Lead Service Designer

Lead Service Designers at [REDACTED] are strategic leaders responsible for helping to shape the Service Design practice, owning the strategic direction of complex, high-impact services, and driving organisational change across multiple client engagements. This role requires an expert Service Design practitioner who operates at the intersection of policy, technology, and operations, significantly influencing senior client strategy and developing the next generation of designers. Success is measured by the improvement of public services and the quality of the Service Design community.

[REDACTED] wants to positively impact the country's future by using technology to improve society. As a Lead Service Designer, you will move beyond single-project delivery to take accountability for the design and strategic direction of multiple client projects. You will champion and embed Service Design as a strategic capability within client organisations and within [REDACTED].

About the Role

About the role:

• Define the long-term vision, strategy, and roadmap for major public services, ensuring alignment between strategic policy intent, user needs, and practical delivery constraints across the full service lifecycle.
• Act as the strategic design authority on projects, facilitating conversations with stakeholders at all levels to secure organisational alignment and investment for systemic service transformation.
• Take responsibility for defining and embedding [REDACTED]’s Service Design standards, methodologies, and toolkits, leading the professional development and mentoring of the entire Service Design community.
• Propose high-impact Service Design approaches to problems, influencing wider policy or organisational structures based on robust research and outcome data.
• Define, measure, and assure what ‘good’ end-to-end service design looks like across a portfolio of work, holding teams and senior colleagues to account for producing high-quality, measurable service outcomes.

Collaborative and communicative leadership

• Lead challenging conversations with colleagues at all levels, senior stakeholders regarding service blockers, policy constraints, and investment decisions, using data and empathy to drive commitment to user-centred outcomes.
• Lead continuous improvement in the practice, identifying and adopting new strategic Service Design approaches and fostering a culture of experimentation and learning within the community.

Key Responsibilities

Scope

• Provide design assurance for the successful strategic design and transformation of public services, applying a holistic Service Design lens across technology, policy, process, and the client organisation’s operating model.
• Lead the uplift of client service design maturity, setting strategic expectations with the most senior stakeholders and leading the delivery of training and briefing programmes.
• Define the strategy for designing, prototyping, and testing seamless, multi-channel services, ensuring all organisational, service, and user outcomes are aligned and measured against key performance indicators.
• Champion the practice across [REDACTED] through leadership within the Community of Practice (CoP) and providing high-level coaching and mentoring support to Senior and midlevel Designers.

Job Benefits

We are always listening to our growing teams and evolving the benefits available to our people. As we scale, as do our benefits and we are scaling quickly. We've recently introduced a flexible benefit platform which includes a Smart Tech scheme, Cycle to work scheme, and an individual benefits allowance which you can invest in a Health care cash plan or Pension plan. We’re also big on connection and have an optional social and wellbeing calendar of events for all employees to join should they choose to.

Here are some of our most popular benefits listed below:

• 30 days Holiday - we offer 30 days of paid annual leave plus bank holidays
• Flexible Working Hours - we are flexible with what hours you work
• Flexible Parental Leave - we offer flexible parental leave options
• Remote Working - we offer part time remote working for all our staff
• Paid counseling - we offer paid counseling as well as financial and legal advice

If successful, you will be required to undertake an SC clearance