Senior Service Designer - SFIA 5

Location: Hybrid - Onsite will be any UK site Hubs
Rate: £485 per day
IR35 Status: Inside IR35
Clearance: BPSS

Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced Senior Service Designer (SFIA Level 5) to lead the design and improvement of complex, user-centred services within a government or public sector environment. The successful candidate will work across multidisciplinary teams to shape end-to-end service experiences, ensuring services are accessible, intuitive, and aligned with Government Digital Service (GDS) standards. This role requires a strategic thinker who can balance user needs, business objectives, policy requirements, and technical constraints to deliver effective service outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end service design across the full service landscape, ensuring a seamless and coherent user experience across multiple touchpoints, channels, and organisational boundaries.
• Support agile delivery squads in the development and continuous improvement of services while contributing to larger Discovery and strategic transformation workstreams.
• Facilitate cross-functional collaboration between service design, user research, content design, business analysis, policy, operations, and technical teams.
• Design, test, and iterate services in accordance with Government Digital Standards, Service Standard assessments, and GDS best practices.
• Engage and influence stakeholders at all levels, from operational teams to senior leadership, identifying opportunities, managing constraints, and helping define future service visions.
• Create and maintain service blueprints, customer journey maps, ecosystem maps, process flows, and other service design artefacts to communicate service intent and design decisions.
• Facilitate workshops and co-design sessions to gather insights, align stakeholders, and drive consensus around service improvements.
• Use user research findings, operational data, and service performance metrics to inform design decisions and prioritise service enhancements.
• Identify pain points, risks, dependencies, and opportunities across the wider service ecosystem, ensuring solutions deliver measurable user and business value.
• Promote service design best practices and contribute to the growth and maturity of the design profession within the organisation.

Essential Skills and Experience

• Proven experience leading service design activities within large-scale digital transformation programmes.
• Strong knowledge of user-centred design methodologies and service design principles.
• Experience designing services within UK Government or public sector environments.
• Demonstrable understanding of the Government Digital Service (GDS) Service Standard and service assessment process.
• Expertise in developing service blueprints, customer journeys, ecosystem maps, and service visualisations.
• Experience working within Agile, multidisciplinary delivery teams across Discovery, Alpha, Beta, and Live phases.
• Strong facilitation, stakeholder management, and communication skills, with the ability to influence at all organisational levels.
• Ability to balance user needs, business objectives, operational requirements, and technical constraints when designing services.
• Experience translating complex problems into clear, actionable service design solutions.