Service Designer

Are you a dedicated person who is passionate about making a difference?

Would you like to work for the Ministry of Defence? 

Defence Business Services (DBS) is one of the largest shared service organisations in Europe that provides a wide range of corporate services, to over 1.2 million end users, including serving and past military and families, as well as MoD civil servants and industry. DBS delivers large scale administration and smaller specialist services to enable the wider MOD to focus on its core aims, maintaining the UK’s Defence and Security. Services include Human Resources, Pay, Veterans, Finance and Procurement.

• Our Vision – To support UK defence customers with outstanding service every time.
• Our Mission – Together we will proudly support Defence, continuously improving and delivering flexible, timely, sustainable and value for money services that underpin the whole force and enhance operational capability.

DBS is committed to creating a great place to work for all our colleagues. We are building an inclusive culture and respectful environment that reflects the diversity of the society.

We want to maximise the potential of everyone who chooses to work for us through opportunities to develop your skills and experience. We also offer a range of flexible working patterns and support to make a fulfilling career accessible to you and offer a Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%. Where your role permits, we support a blended working approach alternatively known as hybrid working.

Applicants should note that DBS has recently undertaken a review of its operational locations in the North West, and will consolidate all activities in Blackpool. This means that DBS staff will move from both Walker House (Liverpool) and Cheadle Hulme in the late Summer of 2023 and initially relocate to Tomlinson House (Norcross). A further move, to the new Government Hub at Talbot Gateway in Blackpool, is scheduled to take place in 2026.

As a result, all vacant DBS posts in the North West will be advertised at Tomlinson House (Norcross). There is, however, an expectation that all DBS staff, irrespective of their agreed duty station, will travel to other DBS and/or MOD site(s), as required, to complete all necessary training and to participate in team or additional collaborative activities – detached duty terms may apply. Terms of transfer have been negotiated for DBS posts relocating in the North West. DBS also supports Flexible Working, which can be discussed in more detail at interview.

Come and join the DBS community today! 

DIT support, deliver and maintain a wide range of on premise, Software as a Service (SAAS), Platform as a Services (PAAS) and robotic and digital products for Defence

DIT’s products support thousands of users across defence and a significant number of key defence activities though support of IT-enabled change to MOD Corporate Services, including Finance, Procurement, Payroll and HR, across Civilian and Military Services.

This role is to design end-to-end journey of a service across Defence Business Services.  Services include public facing transactions, products and content across digital and off-line channels on www.gov.uk such as ‘Apply for a deceased person’s military record’ and internal digital forms and products provided to all staff in the Ministry of Defence.

The postholder will work collaboratively with service team members including development, analytics and user research as well as working closely with internal and external stakeholders, create, or change, transactions, products and content to meet user needs and organisation outcomes

Key Responsibilities:

• Act as an advocate of user needs and service design, and influence the delivery of services to ensure that these user needs are met
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, stakeholders, and partners to identify user needs and design solutions that meet those needs.
• Develop and maintain strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders to ensure effective collaboration and knowledge sharing.
• Have responsibility for service design across complex services, ensuring services solve the whole problem for users and meet both user needs and policy intent
• Lead on the development of design concepts for services, making best use of common component design patterns from across government, and iterating based on research, analytics and user feedback
• Provide expertise to the team on accessibility requirements and inclusive design
• Help identify high level needs and epics to influence the product roadmap and how the backlog is prioritised
• Map the experience of users and highlight areas where it can be improved
• Explore ways of simplifying complex end-to-end processes for digital and non-digital journeys
• Identify design challenges and explore ways of solving them using best practise across government
• Understand and work within constraints to deliver the most user-friendly solution to users
• Promote the value of service design across the organisation

Essential Skills and Experience:

•    Experience of service design, with proven ability to develop evidence and context based design
•    Building positive relationships, engaging with, and influencing, stakeholders to deliver outcomes
•    Introducing positive change into working practices, teams or organisations
•    Excellent planning and organisational skills and the ability to prioritise to meet deadlines and cope with fluctuations in workload
•    Designing accessible, usable services that are based on meeting user needs, across multiple products and channels
•    Helping teams understand the wider context of a design project or product
•    Working in an agile, multi-disciplinary and collaborative environment

Desirable Skills and Experience:

•    Experience of working to the government service standard and/or GOV.UK standards and working practices
•    Experience working in agile teams
•    Familiarity with GOV.UK design system and prototyping kit

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

• DDaT – Senior Service Designer Communicating between the technical and non-technical. (Skill level: practitioner)
• DDaT – Senior Service Designer Evidence-and context-based design. (Skill level: expert)
• DDaT – Senior Service Designer Prototyping. (Skill level: expert)
• DDaT – Senior Service Designer User focus. (Skill level: expert)