Lead Service Designer

At the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), we design user-centred services that make the criminal justice system easier to use, quicker to deliver, and fairer for all.

As the Lead Service Designer at CPS, you will play a key role in making sure that our services are user-centred and effective. You’ll work closely with leadership and across multi-disciplinary delivery teams to create strategies that improve services based on data and user needs. You will ensure that the design and delivery of services are of high quality, inclusive, and accessible. You will help teams work together, mentor other designers, and advocate for and build service design capability within the organisation. You will also collaborate with service designers across the Criminal Justice System to ensure joined-up services for users.

You will report to the Head of User Centred Design and Analysis profession, and work as part of the leadership team to support and develop our profession at CPS.

As part of this role, you are expected to undertake direct line management responsibilities.

As a lead service designer, you will:

• Work with service owners and programme leadership to build a shared understanding of CPS’s services, and develop data-driven service improvement strategies that align with user needs and organisational goals
• Set direction and assure the quality of service design and delivery across teams, aligned to the Service Standard and government design principles
• Lead on the user centred design and iteration of multiple or highly complex services, ensuring our services are inclusive, accessible and meet users’ needs
• Support collaboration across teams and the user centred design profession
• Collaborate with the rest of user centred design and analysis leadership to develop the profession and enable us to deliver on our vision for design
• Help to build the service design capability within CPS, by growing and mentoring our service design profession, and developing the skillset within our user centred design community
• Be an advocate for service design within the organisation, clearly communicating the value to senior leaders and stakeholders at all levels, and helping them to adopt a service design approach
• Join up service design work across the Criminal Justice System to design end-to-end services that deliver impactful outcomes

A copy of the full job description is available if requested from Benjamin.Ross-Russell@cps.gov.uk

To be eligible to apply, you need:

• Significant hands-on experience leading service design in complex organisations, ensuring effective and user-centred service delivery
• A deep understanding of the Government Design Principles, agile delivery, and evidence-based approaches to service improvement
• Strong stakeholder influencing, collaboration, and facilitation skills, including working with policy and operational colleagues to align service design with policy intent and delivery realities
• Experience in successfully advocating for user centred design decisions
• Expertise in service mapping and communicating complexity clearly to support inclusive participation in the design process
• Experience mentoring or coaching designers, and leading across multi-disciplinary agile teams and programmes
• A track record of delivering inclusive and accessible services
• Strategic thinking with experience shaping service strategies and organisational design decisions
• Experience measuring service impact and outcomes using qualitative and quantitative methods

You must also provide a link to a portfolio of your work as part of the application – This is an important requirement for the Lead Service Design role.

We’ll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Seeing the Big Picture
• Making Effective Decisions
• Communicating and Influencing