Service Designer

About the role

As a Service Designer at dxw, you’ll be a hands‑on designer working within multidisciplinary teams to help create and improve public services that meet real user needs and deliver value for clients. This role sits between Junior and Senior levels and focuses on developing strong service design practice while contributing meaningfully to client work.

You’ll collaborate closely with user researchers, content designers, developers, delivery colleagues, business analysts and client teams. Working across different stages of the service lifecycle, you’ll help teams understand problems, explore opportunities and design services that work across front and back stages.

This is a practitioner role. You’ll be supported by more senior designers and the wider UCD community, with opportunities to grow your skills, confidence and impact over time.

Alongside project work, you’ll contribute to dxw’s service design discipline by sharing knowledge and helping improve how we work. You’ll also take part in wider design and company activities and may contribute to internal initiatives.

We value diverse perspectives and encourage people with a broad range of experience to apply. We are particularly interested in candidates with experience within the health and justice sectors.

Key responsibilities

Service design practice

• Apply human‑centred service design methods to explore, shape and improve services across the full service lifecycle.

• Work on services at different stages, from early discovery and strategy to transformation and improvement of live services, in line with the Government Service Manual.

• Use a range of methods to identify challenges and opportunities across frontstage and backstage service experiences.

• Create clear and useful design artefacts, such as service blueprints, user journeys, flow diagrams and prototypes, to support shared understanding and decision‑making.

Working in multidisciplinary teams

• Work as part of multidisciplinary, agile teams, often blended with dxw, client and partner colleagues.

• Collaborate closely with other designers, researchers, developers and delivery leads to design and test ideas.

• Communicate design ideas, insights and rationale clearly to a range of audiences.

• Support inclusive, collaborative ways of working within teams and with clients.

Supporting clients and delivery

• Help teams and clients understand service design approaches and the value they bring.

• Support clients to build their own service design capability and skills where appropriate.

• Balance exploration and delivery, helping teams move forward while learning from evidence.

Improving how we work

• Contribute to the development and improvement of dxw’s service design practices and ways of working.

• Support recruitment activity and contribute to strengthening the service design practice.

• Share learning, experiences and ideas with the wider design community at dxw.

Expectations of the role

• You will be a practitioner designer, spending most of your time working hands‑on on client projects.

• You will work with guidance and support from senior designers, while taking ownership of your own design tasks and outputs.

• You will be expected to collaborate closely with others and seek support when needed.

• You will contribute to a supportive, learning‑focused design community at dxw.

About you

You care about designing public services that work well for the people who rely on them, and you’re motivated by understanding complex problems and improving systems.

You:

• Have around 2–3 years’ experience working in service design or a related role.

• Believe in the value and impact that service design can bring to organisations and users.

• Are comfortable working as part of a multidisciplinary team.

• Work in ways that support inclusion, equity and accessibility.

• Have a working knowledge of agile methodologies.

• Have practical experience using human‑centred service design methods.

• Can create and explain design artefacts that help teams and clients understand problems and opportunities.

• Have strong communication skills and can articulate design ideas and insights clearly.

• Are curious, willing to try new things, and know when to ask for help.

• Are interested in contributing to and learning from the wider design community.