User Experience and Service Design Lead

North Northamptonshire Council; Kettering; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Pension scheme with life cover

Hybrid and flexible working

Generous leave entitlement (28–33 days

Employee Assistance Programme

Employee Benefits Scheme

Wellbeing support

Job summary

North Northamptonshire Council in the UK is seeking a User Experience and Service Design Lead within the Digital team to design accessible, intuitive digital services for staff and residents. You will combine user research, service design and business analysis to identify improvements guided by data and insight.

You will collaborate with colleagues, partners and residents to deliver end-to-end service enhancements, while championing accessibility and inclusive design in an agile environment.

Qualifications

• Experience applying user-centred design to digital services.
• Ability to map user journeys and service blueprints.
• Experience conducting usability testing and research.
• Knowledge of accessibility standards and inclusive design.
• Ability to translate insights into delivery requirements.

Responsibilities

• Lead user experience and service design activity, plan and deliver research and usability testing.
• Analyse metrics and feedback to inform design decisions.
• Create user journeys, service maps and blueprints to identify pain points.
• Develop wireframes and prototypes.
• Facilitate workshops with service teams, digital colleagues and users.
• Translate business and user requirements into clear delivery options.
• Champion accessibility and standards in all services.
• Support agile delivery across the Digital team.
• Communicate complex findings to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Provide mentoring and guidance to colleagues to raise awareness of user-centred design.

Skills

User research

User experience design

Service design

Accessibility

Inclusive design

Data-informed decision making

Stakeholder engagement

Agile working

Job description

The following content displays a map of the jobs location - Haylock House, Kettering

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 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.

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

Disability Confident Employer

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)