Lead Service Designer

Job Description
As a core part of BEIS Digital you will be part of a specialist multi-disciplinary team comprised of Service Designers, Content Designers, User Researchers, Product Managers and Software Developers. You will be part of a team that works very collaboratively and is leading example of how a user-centred approach can add value and drive efficiency in government. In addition to frequent learning opportunities and flexible working, the opportunity to work very closely with other disciplines will give you an amazing opportunity to learn how each specialism adds value to a service.
As the Lead Service Designer within BEIS Digital, you’ll work with internal teams across BEIS 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.

Person specification
As a Lead Service Designer, you will:

• Be an expert in communicating between senior stakeholders and design colleagues to mediate, build and grow relationships
• Lead the strategy of making evidence-based decisions through clearly demonstrating the benefits of user research and outlining actionable recommendations
• Leading and supporting strategic decision making – based on identifying risks, impact, and complexity for stakeholders most often as part of a leadership team
• Managing service designers and user researchers within the team – you are trusted to guide teams in making critical decisions on the shape of the service and know how to build consensus within teams
• You provide guidance and support to designers on their day-to-day activities and reviewing work/mentoring team members – as an expert in being user-focused you can guide the team in selecting the right methods based on the problem you are trying to understand
• You have experience in service assessments and are an expert in applying the service standard and sharing that knowledge with your wider team
• You will be working with the other leads and disciplines in the UCD team to build the team’s and more widely BEIS’ skills and resilience – additionally, championing service design in BEIS and representing BEIS at cross government working groups

Skills And Experience
We’d love to hear from you if have the following skills and experience

• Have a design related degree, or relevant experience in designing services and human-centred experiences
• Be an expert at communicating with stakeholders at all levels, with a focus on building relationships.
• Have experience of working in an agile team and are practised in agile delivery, user story creation and prioritising work based on user research
• Have demonstrable experience of working with complex services and identify opportunities of how to remove complexity from services
• Have experience in leading workshops with non-technical colleagues and senior stakeholders
• The ability to identify the right medium to communicate within your team. For example: sketching, show-and-tells, paper prototyping, digital prototyping, non-digital prototyping and white-boarding
• Have experience in mentoring user researchers to interpret findings and in conducting user research yourself such as user interviews and usability testing.

Technical Skills
To be assessed:
Agile Working – You can coach and lead teams in Agile and Lean practices, determining the right approach for the team to take and evaluating this through the life of a project. You can think of new and innovative ways of working to achieve the right outcomes. You can act as a recognised expert and advocate for the approaches, continuously reflecting and challenging the team. (Skill level: expert)

Link to role information:
Communication Skills – You can mediate between people and mend relationships, communicating with stakeholders at all levels. You can manage stakeholder expectations and moderate discussions about high risk and complexity, even within constrained timescales. You can speak on behalf of and represent the community to large audiences inside and outside of government. (Skill level: expert)

Link to role information:
Behaviours
We’ll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Seeing the Big Picture
• Delivering at Pace
• Changing and Improving

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

• Experience of working within constraints
• User Focus
• Agile Working
• Communication Skills