Senior Service Designer

Overview

As a Senior Service Designer, you lead service design workstreams from discovery to delivery for public sector projects, shaping user-centred, accessible services. You work with multidisciplinary teams to ensure outputs align with organisational goals and deliver meaningful user outcomes. You will mentor junior colleagues and contribute to business development while advancing the service design capability. This role combines strategic thinking with hands-on delivery in a fast-paced, collaborative environment. You will work on high-impact public sector programmes, applying GDS standards and inclusive design to drive tangible improvements.

Pay / Benefits

• career development and certifications
• ongoing professional training
• exposure to leading technologies
• team events and knowledge-sharing
• delivery-focused training opportunities

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end service design from ideation to solution development and testing
• Tailor service design approaches and artefacts to client needs and design maturity
• Develop high-quality service design artefacts ensuring consistency and impact
• Apply Government Digital Service (GDS) standards, accessibility, and inclusive design
• Facilitate workshops, co-design sessions, and stakeholder engagement
• Communicate complex ideas through storytelling and visualisation
• Manage stakeholders, balancing perspectives and advocating for user-centred design
• Identify priorities, risks, dependencies, and delivery requirements
• Mentor junior colleagues and delegate responsibilities
• Contribute to tool, method, and proposition development by staying current with trends

Key requirements

• Minimum 5 years’ experience designing services and products
• Experience leading service design workstreams across multiple projects/clients with minimal supervision
• Strong GDS standards expertise and experience supporting/passing service assessments
• Experience tailoring methods and artefacts to client needs and maturity
• Strong workshop facilitation and design sprint experience
• Ability to simplify complex problems in fast-paced environments
• Excellent storytelling and communication with diverse stakeholders
• Experience in agile, cross-functional teams with researchers, designers, analysts, product owners, delivery managers and developers
• Ability to manage competing priorities and work under tight timescales
• Experience engaging with legal, policy, and specialist teams to drive decisions
• Flexibility to support broader user-centred design disciplines or project delivery
• Ability to showcase work through artefacts and outcomes
• Active SC (Security Check) Clearance

• stakeholder management
• communication
• mentoring
• GDS standards and inclusive design
• service design methods and artefacts
• workshop facilitation and design sprints

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