Senior Manager - Service Design

Yorkshire Building Society; Leeds; On-site; GBP 85,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

25 days holidays + Bank Holidays

Bonus 7% of eligible pay (up to 15%)

Pension up to 11%

Private medical insurance

Self-service benefits portal

Job summary

Yorkshire Building Society seeks an experienced Senior Manager to create and mature a brand-new Service Design capability. You will shape strategy, governance and standards, leading a cross-organisational effort to design end-to-end services that combine digital and human touchpoints.

Your leadership will align customer outcomes with operational value. You will build professional pathways, scale the function and advocate for a service-led mindset across the Society, delivering measurable

Qualifications

• You are an experience Service Design leader who has successful built, scaled or transformed a service design function.
• You’re a strong leader and influencer – someone who can build credibility, engage senior stakeholders, and bring people with you on the journey.
• You combine strategic thinking with practical delivery expertise and are comfortable influencing at Executive and Director level while developing and supporting teams to perform at their best.
• Importantly, you’re passionate about inclusive, accessible design and understand how to apply user-centred principles at scale to deliver meaningful improvements.

Responsibilities

• Establish and scale the Society's Service Design function.
• Define the vision, operating model, standards, frameworks and governance for the discipline.
• Create clear professional pathways, capability frameworks and development plans.
• Build an engaged and high-performing service design community and culture.
• Act as the senior advocate for service design across the organisation.
• Lead service design across large-scale, complex transformation programmes.
• Influence strategic decisions through evidence, customer insight and service performance data.
• Ensure service design is embedded into business planning, change delivery and investment processes.

Skills

Service Design leadership

Stakeholder engagement

Strategic thinking

Change transformation

Job description

Senior Manager – Service Design

This is a rare opportunity to create something transformational!

At Yorkshire Building Society, we're reimagining how customers experience our services. As we continue our transformation journey, we're moving beyond improving individual products and channels to designing seamless, end-to-end services that work brilliantly for both members and colleagues.

To help us achieve this, we're creating a new Service Design capability and are looking for an experienced leader to shape, define and scale it.

This isn't a role where you'll inherit a mature function and maintain the status quo. You'll build the capability, create the standards, establish the profession, influence strategic decisions and help embed a service-led mindset across the Society. The foundations are in place, but the opportunity to define what great looks like and create lasting impact is yours.

About the Role

As Senior Manager – Service Design, you’ll lead the creation and maturity of a brand-new organisational capability focused on designing seamless, user-centred, end-to-end services.

Reporting to the Director of Savings & Digital Channels, you will establish the strategic direction, frameworks, standards and governance that enable service design to become a recognised and influential discipline across Yorkshire Building Society. You'll work collaboratively with leaders across YBS to ensure customer and colleague outcomes are at the heart of transformation and investment decisions.

You'll play a critical role in helping the Society evolve from siloed change initiatives towards holistic, service-led transformation, ensuring experiences are designed around real customer needs while delivering operational and commercial value.

What You’ll be doing:

Build and Lead a New Capability

• Establish and scale the Society's Service Design function.

• Define the vision, operating model, standards, frameworks and governance for the discipline.

• Create clear professional pathways, capability frameworks and development plans.

• Build an engaged and high-performing service design community and culture.

• Act as the senior advocate for service design across the organisation.

Shape Strategic Transformation

• Lead service design across large-scale, complex transformation programmes.

• Influence strategic decisions through evidence, customer insight and service performance data.

• Ensure service design is embedded into business planning, change delivery and investment processes.

• Help leaders understand trade-offs between customer outcomes, operational efficiency, risk and commercial priorities.

• Champion a service-led approach to transformation across the Society.

Design Services That Work Across Every Channel

• Lead the design of end-to-end services spanning digital, branch, contact centre and operational teams.

• Ensure members experience consistent, intuitive and joined-up journeys regardless of how they choose to interact with us.

• Design services that combine digital convenience with human support when it matters most.

• Drive measurable improvements in customer experience, colleague experience and operational effectiveness.

Establish Professional Excellence

• Create and govern service design standards, principles and quality frameworks.

• Embed inclusive, accessible and evidence-based design practices throughout the organisation.

• Develop robust methods for journey mapping, service blueprinting, service definition and continuous improvement.

• Foster innovation while ensuring consistency and quality at scale.

About You

• You are an experience Service Design leader who has successful built, scaled or transformed a service design function.

• You’re a strong leader and influencer – someone who can build credibility, engage senior stakeholders, and bring people with you on the journey.

• You combine strategic thinking with practical delivery expertise and are comfortable influencing at Executive and Director level while developing and supporting teams to perform at their best.

• Importantly, you’re passionate about inclusive, accessible design and understand how to apply user-centred principles at scale to deliver meaningful improvements.

About us

At YBS we don’t have shareholders, we have members. We care about people and that includes you. So here, you’ll be respected for who you are, you’ll be able to bring your whole self to work, and you’ll have everything you need to build a long and rewarding career.

Flexibility. We offer a range of flexible working options without unsocial hours, which can help you find a healthy work-life balance. Whether it’s finishing early for an appointment or fitting your studies and hobbies in around your working hours, we can help make it work for you. We’re happy to talk flexible working and you can reach out to us anytime during the recruitment process to discuss this.

Development.We want you to feel challenged here. Whatever your ambitions, we’re committed to helping you develop your skills and move ahead in your career journey. From day one, we’ll set you up for success with a brilliant induction and full training plan, all designed to get you up to speed quickly.

Inclusivity.We’re passionate about creating an inclusive environment where everyone is welcome and able to be themselves. If you’ll go the extra mile to help our members, you’ll fit right in and feel you belong here.

About our Benefits

We offer lots of fantastic rewards that you can make the most of in and out of work, including:

• Holiday.You’ll get 25 days plus Bank Holidays, as well as the option to buy up to a further 5 days.

• Bonus.At YBS we work collaboratively and share in our success together, so when we reach our goals were all rewarded with an on target bonus of 7% of eligible pay (with the opportunity to earn up to a maximum 15%).

• Pension.We know how important it is to save towards the future, that’s why we’ll contribute up 11% into your YBS pension.

• Healthcare.Health and wellbeing are an important part of life at YBS, when you join us you’ll have access to a range of health benefits to suit your life including private medical insurance, dental and healthcare plans.

• My Benefits.When you join YBS you’ll have access to our self-service benefits portal, where you can access a range of retail, hospitality and health discounts,