Senior Service Designer

Making Tax Digital (MTD) is a key part of the government’s ambition for HMRC to become one of the most digitally advanced tax authorities in the world. MTD will make it easier for businesses to get their tax right, saving time which can be devoted to maximising business opportunities, and helping to foster 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. We are committed to ensuring that the tax system continues to meet the needs of the increasingly digitally engaged population, and we want to build on its resilience and effectiveness.

An exciting new opportunity is available within the Making Tax Digital Programme, for a motivated, passionate and self-starting individual to join an established and knowledgeable team operating in a fast-paced environment.

We are looking for an individual who is proactive in their approach to work and has sound judgement, as well as a strong ability to communicate and prioritise.

The successful individual can look forward to a supportive environment that will provide all the training and experience they need to achieve great outcomes, develop their skills and personal effectiveness and get valuable and unique insights into a high-profile programme.

See what it’s like to work at HMRC: find out more about us or ask our colleagues a question. Questions relating to an individual application must be emailed as detailed later in this advert.

We are looking to recruit 2 Senior Services Designers to work in Making Tax Digital. You will share your experience on designing the end-to-end journey of our services and products for our users, showing your role when tricky problems arose and thinking broadly about how services and policies interact.

You will work across a group of multidisciplinary teams to ensure that the features that are being designed are informed by evidence and put our users first. You will work closely with each other to ensure the full end-to-end picture is joined up, and you will manage and develop the capability of service designers that are embedded within teams that are designing and building new features.

With complex services we have a complex user base – millions of people have to use these services, which means a broad spectrum of different needs and outcomes. You will influence and support others within the profession to take on designing our biggest services. You will work with digital service managers and programme directors 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 online below or available to download at the bottom of this job advert in the candidate pack.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/service-designer#senior-service-designer

The Senior Service Designer will fulfil a range of roles in the programme:  

Leader – Work with service managers and programme directors to develop design concepts on complex projects and in support of other service designers, including the management and/or coaching junior designers.

Co-creator – Help build, set direction and embed good practice within teams where everyone involved in the service is represented and contributes to the bigger picture.

Facilitator – developing a common understanding of a challenging policy problem or potential policy options and enable design-led decision making.

Storyteller – articulating strategic goals for services, communicating complex information, and sharing the story using artefacts like service blueprints, roadmaps, vision and mission statements that you and your service designers create

Evidence-driven – you are a strong believer in context-based design, you can visualise, articulate and solve complex problems and concepts, and make disciplined decisions based on available information and research evidence.

Analyst – Analysing failure within existing services and/or identifying potential unintended consequences of policy options and creating recommendations to address these.

Holistic – Understanding the existing support system for a service – both digital and process based – and designing targeted improvements to existing services or to accommodate new services.

Technical skills: 

We would like you to show the following technical skills from the Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) Capability Framework:

Evidence and context -based design

Strategic thinking

User centred design

Leadership and guidance

Service design techniques

Essential Criteria: Essential skills and experience

You’ll be able to evidence expertise and a track record in:

1. Designing systems for use across services using a variety of prototyping methods and identifying the simplest of approaches.
2. Meeting the needs of users and 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.
3. Designing within constraints and to delivery timescales, including identifying, communicating and working within constraints, and pushing back to ensure constraints are valid.
4. Working with consequential or complex risks, building consensus between services or independent stakeholders, developing and using key shared artefacts such as service blueprints.
5. Strong stakeholder communication, including interpreting the needs of technical and business stakeholders and managing stakeholder expectations and support or host difficult discussions within the team or with diverse senior stakeholders.
6. Working in and across Agile teams – including helping teams to manage and visualise outcomes, prioritise work and adhere to agreed minimum viable product (MVP), priorities and scope.

Desirable Criteria:  

–    Mentoring or developing service designers.

–    Collaborating with user researchers, digital service managers and business analysts.