms, and client presentations
- Responding intelligently to feedback and developing work through successive iterations
- Coordinating with other designers, consultants, fabricators, and project partners
- Building an understanding of programme, scope, budget, and the commercial side of projects
- Taking responsibility for your own workload, deadlines, and deliverables
- Contributing to the quality, culture, and day-to-day life of the studio
What You'll Bring
- A strong portfolio demonstrating conceptual thinking, spatial design ability, and well-resolved work
- Experience within a respected spatial, retail, experiential, or architectural design practice
- Retail and brand environment experience is highly desirable; hospitality, workplace, and experiential are also relevant
- Excellent SketchUp skills. This one is essential to the role
- Good Vectorworks capability
- Strong rendering and visualisation skills, ideally using V-Ray
- A good understanding of materials, fabrication, construction, and detailing
- Experience developing design concepts into increasingly resolved spatial proposals
- The ability to read and understand architectural drawings
- Experience producing design-intent drawings and documentation
- The ability to communicate ideas quickly through sketches, diagrams, and visual references
- Strong presentation and graphic communication skills
- Good working knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite
- Curiosity about emerging creative tools, including AI, and how they can support ideation, visualisation, and the wider design process
- Good organisational skills and a collaborative, proactive approach
The Person
They're interested in designers who are curious, culturally engaged, and developing their own creative point of view. You should care about what's happening beyond conventional interior design, across architecture, fashion, graphic design, art, music, product design, fabrication, technology, and emerging forms of physical retail. A genuine connection to youth, streetwear, and contemporary culture would be a real advantage.
You don't need to know everything. What matters is that you're curious, take responsibility for your work, ask good questions, and have the ambition to keep improving.
What's on Offer
- Genuine exposure to the full life of a project, from early creative thinking and strategy through to delivery on site
- Close working with the Creative Director, Senior Designers, and a tight-knit team, plus exposure to clients, collaborators, makers, and specialists
- The chance to learn quickly and take on responsibility without disappearing into the hierarchy of a much larger practice
- Hybrid working, with the flexibility to work remotely a few days per week
- Generous holiday, including 25 days' annual leave plus bank holidays, a wellbeing day, two community days, and your birthday off, with additional leave for length of service
- Annual personal growth and professional development budget