Lead Service Designer

As the Lead Service Designer within Corporate Services, you’ll work with internal teams across DESNZ and DSIT to ensure that their service delivery is user-centred. Your role will be to set the direction and assure the quality of design delivery across the UCD team – leading multiple complex services.

You’ll be excellent at communicating with a broad range of stakeholders – and know how to handle a difficult conversation. Your expertise in solving complex problems means that you’ll be good at spotting problems and working with your team to identify how to fix them.

Your experience in having delivered agile services means that you understand how to support your team in prioritising work, so that you can quickly iterate and identify.

Responsibilities include:

• Managing service designers within the team by providing guidance on project activities, supporting them on strategic direction and developing them in their role.
• Embedding good user-centred practices in teams and overseeing the quality of services based on evidence and adhering to the service standard.
• Working collaboratively with Leads from other disciplines in the User Centred Design Team – content design, user research, business analysis and product management.
• Coaching team members on best practise and innovative ways to solve problems. Nurturing a collaborative culture and establishing new ways-of-working.
• Championing service design and building a community of practise. Collaborating with other teams to advise and build consensus in the department.

Skills and experience

Capability framework: User focus

You are an expert in being user-focused and can give direction on the right methods to use. You bring insight on user needs to the business and how to meet those needs. You have experience in delivering evidence-based services that simplify complexity.

Capability framework: Agile working

You have experience with agile practices and have participated in them across the life-cycle of a project. You are comfortable with ambiguity and as an expert can reflect and challenge the team on their approach.

Capability framework: Communicating between the technical and non-technical

You are an expert in communicating between senior stakeholders and colleagues at all grades to build and grow relationships. You can select the appropriate method to communicate and influence with significant experience in visual communication.

Capability framework: Managing decision and risks

You are an expert in working to constrained timescales and can build consensus between organisations. You have experience in strategic decision making – based on identifying risks, impact, and complexity for stakeholders.

Capability framework: Leadership and guidance

You are a leader, who is trusted to guide teams in making critical decisions but can also lead on strategy. You’re experienced in coaching and conflict resolution – you can resolve and unblock issues for your team.

Desirable Skills/ Experience

• Experience as a service assessor with a good understanding of the service standard and the assessment process throughout a project life-cycle.
• Experience of prototyping in code using the GDS prototyping toolkit when designing and testing services.
• Experience in bringing together communities of practice across government departments and developing a network of shared understanding.

It is unusual that all candidates will meet all the criteria. If your skills and experience look slightly different from what we have identified and you think you can bring value to the Lead Service Designer role and the team, we strongly encourage you to apply. We’d love to hear from you!

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

• User focus
• Agile working
• Managing decision and risks
• Communicating between the technical and non-technical (via presentation)
• Leadership and guidance (via presentation)