Senior Designer

Job description

[Employer hidden] wants to positively impact the country's future by using technology to improve society. We believe being design-led can create positive outcomes in the public sector through critical services enabled by technology. We’ve built a community of designers and researchers to support the public sector's growing demand for a design-led approach to service delivery. Senior Designers at [Employer hidden] are senior specialists in their design discipline(s). In this case, we’re looking for a well-rounded, expert practitioner across a range of design disciplines, including UX Design, Interaction Design, Product Design, and Service Design who is also able to coach and mentor other designers within the Interaction and Service Design discipline at [Employer hidden]. Success in this role means working as an expert practitioner to deliver positive outcomes.

Key responsibilities

## Scope - Responsible to a Lead Designer - Hands-on design to assure the successful design and delivery of public services through technology. - Acts as an subject matter expert, facilitating the design process and communicating design decisions to teams and setting expectations with stakeholders. - Takes an active role in the Service and Interaction Design community, leading on (as appropriate), developing, and sharing good practice. - Actively supports retention, hiring, and team quality - Mentoring and coaching within the design community. ## Senior Designers at [Employer hidden] are senior practitioners - Able to develop new and novel approaches to highly complex design challenges, based on fundamental design principles. - An expert practitioner in leading design tools, including but not limited to Figma, the GOV.UK prototyping kit, and Adobe InDesign. - Advocate for the Interaction and Service Design practice internally and externally. - Able to coach and mentor others, and define the interaction and service design standards which others will apply. - Influences the organisation, clients, partners and peers on the contribution of interaction and service design. - Develop a wide breadth of knowledge across the industry or business. Take the initiative and are fully responsible for their own outcomes - Work is often self-initiated. Able to define an approach from first principles, and propose alternative ways to deliver. - Fully responsible for meeting their objectives on an engagement. Contribute to overall design outcomes of an engagement - Understand the relationship between interaction and service design, other disciplines, and wider client organisational requirements. - Defines what ‘good’ design looks like on an engagement, enabling and holding others to account for producing high quality outputs and deliverables - Establish milestones and have a significant role in the assignment of tasks and/or responsibilities. Makes decisions which impact the success of assigned work, i.e. results, deadlines and budget. - Supports client collaboration throughout all stages of work. Ensures users’ needs are met consistently through each work stage. Highly accountable - Comfortable with owning a problem and are committed to seeing it through to resolution - Actively look to deliver a positive outcome, even if they can’t personally do it Have a growth mindset - Always willing to learn and develop Candid-but-kind communicators - Give feedback often - Understand that a balance of positive and constructive feedback is the most effective way to work - Comfortable having difficult conversation ## Skills, knowledge and expertise ## Practice - Create a shared understanding of problems to solve and ideas to test - Make things real through storytelling and uncovering the ‘why’ - Caring about design enough to make sure everyone can use public services - Make use of the [Employer hidden] playbooks where they exist and support their development - Make public services simple to explain, understand, and use by removing unnecessary complexity and keeping designs focused on creating positive outcomes for people and society. ## Teamwork - Introduce good habits for sharing and improving design work into teams. ## Community - Support the hiring and onboarding of designers (contract and permanent) - Help define [Employer hidden] design principles through delivering effective public services - Represent and advocate for user-centred design publicly and internally ## Commercial - Build relationships with clients, earning their trust and understanding their needs - Support the commercial team to win new work by contributing and reviewing bids relating to UCD - Contribute to marketing materials (blogs, case studies, talks). Key measures - Case studies of how to design and deliver good public services and outcomes - Contributing to the growth and happiness of the UCD community at [Employer hidden] - Deliver your project objectives on time and to the expected standard - Display the [Employer hidden] values and behaviours reflected in feedback from colleagues and clients ## Behaviours - Client Focus - a need to put the most compelling offer possible in front of the client - Drive to Deliver - able to take ownership of the response, pushing it through the business inside the timeframes that we have been given. - Learning and Mentoring - an appetite to grow fast and learn while passing on your own experience to your teams and colleagues - One team - contributing to the ongoing improvement of the function at [Employer hidden], sharing experiences and successes as well as learning points.

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](https://github.com/madetech/handbook/blob/main/benefits/taking_holiday.md) - we offer 30 days of paid annual leave plus bank holidays [Flexible Working Hours](https://github.com/madetech/handbook/blob/master/benefits/working_hours.md) - we are flexible with what hours you work [Flexible Parental Leave](https://github.com/madetech/handbook/blob/master/guides/welfare/parental_leave.md) - we offer flexible parental leave options [Remote Working](https://github.com/madetech/handbook/blob/main/benefits/hybrid_working.md) - we offer part time remote working for all our staff [Paid counselling](https://github.com/madetech/handbook/blob/main/guides/welfare/paid_counselling.md) - we offer paid counselling as well as financial and legal advice

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

Location: Any UK Office Hub (Bristol / London / Manchester / Swansea)

Department: Strategy & Design > Service & Interaction Design

Employment type: Permanent

Workplace type: Hybrid

Compensation: £50,000 - £60,000 / year

Sounds good?

Join us in our mission to use technology to improve society for everyone.

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How we hire

Our hiring process is designed to be thorough, transparent, and supportive, guiding candidates through each step. The exact process may vary slightly depending on the role but these are the typical steps candidates can expect. We’ll keep you updated throughout the process and provide helpful feedback at each stage. No matter the outcome, we make sure the feedback is useful and supportive, so you feel informed and can learn from the experience.

1. Application reviewed

Our talent team will review all applications, and while we may use AI to help speed up the process, a real human will always make the final decisions. Once reviewed, shortlisted applicants will be invited to a screening.

2. Talent Partner screen

This is a 25-30 minute call with someone in our talent team who is hiring for the role.

3. CV Hiring Manager shortlist

Once screenings have taken place the hiring manager will review the shortlist and invites to interview will be sent.

4. First stage interview

You may then be invited to an initial virtual interview which is usually with the hiring manager or a couple of members from the team. This is usually around 45 – 60 minutes and the format may vary depending on the role.

5. Final stage interview

If you progress, you’ll be invited to a final stage interview which is usually with two members of the team. The format varies depending on the role and this is usually an hour.

6. Final conversation (not applicable to every role)

Final conversation with one of our exec members.

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