Midweight Designer
Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: Holborn Store Support Centre and Home, London, EC1N 2HT
Contract type: Fixed-Term Assignment
Business area: Marketing
Closing date: 11 April 2025
Requisition ID: 297689
We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you at Sainsbury’s. We’re one of the biggest supermarkets in the UK with one of the largest websites. So marketing here really happens at scale. We move a lot faster than you’d think too, across Brand Planning, Brand Comms and Creative, Digital Marketing, CRM and Loyalty, Nectar 360, Insights, and Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability. More people shopping with us each week means more interactions. And thanks to data insight, we understand customers in a way that almost nobody else does. We work alongside incredible brand partners and the best agencies around. So if you have a passion to learn, grow and experience new teams, come and explore it all with us.
Midweight Designer
Location: Hybrid – (London, Holborn / Farringdon)
Contract Type: FTC 5 months
About the Role
We’re looking for a talented Midweight Designer to join our in-house creative team at Zest Studio. This role is ideal for a hands-on designer who thrives in a fast-paced retail environment and has experience designing across both print and digital channels. You’ll work on a range of customer-facing campaigns, bringing ideas to life from concept to final execution, working with a variety of creative teams and under the guidance of the leadership team.
About the Studio
Zest is a multi-channel in-house agency that works across multiple brands (Sainsbury’s, Smart Charge, Argos, Habitat & Tu), producing creative content ranging from in-store POS and digital design to organic and paid social content. You will be working with multiple teams across brand, marketing, legal, campaign, and production; strong communication and presentation skills are essential. You’ll need to confidently present ideas, justify design decisions, and adapt feedback into high-quality creative solutions.
What You’ll Be Doing
- Designing for a variety of multi-channel, through-the-line formats, including POS, in-store comms, web, email, and social media.
- Taking projects from initial brief to final artwork, ensuring high-quality, brand-consistent outputs.
- Managing multiple projects simultaneously, working to deadlines in a fast-paced retail environment.
- Ensuring all assets align with brand guidelines and are optimised for different customer touchpoints.
- Keeping up with design trends and innovation in retail marketing.
- Understanding the retail environment and campaign rollout.
Collaboration & Partnerships
- Build strong relationships with the internal team at Zest, as well as external agency partners, showing respect for the contribution of each discipline and each individual.
- Develop positive relationships with ‘internal’ clients – offering credible suggestions regarding design solutions for the brand(s).
- Communicate effectively, collaborate productively, and serve as an example for more junior craft and production teams.
- Partner closely with the Creative function within Zest and foster a sounding board partnership that champions the best designs delivering results.
- Utilise systems, tools, and processes that enable the team to excel.
What We’re Looking For
- 3+ years’ experience in a multi-channel design role, ideally within retail, agency, or in-house creative teams.
- Strong portfolio demonstrating expertise across both print and digital design.
- A proven track record of delivering high-quality work as a designer.
- A genuine passion for craftsmanship and design detail.
- Experience managing multiple projects simultaneously.
- Proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign).
- Ability to take ownership of projects, problem-solve, and work independently when needed.
- A keen eye for detail, layout, typography, and visual storytelling.
- Experience working within brand guidelines and delivering consistent creative solutions.
- Motion graphics or video editing skills (After Effects, Premiere Pro) are a plus but not essential.
- Experience with Figma is a plus but not essential.
- Adaptability – willingness to adjust to changing client needs and challenges.
- Communication – ability to convey complex ideas clearly and build strong internal relationships.
- Behavioural Flexibility – active listening, tailoring communication to different audiences, and responding to behavioural cues.
- Emotional Intelligence – managing emotions effectively, responding to feedback with empathy, and understanding client/audience perspectives.
- Curiosity – a drive for innovation and creativity in design, alongside contributing to Zest’s overall growth and success.
Why Join Us?
- Work on high-impact campaigns for some of the UK’s most recognised retail brands.
- Collaborative and fast-paced team environment with great opportunities for growth and development.
- Competitive salary, benefits, and colleague discounts across Sainsbury’s, Smart Charge, Argos, Habitat & Tu.
Interested? Send us your CV and portfolio showcasing your best multi-channel design work.
We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer so you’ll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there’s always the chance to try something new — whether that’s as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working. When you join our team, we’ll also offer you an amazing range of benefits. Here are some of them: Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to save 10% on your shopping online and instore at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat, and we regularly increase the discount to 15% at points during the year. We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover. You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 10% of salary, depending on how we perform. Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance and you can buy up to an additional week's holiday. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, salary advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers. And if you ever need it there is also an employee assistance programme. Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks’ pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks’ pay for paternity leave. Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).
