Service Designer
We're looking for an experienced Service Designer who can quickly embed into multidisciplinary teams and design or improve end to end public services. This role suits someone comfortable working in complex environments, shaping services across digital and non digital touchpoints, and making progress where problems are not yet fully defined.
Strong communication skills are essential. You'll need to communicate clearly, confidently and adaptively - whether working day to day with delivery teams or influencing senior stakeholders.
What we need them to do
- Design and improve whole services by understanding user needs, organisational constraints and policy intent
- Take ownership of service journeys, mapping current and future states and identifying opportunities for improvement
- Use research, data and insight to inform decisions and iterate designs
- Work closely with researchers, product managers, content designers, developers, policy and delivery colleagues
- Communicate effectively within teams, contributing positively to team dynamics and decision making
- Work confidently with stakeholders, facilitating conversations, managing differing perspectives and building shared understanding
- Facilitate workshops and design sessions that help teams and stakeholders align and move forward
- Clearly articulate design decisions, trade offs and rationale - verbally and visually - even when things are uncertain
- Ensure services are inclusive, accessible and aligned to relevant standards and guidance
What "good" looks like
- Communicates clearly and calmly, tailoring messages for different audiences (designers, non specialists, senior stakeholders)
- Builds trust and strong working relationships across disciplines
- Can explain complex design problems and concepts in plain language
- Comfortable challenging assumptions constructively and navigating disagreement
- Can work with minimal supervision and make sound design decisions, knowing when to seek direction
- Pragmatic and delivery focused - prioritises outcomes over perfect artefacts
- Collaborative and low ego - brings people with them rather than designing in isolation
Experience we're looking for
- Strong service design experience in public sector or similarly complex organisations
- Demonstrable experience working to either the GOV.UK Service Manual or the NHS Service Manual, and applying the principles and standards in practice
- Evidence of end to end service design (not just UX or interaction design)
- Experience working in agile, multidisciplinary teams
- Proven ability to communicate effectively with a wide range of stakeholders, including non designers
- Confident using service design methods (journey mapping, prototyping, co design, prioritisation, etc.)
- Familiarity with accessibility, inclusion and evidence based design practices
- Maximum 5 years Experience
Nice to have
- Experience working with policy led services
- Experience supporting or mentoring other designers
- Experience working across multiple organisations or delivery partners