Tom Newton Email & Phone Number

Manchester, England, Gb

Copenhagen, Capital Region Of Denmark, Dk

As Head of Design at Lunar, I lead the design organisation at one of Scandinavia’s leading challenger banks, serving over one million users across the region. I drive the alignment between design and broader business strategy, ensuring that user-centred design contributes directly to our growth and success.In this role, I focus on optimising design processes, fostering cross-functional collaboration, and managing a high-performing team of designers, researchers, and writers. Together, we’ve achieved key outcomes including a 74% increase in customer growth, a 56% rise in revenue, and measurable improvements in user engagement, customer satisfaction and retention.Key accomplishments include:• Identifying and leading a strategic initiative to address design and technical debt, which resulted in a new, scalable platform that significantly improved core business metrics.• Leading the creation of a product and design operations team that reduced time to market and improved cross-organisational ways of working.• Mentoring and developing a diverse design team, promoting career growth through clear progression paths, transparent expectations and skill alignment, contributing to team retention.• Driving high employee satisfaction and engagement, maintaining top scores in managerial and operational performance metrics.• Championing initiatives such as design critiques, skill-sharing sessions, and co-design workshops, fostering a culture of collaboration, creativity, and innovation.• Restructuring the design organisation to ensure the right skills were deployed in the right areas, complemented by strategic hiring and growth frameworks.

San Jose, Ca, Us

As Head of Design at eBay, I managed multiple design teams across the Scandinavian organisation, aligning design with business strategy, optimising processes, and scaling teams to meet growing demands during a period of organisational change.I demonstrated the value of design by fostering collaboration and establishing frameworks to support team success. This included navigating a large-scale merger with Scandinavian media company Schibsted and successfully integrating design teams into the new organisation.Key achievements include:• Creating a comprehensive skills framework that mapped role expectations and identified skill gaps, forming the foundation for strategic recruitment and team development.• Successfully recruiting 6 product designers to establish a new local design team, enhancing design capabilities and driving impactful user experiences.• Led the integration of design teams during the merger with Schibsted, ensuring smooth transitions and aligning design processes across multiple brands within the organisation.

Manchester, Greater Manchester, Gb

As Design Manager at Auto Trader UK, I led the consumer design team across the website and app, focusing on scaling the team, improving user-centred design, and refining product processes across the business.In this role, I worked to drive data-driven product decisions, implemented continuous improvement processes, and contributed hands-on to product design and technical development. I played a key part in leading the team through various organisational changes and challenges, ensuring alignment with Auto Trader’s broader goals.Key achievements include:• Contributed to the transition to data-driven product processes, including CRO experimentation, enabling the team to measure and prove the impact of product efforts, driving team growth.• Led design efforts and contributed hands-on in designing and coding experiments, resulting in a responsive redesign and a rewrite of the front-end technical foundation, including the creation of Auto Trader’s first design system.• Collaborated on the relocation of the design team from London to Auto Trader’s new head office in Manchester, including recruiting a new local team of product designers, researchers, and content writers.• Successfully transitioned the team to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring the mental and physical well-being of individuals during this challenging time.• Led design during the creation of Auto Trader’s car leasing product, driving design and user experience efforts for a new product offering.

Amsterdam, Netherlands, Nl

As Design Lead at Booking.com, I led the design team for the cars arm (RentalCars and associated products), focusing on user-centred design and strategic direction across multi-product workstreams. I was responsible for managing the design and research team, collaborating cross-functionally, and driving improvements in both the product experience and design processes.Key achievements include:• Led the major redesign of the RentalCars platform: Conducted a comprehensive discovery phase, mapping user, business, and tech requirements across the entire product suite. This included 8 workshops with 40+ participants across 19 teams, defining 203 job stories to ensure alignment and build a deep understanding of the product.• Secured leadership buy-in and budget for redesign efforts: Presented findings to leadership, demonstrating the value of a consistent design system and unified user journey. This led to the approval of further budget to re-platform the site based on the new design, ensuring cross-team collaboration and clearer development roadmaps.• Fostered cross-team collaboration: Regularly shared progress through design critiques and open sessions, promoting transparency and inclusivity throughout the discovery and design process.

Manchester, Manchester, Gb

Front-End secondment to improve my knowledge in this area. Developing a design system for Center Parcs and building a new website for Woodland Trust.

Manchester, Manchester, Gb

Leading the creative and front-end output for a client focused product team through workshops, design sprints and iterative development. My role involves stakeholder management, team leadership, product / strategic planning, line management and getting stuck-in producing output as part of the team.

Reviewing the best websites against a set of criteria with other design judges to award the coveted monthly and yearly CSS Design Awards for various categories.

London, Gb

Leading the visual design and concept development for responsive websites, apps (iOS & Android) and physical in-store designs for some of the world’s best luxury brands including Manolo Blahnik, Chelsea FC, Finery and FCUK.

Calgary, Alberta, Ca

Working on website design, user experiences, responsive solutions and global digital marketing campaigns for some of the worlds best known brands. With a focus on improving and evolving Citibank’s (award winning) online mortgage experience.

London, England, Gb

Lead creative for Glasses Direct. Working on and managing website improvements and implementations (design, front-end development and CMS integration), designing and art-working email / onsite marketing campaigns, print campaigns and advertisements.

London, Gb

Designing digital on-site and mobile banners, user interface elements and solutions along with off-site dynamic advertising banners for companies such as eBay and Thetrainline.comLead designer for a team specialising in creative content for eBay's Global Buying Hub, which caters a custom localised eBay experience for countries without a dedicated eBay platform.

London, Gb

Independently tasked with designing digital on-site and mobile banners, preparing and producing final graphics for delivery and assisting the senior team on main concept creation. Other tasks included ensuring all work is delivered on time, to the highest level possible, researching new trends and technologies for use in projects, writing HTML image maps and maintaining the online Feed work archive.

London, Greenwich, Gb

Positioned within the marketing department I worked on a broad range of design requirements including a major website redesign where I produced page designs, onsite banners, illustrations and icons used throughout the site.I also designed printed brochures, flyers and magazine advertisements along with designing and overseeing production of a large scale exhibition stand used at Earls Court.

San Francisco, Ca, Us

Design intern during summer break from university. Working on various projects for Coca-Cola including being involved in the the packaging and digital design for the 2010 world cup.

Kent, Gb

Design intern during summer break from university. Working on digital projects for Brighton Institute of Modern Music and Dragonfly energy drinks.