Service Design Lead

Peoples Partnership; Crawley; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading not-for-profit organization is seeking a Service Design Lead to embed service design practices and improve customer journeys. The successful candidate will lead workshops and coach the CX team to enhance skills in journey mapping and facilitation. This role is pivotal in ensuring that customer experience and business efficiency evolve simultaneously. A hybrid working approach is offered, along with generous employee benefits including a 14% pension contribution and onsite gym facilities.

Benefits

Generous pension contributions

Real living wage

Employee healthcare

Learning & development opportunities

Onsite gym

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading service design in large organizations.
• Strong skills in journey mapping and design facilitation.
• Experience using a journey management platform.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design of end-to-end customer journeys.
• Facilitate workshops to align teams on service improvements.
• Coach and mentor the CX team in journey mapping.

Skills

Journey mapping

Service blueprinting

Design facilitation

Workshop design

Strategic communication

Tools

TheyDo

Miro

Mural

FigJam

Job description

Service Design Lead

24 months FTC

About People's Partnership

At the heart of our not-for-profit organisation is a commitment and a motivation to make the future‑saving experience a simple one for our members. We champion fairness and simplicity, not profit‑chasing. Imagine a financial adventure where everyone's a winner, fueled by our exceptional service and brought to life by the fantastic individuals who work for us. We're a diverse employer with a flexible, hybrid working approach, ensuring everyone gets the opportunity to come to work and be the best version of themselves.

What you'll be doing

The Service Design Lead / Manager will establish and embed service design as a discipline within the organisation, ensuring that customer experience and business efficiency evolve together as the business scales and modernises. This role combines strategic leadership and hands‑on design delivery, helping to define, design and improve key customer journeys while building service design capability within the Customer Experience (CX) team.

• Lead the design of end‑to‑end customer journeys, with a current emphasis on the retirement proposition, while maintaining an enterprise‑wide perspective.
• Design and facilitate workshops and collaborative sessions to align teams on journey challenges, opportunities, and service improvements.
• Set up and maintain a journey management platform (TheyDo or similar), ensuring journeys are well structured, evidence‑based, and linked to customer and business metrics.
• Coach and mentor the CX team (four analysts) to develop skills in journey mapping, facilitation, and insight‑led design.
• Collaborate with the CX Specialist Lead to ensure that projects with high Service Design needs can be supported, in tandem with CX Specialists, and Communications teams.

What we're looking for

• Proven experience leading service design in complex or large‑scale organisations, ideally as the first or senior design hire.
• Strong practitioner skills in journey mapping, service blueprinting, design facilitation, and experience definition.
• Demonstrated experience setting up and using a journey management platform (e.g. TheyDo, CXOmni, Cemantica).
• Ability to translate customer and business insights into design priorities and actionable outcomes.
• Skilled in workshop design and facilitation, including remote and hybrid collaboration (Miro, Mural, FigJam).
• Confident operating at both strategic and hands‑on levels, managing ambiguity and competing priorities.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to simplify and present complex information effectively.

What you can expect from us

• Generous pension contributions with an employer contribution of up to 14%
• Real living wage
• Income protection, critical illness cover & death in service insurance
• Employee healthcare
• Parental and adoption leave
• Learning & development opportunities and study support
• Travel season ticket loans
• Subsidised restaurant in our Crawley office
• Volunteering days and charity payroll giving
• Onsite gym
• Ride‑to‑Work scheme
• Social clubs and events

You can learn more about how we support our employees on our website.

Disability Statement

People's Partnership is an equal opportunities employer. We believe everyone has the right to be treated fairly, with dignity and respect. We are committed to treating all our people (and all who apply for a role at People's Partnership) equally and enabling them to perform at their best and demonstrate what they have to offer. We are a disability committed employer, please let us know if you need any reasonable adjustments made to our recruitment process (application, selection assessments where relevant, and interview) to enable you to show us the best "you".