About the role

We’re looking for a senior service designer who is motivated to support and protect our communities by delivering better services.

The Home Office keeps our UK citizens safe and our country secure. We play a fundamental role in the security and economic prosperity of the UK.

You will work in an agile, multi-disciplinary team within the Digital Corporate Enablement Office (DCEO). Your designs will help shape the digital services and platforms that enable colleagues across the Home Office to work more effectively and deliver better outcomes.

Some of the projects you could work on include:

• Building and improving digital products and services that support corporate functions such as Human Resources, Finance, Commercial, Estates, Security and Communications.
• Designing and enhancing internal tools and platforms used by Home Office colleagues to access information, complete tasks and collaborate effectively.
• Improving enterprise services and engagement platforms, including GOV.UK content, workplace services, business management tools and digital collaboration products.
• Supporting the development of innovative, user-centred solutions that connect people, services and information across the organisation.

You can deliver accessible services and take a lead role in guiding design within a project team. You are comfortable working at pace across a variety of products and workstreams, collaborating closely with multidisciplinary teams to solve complex user needs. You will be skilled in using user research, data and evidence to inform design decisions, measure outcomes and drive continuous improvement.

You can learn more about design and research in the Home Office on our blog:

• Sharing user-centred design lessons learnt at the Home Office
• Making ethics part of the way we design products and services
• Applying user-centred design in a data-focused product
• and by looking at our design system

We have a thriving user-centred design (UCD) community. If you want to work with us to ensure that our services are easier and simpler to use, apply now.

Where business needs allow, some roles may be suitable for a combination of office and home-based working. Where this is the case, employees will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of their working time in the office. Applicants can raise any queries to the email address at the bottom of the advert.   

Watch this short video to hear from members of Home Office Digital talking about the projects they work on and their experience of working here: Working for Home Office Digital. 

Job description

Your main day-to-day responsibilities will include:

• Leading service design work on projects and ensuring that delivery teams are taking a user-centred, evidence-based approach.
• Creating compelling service solutions by identifying opportunities to improve the performance or management of existing services, and drawing on findings from user research, data patterns, policy and other areas.
• Engaging with senior stakeholders, presenting project findings and related recommendations to senior decision makers across government.
• Rapidly creating sketches, diagrams and lo-fi prototypes to share and test ideas.
• Coaching and coordinating multidisciplinary teams to help them successfully design good services.
• Raising awareness of what good service design looks like by sharing valuable case studies, methods, tools, artefacts and standards across the Home Office and beyond.
• Presenting project findings and related recommendations to senior decision makers across government.
• Identifying and raising any blockers to design activities to the leadership team.

Person specification

Working Pattern 

This role is available on a full-time basis with the option of compressed hours working.  This role is also suitable for part-time working hours, with a minimum requirement to work 3 days per week due to business requirements.    

Essential Skills

You will be assessed against the following skills and experience during the selection process:

• Service design: leads service design efforts for complex projects, overseeing both front-stage and back-stage elements. Coordinates people, process, and technology to deliver optimal services. Mentors junior team members in service design methods.
• Prototyping and concept creation: manages the prototyping and concept creation process for high-impact projects. Applies advanced techniques, like interactive and complex prototyping in code, to validate and refine concepts. Provides guidance to junior team members.
• Service analysis: leads service analysis for high-impact projects, critically examining complex processes to identify opportunities for significant improvements. Coaches junior team members in service analysis techniques.
• Accessibility and inclusion: able to regularly apply accessibility standards to your work and begins to understand the broader aspects of inclusive design.
• Managing people and leading: capable of managing a small team, providing coaching and feedback.
• Communicate, persuade and advocate: actively engages with multiple stakeholder groups, presenting and defending UCD principles effectively. Skilled in tailoring the message for the audience.