User Experience and Service Design Lead

North Northants; Kettering; Hybrid; GBP 55,000 - 75,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Pension scheme

Hybrid/flexible working

Employee Assistance Programme

Employee Benefits Scheme

Wellbeing support

HMRC travel rates

Employee Network Groups

Job summary

North Northamptonshire Council is seeking a User Experience and Service Design Lead to shape digital services around real user needs in our Digital team. You will work with staff and residents to understand processes, journeys and opportunities for improvement.

You will combine user research, service design and business analysis to deliver accessible, evidence-led experiences, guided by data and insight, with the customer at the heart of every decision.

Qualifications

• Experience applying user-centred and service design methods.
• Ability to conduct research, testing with users, and analysis.
• Knowledge of accessibility, inclusive design and agile working.

Responsibilities

• Lead user experience and service design activity through research and usability testing.
• Analyze metrics, SEO insight and user feedback to inform design decisions.
• Map and redesign services with journeys, maps and blueprints.
• Create wireframes, prototypes, personas and journey maps.
• Facilitate collaborative design workshops with teams and users.
• Translate business and user requirements into delivery options.
• Champion accessibility, inclusive design and data protection.
• Support agile delivery across discovery, backlog and sprints.
• Influence stakeholders with clear research findings.
• Build capability through mentoring across Technology, Digital and Data.

Job description

About the role

This role is pivotal in helping the council design and improve digital services around real user needs. As a User Experience and Service Design Lead in the Digital team, you will work with both staff and residents to understand processes, workflows, and user journeys. You will help identify process improvements and shape accessible, intuitive and evidence-led digital experiences.

You will combine user experience design, service design, user research and business analysis skills to support service improvements and change guided by data and insight, with the customer at the heart of the process.

What will you be doing?

• Lead user experience and service design activity:Plan and deliver user research, discovery work, usability testing and insight analysis to understand user needs, behaviours, barriers and opportunities for improvement.
• Use evidence to drive improvement:Analyse website metrics, search data, SEO insight, accessibility findings, user feedback and service performance information to inform design decisions and recommendations.
• Map and redesign services:Create user journeys, service maps, process maps and service blueprints to identify pain points, duplication, failure demand and opportunities to improve end-to-end services.
• Develop design concepts and prototypes: Produce wireframes, prototypes, personas, journey maps and other visual artefacts that help services test, refine and communicate ideas before delivery.
• Facilitate collaborative design:Run workshops and design sessions with service teams, digital colleagues, partners and users to shape practical, accessible and deliverable service improvements.
• Translate needs into delivery requirements: Gather and translate business and user requirements into clear findings, options, recommendations and delivery requirements for multidisciplinary teams.
• Champion accessibility and standards:Ensure digital services are designed in line with accessibility standards, inclusive design principles, data protection and cyber security considerations.
• Support agile delivery: Contribute to discovery, backlog development, sprint planning, delivery reviews and continuous improvement across Digital team ways of working.
• Influence and advise:Communicate complex research findings and design options clearly to technical and non-technical audiences, constructively challenging assumptions and championing user-centred design.
• Build capability: Provide guidance, mentoring and support to colleagues across Technology, Digital and Data to raise awareness of user-centred design and embed good practice.

About you

You will bring experience of applying user-centred design and service design methods to improve digital services, customer journeys and operational processes. You will be confident conducting research, testing ideas with users, analysing data and turning complex findings into clear recommendations. You will understand accessibility, inclusive design, agile working and digital service improvement, and be able to build strong relationships with colleagues, services, suppliers and stakeholders at different levels.

We anticipate that interviews will take place on the week commencing 28 September 2026.

Here at North Northamptonshire Council, we’re transforming for the better, using all our creativity and imagination to create the best life for our local people.

You’ll find that we have a wide range of careers that may be more surprising than you think!

Why choose us?

We offer a vibrant working environment with:

• a pension scheme, where we pay a significant contribution on top of your contribution. It provides life cover and ill-health protection.
• lots of opportunities to develop your skills, knowledge and potential in a large unitary council
• generous leave entitlement (28days, rising to 33days) and bank holidays, plus the option to buy up to an extra 10 days
• hybrid and flexible working arrangements, where practicable for service needs to help you with a healthy work-life balance.

We provide a range of great benefits such as an Employee Assistance Programme, an Employee Benefits Scheme, wellbeing support, travel rates at HMRC rates, as well as supporting a range of active Employee Network Groups.

About us

Our Values and Behaviours

Our values define who we are and how we operate, by forming the foundation for how we interact with our customers, colleagues and provide our services. They are also at the forefront of our decision making and delivery and are:

Customer-focused
Respectful
Efficient
Supportive
Trustworthy

Our key commitments help ensure that the priorities we make, now and in the future, maintain the necessary breadth of focus in those areas that we believe matter most.

We are proud to be a recognised Disability Confident Employer and is committed to providing an inclusive recruitment process and will offer an interview to disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for the role.

The council obtained the Gold status award for the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme (ERS).

Further information can be found at Jobs and careers | North Northamptonshire Council (northnorthants.gov.uk)

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• Location Haylock House, Kettering, United Kingdom