Senior Service Designer

DWP Digital; Leeds; Hybrid; GBP 61,000 - 75,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid working model

Pension with employer contributions 28

Holidays 26–31 days + flexi time

Volunteering time off

Job summary

DWP Digital is seeking a Senior Service Designer to help shape inclusive, user-centred public services used by millions across the UK. You will work with multidisciplinary teams to uncover problems, design better outcomes, and lead workshops using evidence-based service design approaches.

You will be deployed across areas like Health and Disability, Working Age Services, Debt Management, Digital Payment Services and Digital Channels, with a hybrid working model (40% home, 60% hub).

Qualifications

• Experience designing end-to-end services that balance user needs, business goals and policy objectives.
• Strong understanding of evidence-based service design methods, using research, insight, storytelling and visualization techniques.

Responsibilities

• Shape the future of public services used by millions across the UK.
• Collaborate with multidisciplinary teams to understand problems and design better outcomes.
• Lead workshops and service design activities to enable teams to deliver user-centred services.
• Work across diverse business areas such as Health and Disability, Working Age Services, Debt Management, Digital Payment Services and Digital Channels.

Skills

Service design

Stakeholder collaboration

Workshops

Opportunit y identification

User-centered design

Evidence-based methods

Job description

Join DWP as a Service Designer and help shape inclusive, user-centred services that support millions of people across the UK, solving complex challenges and delivering meaningful improvements to essential public services every day.

Our DWP Digital teams use fresh ideas and leading-edge tech to build and maintain digital solutions that will be used by nearly every person in the UK, every day and at key moments in their lives.

DWP is the UK's largest government department. We help people into work and make payments worth over £195bn a year to support and empower millions of people.

The scale of what we do is extraordinary, and our purpose is unique. We'd love you to join us

What skills, knowledge and experience will you need?

• Experience designing end-to-end services that solve complex problems while balancing user needs, business goals and policy objectives.
• A strong understanding of evidence-based service design methods, using research, insight, storytelling and visualisation techniques to deliver better outcomes.
• The ability to influence and collaborate with stakeholders at all levels, building consensus and supporting decision-making across multidisciplinary teams.
• Experience leading workshops and service design activities, creating collaborative environments that enable teams to deliver user-centred services.
• A proven track record of identifying opportunities for improvement, analysing service performance and solving complex user and business challenges.
• A passion for championing user-centred design, sharing best practice and promoting service design standards across teams and communities.

You and your role

Our Senior Service Designers help shape the future of public services used by millions of people across the UK.

We work on some of government's most complex and high-profile transformation programmes, using service design techniques, user insight and evidence-based approaches to create services that are accessible, effective and centred around user needs.

You'll collaborate with multidisciplinary teams, bringing together user, business, policy and operational perspectives to understand problems, identify opportunities and design better outcomes. Using workshops, service mapping, visualisation and stakeholder engagement techniques, you'll help teams make informed decisions and deliver meaningful improvements across end-to-end services.

We have a brilliant variety of roles, projects and services. You may be deployed into one of several business areas, including:

• Health and Disability - Delivers simple, responsive services and supports timely, accurate and understandable decision-making to help people access the support they need.
• Working Age Services - Responsible for the development and modernisation of employment-related benefits, including Universal Credit, covering both claimant and agent-facing services as well as future service strategy.
• Debt Management - Recovers debt arising from benefit payments while balancing effective recovery with fairness, ensuring repayment approaches reflect individual customer circumstances.
• Digital Payment Services - Supports the UK's largest payment operation, working with government and industry partners to modernise payment services through digital innovation and service design.
• Digital Channels - Owns the strategy, design, delivery and performance of DWP's customer and agent-facing digital services, including GOV.UK content, customer accounts, the GOV.UK App, telephony and postal channels.

Hybrid Working: We work a hybrid model - you'll spend some time working at home (40%) and some time collaborating face to face in a hub (60%).

Pay: We offer competitive pay for this role of £68,205.

Pension: You'll get a brilliant civil service pension with employer contributions of 28.97%, worth over £16,786 per year.

Holidays: A generous leave package starting at 26 (rising to 31 days over time).

You can also take up to 3 extra days off a month on flexi-time. You'll also get all the usual public holidays.

We have a broad benefits package built around your work-life balance which includes:

• Time off volunteering and charitable giving
• Bring your authentic self to work with 'I Can Be Me in DWP'
• Discounts and savings on shopping, fun days out and more
• Interest-free loans to buy a bike or a season ticket, so it's even easier for you to get to work and start making a difference
• Professional development, coaching, mentoring and career progression opportunities.

And we have an award-winning environment and culture:

• DWP have been recognised as 2024 Diversity Employer of the Year at the Computing Women in Tech Excellence awards
• Diverse and Inclusive Leadership at Digital Leaders Awards 2024
• Commended as Best Place to Work in Digital category in the Computing Digital Technology Leaders awards 2025
• Recognised as one of the Best Public Sector Employers at 2025 Women In Tech Employer Awards

Process:

We know your time is valuable, so our application and selection process is just two stages:

• Apply: complete your application on Civil Service Jobs.
• Interview: A single stage interview online.