Senior Service Designer

Our small but perfectly formed Service Design team is growing. We have important mahi to do and to get the job done we need innovators, sense makers, storytellers and collaborators. If you want to use your skills and tools to advocate for the aspirations of tamariki, whānau, iwi & communities and the following sounds like you, we are keen to hear from you.

Mō mātou | About us 

Based within the Māori, Partnerships and Communities rōpū, we are responsible for Human-centred design across Oranga Tamariki—Ministry for Children. As rōpū, we are committed to

• Forming partnerships with communities to support locally led responses that enable tamariki and whānau to thrive.
• Investing at the local level – supporting the aspirations of communities.
• Amplifying the voices of tamariki, whānau, hapū and iwi and ensuring they influence strategy, policy, practice, and operations across our organisation.

The Service Design team does not deliver services, but creates opportunities and initiatives through scalable, system-level experiments, design challenges and prototypes utilising a systems approach to helping tamariki and rangatahi Māori to thrive in the care and protection of their whānau, hapū and iwi.

Mō te tūnga | About the role

Reporting to the Design Manager, Service Design, you will drive co-design and collaboration activities to support change and to implement best practice design approaches using innovative techniques that support outcomes for tamariki and rangatahi.

Why come and work with us?

• We advocate for the aspirations of tamariki, whānau, iwi and communities so they can realise their rangatiratanga.
• We get to work directly with people in the community and we strongly support iwi-led/community-led design.
• There is a lot of positive change happening, we are often in the centre of it, and we can advise and influence major projects.
• We work in multi-disciplinary teams, so you have an opportunity to teach and learn equally
• We are an awesome team, we have each other’s backs, we are really committed to being good treaty partners, and we are constantly innovating our own practice.

On occasion you will be required to travel around the country to work with the community, our partners and stakeholders.

This role is based in our National office in Te Whanganui a Tara/Wellington. Due to the operational requirements and dynamic nature of the role, it will be beneficial for you to have the close support of the team around you. Candidates for this role are required to already be based in Te Whanganui a Tara/Wellington or be willing to relocate to Te Whanganui a Tara/Wellington for this opportunity.

Ngā pūmanawatanga ōu | What you will bring

To be successful in this role you will have:

• Proven experience within a service design discipline
• Expert level skill at building and maintaining relationships with all sorts of people both inside and outside the organisation.
• Capability in te reo, tikanga, and/or other Pacific languages, or you are already on a learning journey in this area.
• The ability to see the big picture but also zoom in and focus on specific pieces of the puzzle.
• Strong ability to advocate, negotiate, and diplomatically challenge things that are not tika or pono.
• Expert level communication and storytelling skills where you can take ideas and share them with a variety of audiences so that everyone ‘gets it’.
• Significant experience in design thinking and tangata centered design and will have designed services that have been implemented in the real world.
• Experience and the confidence to lead design effort from concept through to implementation.
• Demonstrated experience in growing and coaching others to create and enhance skills and confidence in the application of design thinking.