Senior Service Designer

What we’re looking for: 

We’re looking for a skilled practitioner with significant experience in delivering service design projects. The focus of your role will be to create end-to-end, evidence-based designs for services which are inclusive and accessible. You’ll often be working with multidisciplinary teams on complex projects where autonomy and project management will be important.  

We’re on the hunt for someone who will champion our values: to care passionately, be fluent in people, believe in your craft, push convention, be open to change, and to value each other.  

We work with a broad range of clients, some of whom are completely new to user-centred design (UCD). This means you’ll also play a key role in championing our UCD approach.  

The role may also involve:  

• Leading and directing projects – You’ll lead multidisciplinary teams and clients in the pursuit of inclusive, accessible and effective services.  
• Team support and management – You’ll help to support the service design team by inspiring and line managing team members, including overseeing appraisals and professional development.  
• Defining and refining practice – You’ll help to define the way our disciplines work together, and progress the way NEC Digital Studio delivers inclusive, accessible, and effective design.   
• Supporting new business – You’ll help NEC Digital Studio identify and win projects by spotting opportunities with clients and helping with proposals and pitches.   

Your skills and experience:  

We’d like to hear from you if you have skills or experience in some of these areas:  

• Strategy & systems thinking – Familiar with systems thinking, you lead teams and clients to map and analyse strategies, systems and scenarios. You’re experienced in forming well-grounded strategic recommendations.  
• Research – You work with user researchers to uncover and articulate the key factors affecting the service and its use.  
• User-centred journeys & experiences - You choose the right approaches to lead projects to outcomes that are great for the user, feasible to implement, and fit the client’s strategic vision.  
• Facilitation - You lead teams to design and deliver engaging and effective workshops. You support colleagues to present, verbally communicate, and inspire clients, stakeholders and other colleagues. 
• Organisation design – You understand the importance of org-design approaches and their role in implementing effective services  
• Visual communication - You lead teams to make clear and compelling points through well-designed visuals. This may include drawing and sketching or graphic communication  
• Written communication - You guide teams on the most appropriate written formats and structures for each project.  You create and oversee clear, concise writing.  
• Recommendation & implementation - You work with stakeholders to identify what change is possible and how to bring it about. This includes outlining timeframes and resource implications, and identifying future phases of work.  
• Prototyping - You lead teams, clients and stakeholders to scope targeted prototyping exercises. You work across disciplines to design, build and test prototypes that contribute to project outcomes (online and offline).  
• Stakeholder management – you know how to negotiate and guide clients and stakeholders towards positive outcomes that deliver outcomes within budget.  
• Managing complexity and ambiguity – Services are complex and messy! You’re up for leaping into the unknown, supporting our team members and clients to navigate the uncertainty that comes with service transformation projects 
• Proactive and autonomous – you can lead the conversation, and look for ways to participate and add value 
• GDS (government digital service) principles - you have knowledge and experience of designing services in-line with these principles and may have been involved in service assessments

How we work:  

We work with central and local government, the NHS, voluntary, not-for-profit, and private sector organisations.  

We work hand-in-hand with our clients and sometimes we’re embedded in their teams for projects. You’ll move on to different sectors after 3 - 12 months because we want you to get a variety of experiences, from applying GDS (government digital service) standards, to improving customer buy-in. Beyond individual projects, NEC Digital Studio’s Service Designers support each other at weekly meet-ups where we share our work, discuss its wider implications, and learn about methods.  

You’ll also broaden your skills by working closely with members of our Digital teams, including interaction and content designers, and developers. 

All of our Service Designers are supported by more senior members of the Service Design team. They look after your wellbeing, help you set goals and objectives and provide feedback to help you grow.  

We welcome applicants from all professional backgrounds. We acknowledge that we didn’t all start out as service designers and are proud of the varied expertise amongst our team. Our minimum criteria is that you have degree or professional experience that is relevant to Service Design. 

We pride ourselves in offering an excellent benefits package, including an above average pension scheme. When you join the team at NEC Software Solutions, you are provided with the following:

• Private Medical Cover funded by NEC for Employees (with the option to add family members at an additional cost) 
• 25 days paid holiday with the option to buy/sell (FTE)
• 4 x basic salary life assurance cover funded by NEC (with the option to increase cover at an additional cost)
• A Group Pension Plan with fantastic employer contributions up to a maximum of 8.5%
• A selection of flexible benefits to suit your individual needs
• All colleagues get free access to LinkedIn Learning. Over 15000 courses covering a huge breadth of subjects. Learn about what you like, when you like, how you like.
• Give back days  
• Annual team and company away-days 
• Personal learning budget

OTHER INFORMATION

• Candidates must be able to demonstrate a pre-existing right to work and travel within the UK. Documentary evidence will be required.
• All offers are subject to satisfactory vetting, references and occupational health checks. 
• Depending on the nature of the role a Disclosure Barring Service (DBS) check may also be required.

NEC Software Solutions is an equal opportunities employer, welcoming applications from all communities. If you require any reasonable adjustments or have specific accessibility needs during the recruitment or interview process, please feel free to share these with us. We are committed to ensuring an inclusive and accommodating experience for all candidates.

We receive applicants from multiple different sources - so the application process may vary. Once you have chosen to apply the key things we would like to see in your applications are:

• A CV
• A Cover Letter - tell us why you think you’d a good fit for the role and why you want to work for NECD. Please aim to keep your covering letter to 1000 words.
• A presentation of no more than 5 pages on a project or process that you led, which demonstrates your qualification for the role. This could be based on an extract from your portfolio. The example should frame the context and the challenge, demonstrate how you met that challenge and what the results were. If you are selected for an interview and you will have up to 10 minutes to present it to us.