Monica Vinader
Design & Development Director (15-month FTC)
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Job Title: Design & Development Director (15-Month FTC)
Location: Norfolk / Hybrid
Reporting To: Chief Product Officer
Who We Are
At Monica Vinader, we believe luxury should be empowering, long-lasting, and responsibly made. Guided by integrity, craftsmanship, and innovation, our goal is to elevate people’s lives by opening access to a more beautiful world.
From crafting consciously with recycled precious metals and ethically sourced materials, to designing enduring, versatile pieces made to be layered, loved, and lived in every day, we are redefining what modern jewellery can be. We create jewellery that marks moments, tells stories, and becomes part of who you are, all while making responsible luxury more accessible.
Our commitment to sustainability, innovation, and positive impact continues to be recognised across the industry. We are proud to have received:
- Responsible Jewellery Brand, 2026 – Country & Town House
- Responsible Luxury Business of the Year, 2025 & 2026 – Positive Luxury
- Top 50 Inspiring Workplaces (UK & NI), 2024 – Inspiring Workplaces
With a global footprint across physical retail, e-commerce, and trusted partners, we put our community at the heart of everything we do. Proudly female-founded and inclusive, we build meaningful relationships with the people who wear and love our jewellery.
Where We Need Your Help
The Design & Development Director leads Monica Vinader's Design & Development function and drives our creative pipeline from brief through to development sign-off — the guardian of the brief, the driver of the calendar, and the person who ensures creative delivery meets our standards and pace.
We need someone with a genuinely strong point of view: someone who will sit in a critique and say clearly whether the work answers the brief, is new enough, and will sell — and hold that line with the design team, the founder, and the ELT.
This is a 15-month fixed-term contract with a defined mandate: land creative direction and product pipeline for FY27 and FY28 against agreed go-to-market and critical path milestones, leading a team of three direct reports covering design and product development. You will report to the Chief Product Officer.
Your time spans briefing, critique, creative planning, critical path oversight, team leadership, and cross-functional work with Merchandising, Supply, Brand & Regions — a role that is detailed as well as strategic; you'll be as comfortable in a technical pack as in a boardroom.
This role requires 2-3 days per week at our Holkham (Norfolk) office, with hybrid working for the remainder, or the London office where that suits.
What You’ll Do
Role Purpose
The Design & Development Director is accountable for the brief, the plan, the commerciality, and the on-time delivery of Monica Vinader's design and development output. You write and own the brief, working tightly with the category team, you own the creative calendar, you chair critique, you judge the work against the brief, you drive decisions to a conclusion, and you hold the Design & Development team to the go-to-market and critical path calendar.
You are the single point of accountability for whether the brief is met, whether the work is developable, and when it lands. Operating in a fast-paced, agile environment, you will balance granular detail with strategic thinking to drive a consistent, innovative product pipeline.
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Guardian of the Brief (Accountable)
- Co-create the brief: With our Head of Category Management, write and own the design brief for every project and season, so there is a single, unambiguous statement of what the work must achieve: customer, occasion, price architecture, category need, margin, volume, option count, and what "new" means in this context.
- Judge against the brief & hold the line: Assess every concept presented against the brief and say so clearly, in the room, with reasons. Your judgement is on brief compliance, newness, customer relevance, and commerciality.
- Delivery to the brief: As concepts evolve, ensure alignment to the brief, or validate deviation from the brief is for a strategic region. Own this clarity and decision-making. Ensure there is strong tension between the brand, regional, and commercial needs vs creative innovation and distinctiveness, and this is aligned and resolved appropriately.
Creative Strategy & Planning
- Creative plan & direction: Own the seasonal creative plan sequenced against go-to-market milestones; facilitate agreement on seasonal direction between the CPO and Co-Founder & Artistic Director, converting it into actionable briefs.
- Design language: Hold the team to the Monica Vinader design language across proportion, finish, construction, layering, and wearability, using the Co-Founder & Artistic Director and Senior Designer as the reference point, so every piece is recognisably MV. You will apply and defend a standard you did not personally set.
