Service Design Lead

This role is based in the United Kingdom and as such all normal working days must be carried out in the United Kingdom.

Join us as a Service Design Lead

• In this dynamic role, you’ll have the chance to make an impact by contributing to the development of service design and experience strategy, while overseeing a team of Service Designers and the delivery of associated strategic initiatives
• You’ll lead service design delivery for mid-size and increasingly complex projects, ensuring designs are user-centred, inclusive, and aligned to experience design, business area, and enterprise strategies. This is an opportunity for you, as an evolving leader, to lead teams toward achieving project goals while continuing to develop your own leadership skills and capabilities
• Drive the integration of AI into service design by identifying opportunities from experimentation and pilot programmes, translating insights into best practices that support consistent service outcomes. You’ll also work closely with Design Leadership and Operations to define and implement AI-enabled service design workflows, fostering capability development, and continuous improvement across the design community

What you’ll do

As a Service Design Lead, you’ll oversee the scoping, direction, and planning of service design for mid-size and increasingly complex projects and programmes while contributing to the overall service design strategy. You’ll lead and execute service design activities across initiatives, ensuring outputs are validated, user-centred, aligned with business needs, and free from barriers that could impact delivery. You’ll also foster strong collaboration across design disciplines and other functions, engaging key stakeholders to maintain alignment and support the effective delivery of projects, programmes, and strategic initiatives.

We’ll expect you to shape and promote the use of service design guidelines and standards to support consistency and scalability, while continuously developing your own domain knowledge and leadership skills. You’ll also help build team capability by coaching, mentoring, and providing constructive feedback, contributing to the growth and maturity of the practice. Moreover, you’ll act as an escalation point, making project and programme-level service design decisions within defined authority, ensuring that outputs remain user-centred, inclusive, and aligned with project objectives and business goals.

In addition, you’ll be:

• Ensuring service design is delivering impactful end-to-end experience improvements through seamless cross-channel services that balance innovation, user needs, and organisational constraints
• Enabling collaboration across multiple disciplines and functions for programmes and complex projects, ensuring clarity of responsibilities and deliverables for each discipline
• Clearly communicating the value and impact of service design decisions across projects and programmes to a wide range of audiences
• Acting as a key contact for stakeholders, managing expectations, influencing decisions, and overseeing progress, risks, conflicts, and alignment issues within defined authority, escalating when necessary
• Shaping and evolving guidelines and standards to drive scalability, consistency, quality, accessibility, and inclusion in service design, while ensuring all outputs comply with necessary regulations

We’re looking for someone with a strong understanding of user-centred design and comprehensive knowledge of redesigning and operationalising services, with solid expertise in embedding accessibility and inclusion throughout the design process. To succeed in this role, you’ll also need proven experience delivering service design for mid-size, increasingly complex projects and programmes, grounded in user research and supported by a portfolio that demonstrates effective end-to-end service design across both front-stage and back-stage elements.

In addition, you’ll need:

• Experience defining and leading design projects and programmes at pace, using agile delivery methods
• A track record of leading, coaching, and developing service designers, fostering a culture of continuous learning, high performance, and inclusive practice while supporting career growth and capability development across the team
• Strong skills in design thinking, data analysis, mapping, and facilitation
• Experience working in multidisciplinary teams and effectively collaborating with cross-functional partners, with proven leadership capability
• Strong stakeholder management skills, including clear communication, expectation management, presenting the rationale behind design decisions, and advocating for the value and impact of design
• Experience leading and developing service design talent, including line management, coaching, mentoring, performance development, and fostering a culture of knowledge sharing and continuous improvement
• Driving the adoption of enterprise-approved AI capabilities within service design, translating experimentation and emerging opportunities into scalable ways of working, guidance, and best practice that enhance efficiency and service outcomes

Pulled from the full job description

• Annual leave
• Company pension, Here’s a quick look at what your pay package and annual leave could look like if you get accepted for the role. We have a wide range of benefits to support you in your working life and beyond.

Tap each segment for details.

Your pay package

100% Base pay This is your base pay package that you take home every month.

+10% Pension funding This is monthly funding paid towards your pension.

up to +10% Benefit funding This is monthly funding paid towards a range of benefits you can choose from.

Your leave allowance

30 days Annual leave You’ll also have the opportunity to purchase up to 5 additional days off.

3 days Volunteering Take time off to support the causes you’re passionate about.

3 days Training Take time to build the skills you need to grow your career.