Lead Service Designer

In this role you will be a lead service designer working across key strategic programmes of work with multidisciplinary agile teams, collaborating with other digital and technical experts to deliver a wide range of digital services and products that fulfil user needs and business outcomes.

You will lead and co-ordinate service design exploration within key programmes, focused on transforming customer service experience and support, Geospatial data services and modernisation of casework systems, working closely with Product Managers, Business Designers, Architects, Policy, Content and Interaction Designers to mature and adapt our services to meet the needs of all the people who use them.

You will be responsible for setting the strategy and direction for service design work across these programmes of work engaging and managing stakeholder needs with a focus on leading discussions around a service solution. You will ensure service solutions are insight led, that agile teams are using best practice design methodologies and are meeting Gov.uk service design standards.

You will oversee and manage design work for SEO service designers in programme teams providing direction, coaching, support and feedback. At practice level you will support the Head of design and Design Leads to inform and guide the design practice strategy.

As a senior member of the team, you will positively impact design maturity at HM Land Registry, the skills and development of designers, and cost/time savings from well-designed services for both the organization and customers. Collaborate with the Head of Design to set design direction and good practice within the directorate, communicate with senior leadership the value it brings to the organisation and to build and support the design practice and community.

Please see the attached Candidate Pack for a full list of duties and further information about this post.

The role aligns to the Lead Service Designer definition available at:

Service designer – Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework

You will be able to demonstrate that you meet the Technical Skills as listed in the candidate pack:

Design communication
Designing for everyone
Designing strategically
Designing together
Evidence-based design
Iterative design
Leading design

To be successful in this role you will also have the below essential technical skills and experience:

• Creating a strategy to deliver usable, responsive and accessible user interfaces consistently across programmes of work
• Understanding senior stakeholder needs, and using design to inform and persuade these audiences
• A strong grounding and experience in user-centred design, from concept to final delivery
• Experience in a lead or strategic design role, leading other designers at organizational level, and making tactical, pragmatic decisions to influence strategic goals and develop service design maturity across multiple programmes of work
• Understands and actively promotes the need for policy design and user-centred design disciplines to work closely together
• Experience of listening to the needs of senior organisational stakeholders, and clearly interpret them for the design team to translate into their design work
• Experience of managing senior stakeholder expectations, setting direction and navigating difficult discussions within the team or with diverse senior stakeholders.
• Knowledge of what good end-to-end public services look like and how to direct designers to design in an inclusive, accessible way
• The ability to absorb large amounts of conflicting information and use it to produce simple designs, removing complexity from services and solving problems
• Experience of autonomously planning and managing backlogs of design work across an organisation, making key decisions that help the organisation meet planned objectives and strategy
• The ability to identify and understand high level organisational constraints and adjust how design work is approached across the programmes they lead service design in to work within those constraints
• Experience of collaborating and making strategic decisions at a project level with your lead counterparts in design adjacent practices such as user research, business analysis, software development, and product
• Experience of developing people within a design team, collaborating with team leads and head of practice to develop people, capabilities and skills to meet the practices strategic objectives
• Coaching, mentoring and training skills

Where an individual taking up the responsibility will be based in Swansea Office, the ability to speak Welsh is desirable.

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

• Design communication Designing for everyone Designing strategically Designing together Evidence-based design Iterative design Leading design