- Commercial brief: Respond to the annual Product Brief and seasonal commercial briefs with viable design options against price architecture, category need, margin, and volume expectations.
- Trends & aesthetic benchmarking: Ensure trend, material, and competitor benchmarking happens to a defined cadence, is properly briefed into the team, and converts into design opportunities that land in the seasonal plan.
- Originality & IP: Own originality assessment at concept stage, and the IP and design registration gates.
Briefing, Critique & Design Process
- Design exploration: Ensure multiple routes are explored against every brief and properly finessed before a supplier is briefed.
- Critique & sign off: Own the design calendar and chair critique. Give a clear view, drive to a decision rather than another round, record it. You sign off that the brief is met and the work can enter development.
- Supplier briefing & cost: Own that supplier briefs are complete and on time, with technical content authored by the Head of Product Development. Hold the team to cost targets at concept stage, and champion component reuse to cut cost, lead time, and complexity.
Development Milestones & Critical Path (Accountable)
- Critical path & sample approval: Hold accountability for development milestones against the critical path (delivery led by the Head of Product Development).
- Viability, quality & escalation: Ensure designs are viable, manufacturable, and meet quality standards; use returns/repairs insight to design out known failure modes; surface slippage, cost, or quality risk to the CPO early, with options to solve.
- Process ownership: Own and continuously improve the NPD process end-to-end, including gate definitions and the calendar of alignment moments between Design, Merchandising, Supply, and Brand.
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Design & Development Team Leadership
- Lead the team: Lead, coach, and develop three direct reports (product development, senior design, junior design), setting clear objectives and giving direct feedback. Lead creative specialists without being their creative author — your authority comes from clarity, judgement, and advocacy, not out-designing them.
- Learn the craft: Get fluent in MV's materials, constructions, and manufacturing constraints quickly, so you can support the team in the detail, not just manage it.
- Resourcing & founder mentorship: Structure workload against the product plan, flagging resourcing risk early; support the founder-led mentorship the Co-Founder & Artistic Director gives the design team.
- Fixed-term handover: Document process, decisions, and design intent throughout the contract, and develop the team so the function is fully transferable at handover — holding the team steady through the period of transition.
Cross-Functional Leadership & Integration
- Brand, Merchandising, Supply: Partner with Brand on consistent product storytelling; with Merchandising/Category on assortment architecture and range rationalisation; with Supply & Quality on cost, capacity, and sourcing decisions, engaging early so supplier capability shapes the range as it's built.
- Sustainability, trade & trading forums: Design within MV's responsible sourcing commitments; support trade, wholesale, and regional requirements; represent Design & Development in range review and go-to-market forums, defending decisions with commercial reasoning.
- Presentation & ambassadorship: Own the Seasonal Product Presentation and timely issue of design assets; represent Design & Development to the ELT, the wider business, and independently on supplier visits and sourcing trips; keep the design studio a functional, inspirational creative space.
What You’ll Bring
- Category background: A jewellery background is not required — we're open to leaders from adjacent design-led categories (fashion, accessories, footwear, watches, eyewear, leather goods, homeware, beauty, premium consumer product), provided you've driven a design and development pipeline at pace and with rigour, and can build technical fluency quickly.
- Point of view: A clear, expressible point of view on customer, commerciality, newness, and process one you'll voice in the room, defend under challenge from senior stakeholders including the founder and CPO, and commit to fully once a decision is made.
- Calendar ownership: Proven end-to-end ownership of a product calendar (brief → concept → development → sign-off → launch), holding a Head of Product Development to account without being the deepest technical expert in the room.
- Organisation: Exceptional organisation across complex, multi-workstream calendars with many dependencies — evidence of building or fixing a critical path, not just working to one.
- Range of altitude: Comfortable operating strategically and in the detail of a range plan, critical path, or technical pack — this is a small, fast team.
- Leadership of creative people: A track record of leading designers or other creative specialists and demonstrably improving their output.
Capability Framework Alignment
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