Furniture Designer - Home - 12 Months Fixed Term Contract

Working Pattern: Typically 3 days in the office, with core hours flexible between 8am-6pm.

Ideal Start Date: February 2027

The Role
As a Furniture Designer for Beds and Upstairs Furniture, you will play a key role in shaping the style, functionality, and future aesthetic of the Next Home bedroom range. You will be responsible for creating market-leading, commercially successful designs spanning cabinetry, free standing storage, and soft upholstery from statement upholstered beds and headboards to chests of drawers, wardrobes, bedsides, and dressing tables.

Working as an integral part of our dynamic Home Design team, you’ll translate emerging interior and lifestyle trends into beautiful, functional bedroom solutions that resonate with the Next customer. You will work closely with our Buying, Merchandising, and Technology teams, receiving dedicated support and development from our Lead Designers to help you settle in and thrive in your role.

• End-to-End Product Design: Create original, commercially viable bedroom furniture concepts, taking products from initial trend research and sketch concepts right through to final sample approval.
• Cabinetry & Textile Innovation: Research and interpret global interior trends, driving innovation across wooden finishes, hardware, frame silhouettes, storage solutions, and upholstered fabric details.
• Technical Spec Development: Produce precise technical spec packs, detailed CADs, and clear design instructions (including frame dimensions, joinery details, drawer mechanisms, and fabric applications) to ensure designs are production ready.
• Cross Functional Collaboration: Work hand in hand with Buying, Merchandising, and Technology teams, as well as external manufacturers, to ensure designs meet target price points, pass stability/safety testing, and hit critical path milestones.
• Range Building: Help build cohesive, balanced bedroom collections that seamlessly integrate storage, cabinetry, and upholstered elements to complement the broader Next Home range.

• Bedroom Furniture Expertise: Demonstrable experience in furniture design covering both hard cabinet furniture (wardrobes, chests, dressing tables, bedside tables) and soft upholstery (upholstered bed frames, wooden beds, headboards), with a strong understanding of joinery, flat-pack assembly, ergonomics, and fabric behaviour.
• Technical Proficiency: Advanced skills in Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator and Photoshop) and relevant 2D/3D design software for creating detailed, scale CADs, exploded assembly views, and clear tech packs.
• Commercial Vision: A sharp eye for aesthetics, proportion, and finish, paired with a grounded understanding of the Next Home customer and what makes high volume bedroom pieces commercially successful.
• Agility & Organisation: Excellent time management and communication skills, with the ability to manage multiple projects at different stages of the critical path in a fast paced retail environment.
• Collaborative Mindset: A strong team player who builds great working relationships with internal teams and offshore supplier partners alike.

Portfolios
To help us get a feel for your style, please attach a digital portfolio to your application. We are looking for work that demonstrates a sharp eye for the future of furniture, how your ideas can be commercially viable for NEXT, and showcases your direct design and CAD work. To help you put your best foot forward, we’ve put together a few top tips on what makes a portfolio stand out to our team.

Applications without a portfolio will not be considered.

Sponsorship
Candidates wishing to apply who would require sponsorship for this role will be required to meet the Home Office sponsorship requirements. For further information please see: https://www.gov.uk/skilled-worker-visa.

At NEXT, we believe the best work happens when there are no barriers to collaboration. That’s why we are a Google-powered workspace. From your very first day, you’ll be using the full Google Workspace suite; Docs, Drive, and Meet, to stay connected and move fast. If your previous experience is rooted in other software suites, don’t worry! We’ll point you to a digital Google toolkit the moment you join, packed with handy guides and insider tips to help you transition smoothly and hit the ground running.

We encourage early applications for our roles, as our recruitment process begins as soon as the role is advertised. If we successfully fill the position, this advert may close earlier than planned.

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