Lead Service Designer

Tesco UK; Welwyn Garden City; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading supermarket chain in Welwyn Garden City seeks an experienced Service Designer to shape service strategy across various channels. The ideal candidate has over 10 years of experience, with expertise in service design and user research. You'll work collaboratively across diverse teams, promoting customer centricity and driving innovation. Enjoy a hybrid work model and a comprehensive benefits package.

Benefits

Comprehensive benefits package

Opportunity for career growth

Inclusive workplace culture

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in service design, systems thinking, and user research.
• Able to produce effective mapping and storytelling artifacts.
• Proficient in collaborating with business, product, and technology teams.

Responsibilities

• Shape strategic direction of service design across customer and colleague touchpoints.
• Lead service design efforts on omnichannel experiences and store innovations.
• Mentor junior colleagues and uphold service design standards.

Skills

Expert communicator

Independent practitioner

Strategic relationship builder

Champion of customer centricity

Collaborative problem solver

Job description

As a Service Designer at the UK’s largest supermarket, you’ll develop services and processes serving millions of people across different user groups (customers, users, colleagues, suppliers).

Seeking someone skilled at navigating uncertainty, solving problems, capturing evidence, understanding complexity, and promoting collaboration in different subject areas to achieve tangible outcomes. Someone who can think and act strategically, not only in terms of speed and efficiency but also scale and impact!

Our team is a small, centralised unit working across five vertical UX and research teams. When not directly involved in projects, we support these teams operating like a mini-internal agency, up-skilling, consulting, providing strategic support or simply helping to understand what to do next.

Regardless of the scope and size of the projects, our core purpose is to serve our customers, communities, and planet a little better every day!

Here’s a taste of what you can expect.

You’ll join a business that values your expertise, experience and insight. That nurtures your personal and career growth, with opportunities for every stage of your journey. You’ll be a crucial part of a dedicated team of individuals from a diverse group of backgrounds who share your determination and motivation. You'll enjoy a hybrid role that builds the perfect work/life balance, allowing you to be yourself both professionally and personally. And a benefits package that’s more than competitive.

Your remit will primarily focus on high priority initiatives contributing to large-scale, ground-breaking efforts. The Service Design team plays a key role in evolving the Design approach and the ways of working across all our business areas.

• Shape and own the strategic direction of service design across store, online, and fulfilment experiences, ensuring flawless integration across all customer and colleague touchpoints.
• Connect initiatives across product, operations, and commercial teams to deliver joined-up services that meet customer needs and drive business efficiency.
• Advocate for a complete view of the grocery retail ecosystem—identifying opportunities to improve services for store customers, online shoppers, store colleagues, head office teams, and suppliers.
• Work closely with senior colleagues in digital, operations, and supply chain to incorporate service design into planning and transformation initiatives.
• Lead service design efforts on sophisticated, cross-functional initiatives such as omnichannel experiences, store format innovation, and fulfilment optimisation.
• Facilitate strategic workshops and decision-making forums, ensuring outcomes are grounded in customer insight, operational feasibility, and commercial impact.
• Set and uphold service design standards across teams, mentoring senior designers and fostering a culture of continuous improvement and design excellence.
• Translate customer and colleague insights into actionable service opportunities, guiding teams to prototype, test, and scale solutions across the business.
• Advocate for service design at the leadership level, helping the organisation mature its design capability and increase its strategic influence in shaping retail experiences.
• Supervise and evaluate the impact of service design interventions, using evidence to iterate and improve services across the end-to-end grocery journey.

About you

• You are an expert communicator, skilled in both verbal and visual communication, able to bring clarity and direction in ambiguous environments and engage your audience regardless their background and seniority
• You are an independent & experienced practitioner, who operates with full autonomy across service design, systems thinking, and user research
• You can build and maintain strategic Collaborator relationships
• You champion Strategic and Service Design principles and advocate customer centricity and design impact
• You consistently deliver outputs that enable UX teams to succeed
• As a lead, you actively support and mentor junior colleagues through daily collaboration
• You lead by example with honesty, humility, and professionalism

Through your documentation, you’ll be asked to demonstrate experience and proficiency in the following areas:

• Roughly 10 or plus years’ experience; contributed to ship multiple products and services.
• Produce effective mapping and storytelling artefacts that prioritise customers, colleagues, and suppliers needs
• Collaborate with Business, Product and Technology collaborators to map and develop the next generation of Tesco’s digital tools and platforms.
• Uncover opportunities for service improvements and support business decisions through collaborative design
• Collaborate closely with Researchers and Product managers to build goals and achievements for services
• Propose research methodologies, collaborate to translate research insights into actions and support the planning of the product roadmap
• Understand, visualise and communicate sophisticated journeys and processes
• Work with multidisciplinary teams across the business to Identify core customer missions, create user journeys and experiences that allow our customers, colleagues and suppliers to use our products safely, seamlessly and effectively
• Seeking a problem solver who values team diversity, prioritises collaboration, is organised, practical, and creative.

Our vision at Tesco is to become every customer's favourite way to shop, whether they are at home or out on the move. Our core purpose is ‘Serving our customers, communities and planet a little better every day’. Serving means more than a transactional relationship with our customers. It means acting as a responsible and sustainable business for all stakeholders, for the communities we are part of and for the planet.

We are proud to have an inclusive culture at Tesco where everyone truly feels able to be themselves. At Tesco, we not only celebrate diversity, but recognise the value and opportunity it brings. We're committed to creating a workplace where differences are valued, and make sure that all colleagues are given the same opportunities. We’re proud to have been accredited Disability Confident Leader and we’re committed to providing a fully inclusive and accessible recruitment process. For further information on the accessibility support we can offer, please click here.

We’re a big business and we can offer a range of diverse full-time & part-time working patterns across our many business areas, which means that we can find something that works for you. We work in a more blended pattern - combining office and remote working. Our offices will continue to be where we connect, collaborate and innovate. If you are applying internally, please speak to the Hiring Manager about how this can work for you - Everyone is welcome at Tesco.