ARCHIVEDGovernmentFull Time
Senior Service Designer

Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS)
◆Salary X-Ray?Indicative range based on survey data, not a guarantee for this role.£60kExpand ▾
From the 2026 Salary(+) Report
£60k
median base salary
£50k£69k
LowHigh
Based on 148 respondents
senior roles in United Kingdom (UK)
Job description
As a Senior Service Designer you will:
- work with Service Owners, Product Managers, User Researchers, Business Analysts and Developers as part of a multi-disciplinary team.
- have responsibility for design across complex services, ensuring services are outcome based and delivering against user needs and fulfil business outcomes.
- lead on the development of design concepts for services, leveraging common component design patterns from across government, iterating based on research and insights.
- provide expertise to the team in accessibility requirements and inclusive design.
- help set direction and embed good practice within teams.
- interpret evidence-based research and incorporate this into your work.
- use experience and delivery expertise to actively adapt ways of working to improve services and acting as the final escalation point for design decisions.
- work with internal and external stakeholders at all levels to raise awareness and visibility of what good Product Design looks like.
- coach, support, and mentor others in what good design looks like.
- promote and protect the value of good service design and ensuring that product teams are able to focus on delivering outcomes for users and the department.
Other
- define, develop, and embed standards, guidelines and processes that promote best practice and consistent ways of working across DBS.
- build capability and assure quality to support strong outputs from multidisciplinary teams.
Person specification
You will already have demonstrable experience in:
- Leading the design of solutions that are based on evidence and help identify any gaps in knowledge.
- Understanding complex systems and creating service visualisations to help others to navigate them.
- Structuring and managing the design process, including framing problems and identifying measurable target outcomes.
- Facilitating engaging workshops to help multidisciplinary groups align, explore, ideate, prioritise or make decisions.
- Developing sketches, diagrams and rapid prototypes to test ideas with users and stakeholders.
- Creation of static HTML and CSS prototypes.
- Effectively communicating information and ideas using diagrams, prototypes and written narratives to influence stakeholders and decision-makers.
- Working autonomously, while managing multiple deadlines and responding to changing priorities.
- Engaging colleagues who are less familiar with service design or user-centred design.
Desirable criteria
- Promote the importance of inclusive design and how to design with accessibility in mind.
- Experience of delivering services to the GOV.UK Service Manual and Service Standard.
- Coaching and mentoring to develop skills of team members.
Behaviours
We’ll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Changing and Improving
- Delivering at Pace
- Seeing the Big Picture
- Working Together