Service Designer - Leeds

Location: Leeds (Hybrid, 2/3 days per week)
Duration: 6 months
Day rate - £450pd inside IR35
Clearance: BPSS and SC clearable

Human Centered Design - Service Designer

Position Description
Your future duties and responsibilities
In this role, you will take ownership of designing and improving end-to-end public services that balance user needs, business goals, and technology capabilities. Working collaboratively with researchers, product managers, and engineers, you'll turn insights into actionable service improvements, ensuring every journey is intuitive, inclusive, and effective. You'll play a leading part in shaping service design practices, modelling best practice, mentoring colleagues, and helping define how design adds measurable value to digital transformation programmes.
You will contribute to a culture that values creative thinking, shared learning, and continuous improvement, empowering you to bring forward innovative ideas and take ownership of meaningful outcomes.

Lead & Innovate: Drive service design for complex journeys, ensuring decisions are grounded in user research and business objectives.
Design & Deliver: Create clear as-is and to-be service blueprints, user journeys, and system maps to identify opportunities and pain points.
Collaborate & Influence: Facilitate co-design workshops, engage stakeholders, and communicate concepts through compelling visuals and storytelling.
Mentor & Grow: Support and develop junior designers, embedding high standards and consistency across design projects.
Measure & Improve: Define outcome metrics, track results, and evolve service designs based on evidence and user feedback.

Required qualifications to be successful in this role
To succeed in this role, you should bring strong service design experience in complex digital environments, ideally with public sector or GDS projects. You'll combine strategic thinking with hands-on design delivery, backed by excellent collaboration and communication skills.
Proven experience designing end-to-end digital or omni-channel services.
Strong knowledge of GDS principles and experience delivering to GDS standards.
Expertise in service blueprints, user journeys, and ecosystem mapping.
Confident in research-informed design and collaborative, agile delivery.
Excellent stakeholder facilitation and visual communication skills.
Experience mentoring or supporting design capability within teams.
Proficiency with Miro/Mural, Figma, and Office 365.

Desirable:
Background in public sector, NHS, or other regulated environments.
Understanding of data-driven experimentation and behavioural analytics.