Principal Service Design Consultant

Our Principal Consultants shape engagements and lead our design teams, to ensure that we deliver fantastic quality work to our clients. As a senior practitioner in a user-centred design business, you will be at the heart of everything we do. You’ll be researching and crafting innovative design solutions that make a difference to people’s lives.

You will be responsible for leading our client engagements within our Digital Government pod (see here for our blog about pods). You will work on projects for central and local government departments, for government agencies and other bodies (such as the UK Space Agency), and for public sector health organisations.

You’ll take a lead role in winning work for cxpartners. You’ll work closely with senior client stakeholders. You’ll help respond to new business opportunities and will shape, cost and communicate both individual projects and wider programmes of work.

We expect you to understand the fundamentals of the way a business like cxpartners works, and to understand our customers’ organisations too. You will work collaboratively in cross-functional, agile teams with other service design and UX consultants, visual designers, technologists, project managers and clients.

You’ll be a team leader internally. You’ll ensure other team members understand their roles and responsibilities, and you’ll mentor junior practitioners. You’ll help to recruit both freelancers and permanent staff. We might ask you to take on some line management responsibility.

You will help our Strategy Director (who leads our Digital Government pod) to drive the vision for the pod. You’ll help with commercial forecasting. We’ll ask you to bring fresh thinking to the team.

You’ll develop your profile as a design leader both inside and outside cxpartners, for example by speaking at conferences and running workshops. You may have a particular area of technical expertise that you will deepen and develop; or you may be a highly experienced generalist.

• Work with clients to design for the whole experience. You will help clients use digital to best effect and to meet their users’ needs through the delivery of excellent, innovative products, services and experiences.
• Take responsibility for the quality and shape of our delivery.
• Take ownership of, and lead projects or programmes of work for, your client accounts.
• Identify and nurture new business leads through your accounts.
• Shape proposals and approaches for bidding for new work.
• Work collaboratively with your Pod leader to drive success through both growth and delivery.
• Provide thought leadership and design methodology as part of the process of bidding for and winning new work.
• Share your deep knowledge of the latest service design trends with your clients, and help them to develop further value from their markets.
• Be proficient in research/design/prototyping methods and processes. Be used to working lean and be expert in agile ways of working.
• Work in blended, multi-discipline teams.
• Have innovation and calculated risk-seeking in your DNA.
• Be great with clients, able to lead and willing to coach staff.
• Be proactive in projecting cxpartners’ value into the digital government, charities and digital home sectors and the wider experience design community.

You will have worked on projects within the public sector. You’ll have some established networks. You’ll have an active interest in how the government can support all citizens across all service provisions. Experience in the housing or health sectors would be a bonus.

You’ll know the Government Service Standards and service manual well and have an understanding of designing services for the public sector. Ideally, you’ll have experience of successfully taking several projects through the GDS assessment process. It would be great if you had experience of running the Discovery and Alpha phases of projects.

You’ll have the appetite to attend digital government meet ups, conferences, and hackathons.

You have detailed knowledge and practical experience of UX methodology and practices. We are pragmatic, not dogmatic, in our approach and very much outcome-driven. Often our work breaks new ground, and we innovate to achieve those outcomes. We’d like you to be the kind of person who is able to help us do that.

You’ll have great communication skills (verbal and written), the ability to listen, and to articulate complex ideas clearly. You’ll need a level of natural authority to help you lead your teams, and to ensure clients listen to you and people respond to you.

We’d like you to be able to see the big picture and have a strong attention to detail – both are possible, we think.

You’ll have experience of leading teams including UX researchers and designers.

Once travel restrictions are eased, you’ll be happy to travel to our other office around once a fortnight, and to work on site with clients if and when that is needed.

You must have the right to live and work in the UK.