Service Designer

Do you believe great services are co-created, not just designed?

Want to join a collaborative community of Service Designers?

Can you help teams design services end-to-end and front-to-back?

Looking for meaningful, iterative work on complex services that matter to millions?

At DWP Digital, we design and build services that make a real difference to people’s lives. As part of the UK’s largest government department, we support over 22 million people each day—from helping them find work to supporting them through some of life’s most difficult moments. Our work is central to delivering the Government’s “Get Britain Working” vision. Few organisations in the world offer the same opportunity to use technology and design thinking at this scale, with real impact.

We’re looking for a Service Designer to join us. This is more than a design role. It’s a chance to enable others to design better services too. You’ll collaborate with policy, product, delivery, and operational teams to align goals, clarify problems, and define what good service truly means.

This role focuses on shaping coherent, user-centred services across digital and non-digital channels. It involves applying research and evidence to inform design decisions, supporting teams to deliver end-to-end service experiences, and fostering an open, iterative design culture. You’ll also help align work with departmental goals and user needs, while promoting best practice and mentoring others in service design.

You’ll be part of a supportive design community that values openness, learning, and practical problem-solving, creating services that are inclusive, resilient, and responsive to change.

As a Service Designer, you will,

Be a hands-on practitioner with experience in driving awareness of service performance and improvement needs resulting in successful service outcomes.

Understand user needs, business and policy goals and use storytelling and visualisations to articulate whole services, both end-to-end and front-to-back, across teams to solve complex problems.

Have good working knowledge of service design in practice and can use service design methods including guidance, tools and patterns, to enable your team to solve complex problems and reach outcomes.

Communicate with stakeholders at varying levels of seniority and using conversation and collaboration to enable consensus that support the team strategy and decision-making enabling them to achieve outcomes.

Contribute to the DWP service design community by, participating in meetups to create connections and share work openly, promoting the capability of service design in and beyond the department and participating in recruitment activities.

When giving details in your employment history and personal statement you should highlight your experience in line with essential criteria below:

• Lead criterion: Have experience of using hands-on service design approaches to solve complex problems.
• Demonstrate user-centred design skill to develop end-to-end, front-to-back services using Government principles and evidence that meet citizen, and colleague needs as well as department objectives.
• Be comfortable communicating to a range of colleagues and stakeholders at varying levels of seniority on the value of user centricity, your approaches and decisions.
• Contribute to and support the creation and maintenance of a positive working environment that enables collaboration within your team and the service design community.

If you would like to learn more about the role, please contact Oliver.canham1@dwp.gov.uk.

We also have a broad benefits package built around your work-life balance which includes:

• Working patterns to support work/life balance such as job sharing, term-time working, flexi-time and compressed hours.
• Generous annual leave – at least 25 days on entry, increasing up to 30 days over time (pro–rata for part time employees), plus 9 days public and privilege leave.
• Support for financial wellbeing, including interest-free season ticket loans for travel, a cycle to work scheme and an employee discount scheme.
• Health and wellbeing support including our Employee Assistance Programme for specialist advice and counselling and the opportunity to join HASSRA a first-class programme of competitions, activities and benefits for its members (subscription payable monthly).
• Family friendly policies including enhanced maternity and shared parental leave pay after 1 year’s continuous service.
• Funded learning and development to support progress in your role and career. This includes industry recognised qualifications and accreditations, coaching, mentoring and talent development programmes.
• An inclusive and diverse environment with opportunities to join professional and interpersonal networks including Women’s Network, National Race Network, National Disability Network (THRIVE) and many more.