Pros
• Meaningful work. The work I did felt purposeful and had real impact. There's satisfaction in designing for a large-scale financial services business where decisions matter. • Talented, collaborative teams. I worked with intelligent people across product, engineering, and stakeholders who took design seriously and engaged thoughtfully in collaboration. • Learning in a complex environment. Fintech work exposed me to genuine UX challenges around regulation, user behaviour, and business constraints. The problem-solving stretched me. • Design autonomy. I had space to shape how design approaches problems and was trusted with ownership of my work. • Industry exposure. Working at a major financial institution gave me insight into how large organisations operate, manage risk, and think about brand in regulated spaces.
Cons
• Organisational pace. Santander is a large company, which means decision cycles are longer and navigating stakeholder alignment requires patience. Things move slower than they might at smaller companies. • Regulatory constraints. The heavily regulated environment filters out some design ideas for compliance reasons. Not everything that's best for users can be implemented. • Career progression clarity. The path forward and expectations for growth could be more transparent. It's worth clarifying explicitly what advancement looks like in your conversations upfront. • Hierarchy and process. There's a fair amount of organisational structure, which can feel bureaucratic at times and occasionally slow decision-making.