Principal Service Designer

The first duty of the government is to keep citizens safe and the country secure. The Home Office has been at the front line of this effort since 1782. As such, we play a fundamental role in maintaining the security and economic prosperity of the UK. The Home Office leads on immigration and passports, refugee protection, counter-terrorism, policing, fire services, and crime and drugs policy.

Digital Data and Technology (DDaT) enables the Home Office to keep the UK safe and secure. We design and build the services that help people apply for visas or passports; support policing and counter-terrorism operations; and protect the UK’s borders.

This is an exciting time to be at the Home Office. You’ll have a chance to shape the future and support our mission to deliver exceptional public services that work for everyone.

Our work is guided by these principles:

• We put user needs first
• We value delivery and outcomes over process
• We work in the open

Our flexible working policy ensures a healthy work-life balance. We also nurture talent and offer a broad range of learning and development opportunities that will help you flourish in your role.

We work hard to maintain a positive working culture and are committed to helping you fulfil your potential. We value diversity and provide an open, inclusive and supportive environment to help you do your best work.

You can keep up-to-date with our work on the Home Office DDaT blog [Home Office DDaT blog.](https://hodigital.blog.gov.uk/)

We’re looking for a Principal Service Designer to join our Policy and Innovation Lab (‘CoLab’). Our mission is to bring user-centred and explorative design approaches to policy making at the Home Office.

We work in policy spaces that require a deeper understanding of service users. These might be projects exploring how we can better support survivors of modern slavery, or working with the police to understand how we can better support offenders with drug dependencies. Our work builds understanding of the challenges being faced by users to rapidly design, test and pilot new solutions to deliver better outcomes.

As a Principal Service Designer, you’ll be comfortable working in the unknown and are experienced in applying service design approaches to complex problems. You’ll be accustomed to taking a leading role on projects and are confident working in a fast-paced environment, going over and beyond to deliver to project deadlines.

In this role, you’ll work closely with user researchers and policy professionals, with access to a range of other specialist skillsets when required. You’ll also be expected to support the service design community and raise awareness of what good service design looks like.

Your main day-to-day responsibilities will include:

• leading projects, using an end-to-end services approach to help policy makers explore and understand complex policy areas
• identifying opportunities to improve existing policies and services and creating compelling solutions based on decisions informed by user research, data patterns, and policy and operational intent
• ensuring that services are accessible and inclusive, supporting the Head of CoLab to develop and embed best practice in the policy design space
• contributing towards an effective user-centred design (UCD) culture, persuading stakeholders and colleagues of the value of service design
• engaging with senior stakeholders and senior decision makers across government to present project findings and recommendations

Other day-today activities

You will also be expected to carry out the following day-to-day activities:

• engage with the service design community to share ideas and best practice and proactively support each other
• support and develop service designers through emerging talent streams, like the Home Office’s Digital Development Programme
• assure services to make sure they are usable, efficient and accessible, and meet Home Office and government standards

Essential criteria

We would love to hear from a wide range of people who can demonstrate some, or all, of the following skills and experiences:

• analysing and evaluating complex problems, understanding the wider systems they sit within, to identify opportunities for cost reduction and improvement
• leading on the design and implementation of services across people, process, and technology, front stage and back stage, to ensure that user needs and target outcomes are being met
• structuring and managing the design process, framing problems and identifying measurable target outcomes to minimise ambiguity and align effort
• effectively and persuasively communicating information and ideas across organisational and technical boundaries, using diagrams, prototypes and written narratives
• engaging with stakeholders at all levels, advocating for user centred ways of working and managing expectations as needed
• considering the needs of diverse audiences to ensure teams design accessible and inclusive digital services

Our skills align with the cross gov DDaT Capability Framework ​​

Digital, Data and Technology Profession Capability Framework – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)​

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

• Analysis of complex systems and services
• Strategic thinking
• Designing to meet user needs