Senior Service Designer

About our Team

Making Tax Digital (MTD) is a key part of the government’s ambition for HMRC to become one of the most digitally sophisticated tax authorities in the world.

Helping businesses to get their tax right, saving time which allows us to be committed to improving business opportunities, and helping to develop good financial planning.

MTD requires businesses to use digital record-keeping tools and submit tax return data directly from those records using MTD-compatible software. Aspiring to ensure that our tax system continues to meet the needs of the increasingly digitally engaged population, and we want to build on its resilience and efficiency.

An exciting new opportunity is available for a Senior Service Designer in Making Tax Digital. We’re looking for a motivated, hardworking and self-starting individual to join an established and knowledgeable programme operating in a fast-paced environment.

About You

• Are you a proactive person in your approach to work? Having balanced judgement, as well as a strong ability to communicate and prioritise.
• Do you want to create encouraging environments and spaces to achieve phenomenal service outcomes, develop skills and personal efficiency whilst gaining insights into high-profile programmes?
• Are you focused on joining up the end-to-end journey of the different services and products for users?
• Are you a real visible influencer? Supporting others within the profession to take on designing our biggest services.
• Do you collaborate with other service managers and programme directors to develop digital design concepts?
• Do you help your teams to implement the best methodology whilst making important decisions based on research understanding how this research influences others?
• Are you experienced in working in complex programmes to embed user centred design in multidisciplinary teams?

Then this might be your Service Designer career choice!

About the Role

Embedding yourself across multidisciplinary teams driving the user centred design across a range of digital products.

Partnering with colleagues to drive the full end-to-end process, joining it up and improving our capability of colleagues  embedded within multidisciplinary teams.

You will work with digital service managers, business analysts and product owners to develop design concepts, collaborate with product and business analysis leads, help set direction and embed good practice within teams and make important decisions based on research and understand how this research impacts others.

The Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) Capability Framework provides more details about the role of the Senior Service Designer which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/service-designer#senior-service-designer

You will support  a small team of service designers who work across wider teams within Making Tax Digital

(You don’t need previous people management experience but it’s desirable)

The Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) Capability Framework provides more details about the role of the Senior Service Designer which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/service-designer#senior-service-designer 

Our Senior Service Designer will, should show recent experience of being a: –

Leader – Work with varying team partners to design concepts on fast paced projects, supporting other service designers, leading and mentoring them.

Co-creator – A direction setter and who knows good practice within teams where everyone involved in the service is represented and supplies to the bigger picture.

Facilitator – Developing a unified approach to our already ambitious policy. Facilitating if problems occur, promoting choices on policy options enabling design-led decision making.

Storyteller – Easily articulating goals for services, communicating high-reaching information while influencing via sharing the journeys using artefacts like service blueprints, roadmaps, vision and mission statements that you and your service designers create.

Evidence-driven – A context-based designer, you can visualise, promote and tackle issues around concepts, making principled decisions driven by your available information/research evidence.

Holistic Analyst– Analysing failures within existing services and/or identifying potential unintended consequences of policy options and creating recommendations to address these. Whilst understanding existing support system for a service – both digital and process based – and designing targeted improvements to existing services or to accommodate new services.

Essential Criteria 

We need to see experience in the following for this opportunity: –

• Designing journeys and systems for use across services using several prototyping methods, identifying the simplest of approaches.
• Experience in leading the design and implementation of strategy, directing evaluations of strategies and policies to ensure business requirements are being met
• Experience in bringing people together to form a motivated team and help create the right environment for a positive team outcome
• Meeting users’ needs while achieving policy intent across a variety of channels, bringing insight and expertise in how user needs have changed over time to ensure they’re met by the business.
• Designing within constraints and to delivery timescales, including identifying, communicating and working within constraints, and pushing back to ensure constraints are valid.
• Working with consequential or complex risks, building consensus between services or independent team members, developing and using key shared artefacts such as service blueprints.
• Strong partner communication, including interpreting needs of technical and business customers, while managing their expectations. Supporting to hold daring conversations within the team or with diverse senior partners.

• Working in and across Agile teams – including helping teams to deal with and visualise outcomes, prioritise work and adhere to agreed minimum viable product (MVP), priorities and scope.