Lead Service Designer

The Role: 

You’ll work alongside a multidisciplinary team of designers, researchers, strategists, and technologists, creating services for some of the world’s most influential organisations.  

Our capability is end-to-end. We move from framing complex challenges through to delivering live services, always balancing user needs, business impact, and operational reality.   

We operate across sectors, including public services, financial services, and consumer brands. Each brings different constraints, expectations, and opportunities; and we adapt accordingly.  

Service design at Valtech connects the dots. We align teams, shape systems, and design services that work across channels, touchpoints, and organisational boundaries. 

Role Responsibilities: 

• You’re a hands-on service designer who thrives in complex, real-world environments. You’re comfortable working directly with clients, often on-site; embedding into teams, facilitating conversations, and helping organisations move forward with clarity and confidence.  

• You lead from the front, but you’re just as comfortable contributing as an individual within a cross-disciplinary team. You work shoulder-to-shoulder with product designers, product managers, engineers, data specialists, and business strategists, bringing your perspective while valuing theirs.  

• You bring a strong foundation in service design, but you’re not rigid in how you apply it. You flex across CX, UX, product, and strategy, using the right tools and approaches for the context. Whether shaping a service vision, mapping a complex ecosystem, or defining an operating model, you focus on what will create momentum and impact.  

• You’re confident operating across sectors. You understand how to adapt your approach when working with government, financial services, insurance, or consumer brands. Balancing structured, principle-led thinking with commercial pragmatism.  

• You’re comfortable in ambiguity. You help define problems, frame opportunity spaces, and guide teams toward clear, actionable direction. You use artefacts like service blueprints, journey maps, and system maps not as outputs, but as tools to align stakeholders and drive decisions.  

• You think in systems. You connect user needs with business goals, operational processes, technology, and data. Designing services that work in practice, not just in theory.  

• You collaborate closely with delivery teams to ensure services are feasible, scalable, and implemented effectively. You stay engaged beyond concepting, helping translate ideas into real-world outcomes.  

• You also bring a commercial lens. You spot opportunities within engagements, build strong client relationships, and help shape follow-on work. You’re comfortable contributing to proposals and working with leadership and sales to grow service design at Valtech.  

• And you support those around you; mentoring designers, raising the quality of thinking, and contributing to a culture of collaboration, learning, and continuous improvement. 

Must have qualifications: 

• Proven experience leading service design across complex services or transformation programmes.  

• A hands-on approach, with the ability to contribute directly within multidisciplinary teams.  

• Experience working across sectors (e.g. public sector, financial services, insurance, or consumer brands), or the ability to adapt quickly between them.  

• A consultative mindset, with strong stakeholder management and facilitation skills.  

• Confidence working on-site with clients and embedding into their teams.  

• Ability to operate in ambiguity and bring structure to complex, evolving problem spaces. 

• A flexible skillset spanning service design, CX, UX, research, product, or strategy.  

• Strong systems thinking, connecting user experience with operations, technology, and data.  

• An understanding of both structured approaches (e.g. GDS) and commercially driven environments and how to balance them.  

• Commercial awareness, with the ability to spot opportunities and contribute to growth.  

• Experience working in agile, cross-functional teams.  

• Commitment to accessibility and inclusive design.  

• A pragmatic, collaborative mindset focused on outcomes over process or purity.