Lead Designer

Opportunity to lead the design for the airport ground customer experience at Qantas
- Flexible ways of working - hybrid model with 3 days onsite
- Full-time permanent position based at our Head Office in Mascot, Sydney

We’ve always been pioneers, and we’re proud to see that spirit in our people today. Our resilience has helped us through good and tough times, and it still drives us to keep pushing the challenging expectations today. Join a growing design practice shaping the future of travel. We’re designing integrated customer experiences across digital, physical and human touchpoints, grounded in empathy, powered by creativity and fuelled by purpose.

As the Lead Designer for Ground Customer Experience at Qantas, you will shape how customers experience our journey on the ground, whether be before they reach the airport, throughout their terminal experience, and into our lounges. You will bring together service, product and digital design to create seamless, premium and connected experiences that reflect the Qantas brand.

Working closely with Product, Tech, Digital, Operations, Brand, Architects, and Airport stakeholders, you will translate insights and opportunities into tangible design requirements that connect the physical, human and digital touchpoints across our airports.

Your key responsibilities include:
Design Leadership and Vision
- Co-define and communicate a clear design vision for Ground experiences, aligned with Qantas’ Customer Strategy and business objectives.
- Champion human-centred and inclusive design across airport environments, ensuring every detail contributes to a premium and effortless experience.
- Mentor and guide designers within Ground CX and broader squads, fostering collaboration, craft excellence and consistency.

Experience Strategy and Design
- Lead the design of end-to-end journeys across ground transport, check-in, security/border, transfers, boarding and lounges.
- Partner with the Principal Service Designer to define service blueprints and customer journeys that inform airport experience strategies.
- Shape design principles, standards and playbooks for Ground CX experiences, ensuring they drive consistency and efficiency across our airports.

Product and Service Integration
- Draft and refine airport layouts, zoning plans and passenger flows for lounges, transfer zones, boarding gates and bus operations.
- Produce renders and visualisations that bring future airport experiences to life for stakeholders and executives.
- Collaborate with internal teams to write requirements for architects, ensuring design intent meets accessibility, safety and brand standards.
- Define experience requirements across seating, signage, digital touchpoints, staff zones and customer interfaces.
- Specify how digital tools (apps, signage, wearables) integrate with physical spaces to guide, inform and delight customers on their day of travel.

Stakeholder Collaboration
- Collaborate with Product, Tech, Operations, Airport authorities and Architects to align strategies, resolve dependencies, and influence decision-making.
- Lead workshops to co-create solutions, test ideas and validate concepts through research and pilots.
- Represent the Design practice in airport projects, ensuring a customer-centred approach underpins every phase of delivery.

You’ll have:

- 8+ years of experience in Experience Design, with proven leadership in complex, multi-stakeholder environments.
- Experience designing physical and digital experiences within transport, aviation or large public/private environments.
- Excellent storytelling and visualisation skills with the ability to turn strategy and journeys into experiences people can see and feel.
- Strong communication, influencing and relationship-building skills across business and technical teams.
- A passion for shaping the future of how people move, connect and experience the world through design.
- Highly experienced with Design systems: Figma, Miro, SketchUp, Adobe Creative Suite
- Previously used documentation: Confluence, Jira, structured Design and Technical requirement templates
- Research and Testing: On-site observation, staff and customer interviews, pilot and iterative testing
- Why Qantas? _
- You’ll join a team where creativity and passion are encouraged. Our people come together to allow us to dream big and deliver successfully._
- There are many different opportunities across our team, which means you’ll be able to grow both personally and professionally at Qantas. Your development is a priority for us - so that you can maintain the high standards our customers have come to expect and can continue to develop over time. You’ll be supported from day 1 with on the job training and coaching as well as our formal training opportunities. While you may start in this role, we’ve got a great track record of supporting our people to take their career in so many different directions, the destinations are endless. _
- The Qantas employee benefits progra