Lead Service Designer

As a Lead Service Designer within Digital Platforms you will help our teams design intuitive and user-focussed, successful services, maintain an overview of the work taking place, build design culture and expertise and play a key role in embedding service design skills and service standards.

In your role you will:

• Work closely with service managers, programme directors and senior stakeholders across Digital Platforms to resource teams, resolve problems and develop future projects
• Set the direction and assure the quality of design delivery across the business area
• Promote the service design discipline, engage with the cross-government community and keep up to date with industry changes
• Lead the design of multiple, highly complex services
• Support the Senior Service Designers within programmes of work.

You will be a core part of the design leadership team, helping to deliver strategic and organisational change through your work with designers in project teams.

As a member of the design leadership team, you will:

• Influence senior leaders in the department to build their understanding and support of design in agile
• Influence operational design, leading how it is implemented in design team practice
• Help ensure that designers have the right conditions and environment to thrive
• Collaborate with the Head of Interaction Design, Head of Content Design, Head of
  Service Design and Head of User Research to provide vision and leadership for the
  overall user-centred design profession
• Contribute to effective recruitment and demand and resource planning, in collaboration with heads of profession, operations and scrum team management
• Provide line management, career and skills mentoring to Senior Designers
• Actively lead in the cross-government design community, discussing and
  sharing suggestions, approaches and ideas.

As a proactive member of the Digital Platforms Senior Leadership Team, you will:

• Lead on and deliver HMRC’s strategic objectives to improve ways of working across Digital Platform Teams
• Act as escalation point for service design issues across the business area
• Identify ways to enable working in a more efficient and effective way and making Digital Platforms and HMRC a great place to work
• Work with other professions leads and teams across HMRC to promote user-centred and agile ways of working.

In collaboration with Head of Service Design Profession, you will:

• Establish and lead local professions community events/sessions
• Provide vision, strategy and leadership for the overall user-centred design professions.

Essential Criteria:

You need to have significant experience in:

• Service design leadership with the ability to motivate, lead and develop large diverse teams, ensuring resources are organised appropriately and effectively
• Building positive relationships, engaging with, and influencing, stakeholders to deliver outcomes
• Introducing positive change into working practices, teams or organisations
• Excellent planning and organisational skills and the ability to prioritise to meet deadlines and cope with fluctuations in workload

You will also need to have extensive experience in:

• Designing accessible, usable services that are based on meeting user needs, across multiple products and channels
• Helping teams understand the wider context of a design project or product
• Working in an agile, multi-disciplinary and collaborative environment

Desirable Criteria:

It would be great if you also have:

• Experience working with the Service Manual and/or GOV.UK standards and working practices
• Familiarity with the GOV.UK design system and prototyping kit

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

• Strategic thinking
• User Focus
• Stakeholder relationship management
• Evidence and context-based design