Trainline growth & monetisation

Leading design for Trainline’s growth and monetisation teams

Background

Trainline is the leading rail and coach platform across the UK and Europe, enabling seamless ticket search and booking for millions of travellers. As Europe’s most downloaded rail app, it supports a global base of more than 27 million active customers.

As Head of Design my role has been to scale and lead a team of 3-7 designers across a growing portfolio of customer growth and monetisation related initiatives.  

Alongside direct line management responsibilities, I remain hands-on in defining design vision, guiding execution through coaching and team rituals, and partnering closely with product, commercial, and engineering leaders to deliver features and products that drive measurable user & business outcomes.

Full credits for product shots and photography can be found at the bottom of the page.

Shaping the user experience with a growth lens

Partnering with a Product Director, we shaped a strategy to unify emerging efforts on Trainline’s growth funnel, centering on real customer needs and pain points for the Trainline customer across their lifetime of acquisition and engagement.

Within two months, we delivered a directional vision that was shared across teams and with Exec groups. I led a team of three designers, driving workshop planning, structure, and creative craft direction throughout with our product peers.

As a result of the vision work, we accelerated initiatives like:

• New onboarding experience for new customers

• A deeper push on railcard adoption to improve retention

• Set the intention to better communicate Trainline’s value across the app and website, though that remains a work in progress.

Expanding Trainline’s monetisation portfolio

Trainline’s expanding revenue portfolio includes the areas of insurance, hotels, car hire, and our media proposition to advertisers. In particular, in 2025 our teams saw a strong double-digit percent revenue growth in hotels and insurance sales in the UK. 

My role has remained to drive direction and oversee the delivery across this various workstreams. A shift to re-centre the customer needs to the heart of these monetisation efforts has been a key reframe to how we develop these products. Ie. What are we looking to solve for our users as well as our business? 

The monetisation portfolio reached a key milestone, securing additional investment in 2026 and evolving into its own organisational pillar, highlighting its growing strategic importance within Trainline.

Scaling the team

I led a hands-on hiring effort to scale the design team from three to seven designers across multiple levels. This included redefining interview processes and criteria to prioritise candidates with strong product thinking, optimisation, and commercial acumen.

As the team has grown, I’ve remained close to the work & craft. Continuing to evolve design rituals, participate in design jams, and advocate for experience uplifts.