Principal Service Designer

Principal Service Designer
£65,000 – £75,000 (Grade D19) plus excellent benefits
Manchester city centre
Flexible working options available

We’re looking for a principal service designer to join Co-op Digital and lead our digital customer experience. You’ll need to be highly skilled in service design, whilst having knowledge across interaction design, visual design, user research, content design and front-end development. You’ll understand how to create customer experiences that give Co-op a competitive advantage, providing commercial return whilst meeting user needs.

As a principal service designer, we’ll look to you to be a leader in our growing design community. You’ll lead the design of products and services at a strategic level within a business area (such as our food business) and grow our service design community of practice. You’ll remain hands-on, working directly within a product team, whilst overseeing the output of other product teams across your business area. You’ll be working with leaders across the Co-op business, and we’ll need you to have experience managing designers and leading a team in a previous role. If you can bring us the people skills and service design experience we need, we can offer you the chance to build a career with a business that’s using digital to make a difference.

What you’ll do

* work with teams across Co-op to embed service design approaches to customer experience
* work with the head of digital design and other principal designers to own the digital customer experience
* be accountable for the design of high profile, complex digital products and services in a business area (such as our food business)
* represent design within a business area, communicating design decisions to colleagues in digital and the wider business
* collaborate with different product teams to design products and services that create commercial return and meet user needs
* consider the wider impact of products being designed, positively influencing the whole service experience
* lead the strategic and iterative improvement of digital products and services
* be an advocate for accessibility in all aspects of the design of a service
* lead and grow the service design community of practice in collaboration with our lead designers
* coach and develop the standard of service design across the design team and digital
* support the development of our design processes to enable service design at scale
* manage around 4 lead designers and support them to manage other designers

This role would suit people who have

* previous experience working in a design leadership role
* broad knowledge of service design, visual design, interaction design, content design, user research and front-end development
* experience managing designers and leading the design of digital products and services
* expert knowledge of service mapping methods (e.g. service blueprints) and systems thinking
* the ability to think holistically to shape both the front stage and back stage of a service to positively impact the customer experience
* the ability to lead a digital design process at a strategic and conceptual level
* an understanding of how to structure and position a product to make it understandable and easy to use, with a commitment to creating digital services that are accessible to all
* experience making design decisions based on user research
* excellent communication skills and ability to build positive relationships with partners in the business, influencing up to senior level
* experience working in an agile, multidisciplinary team environment
* a portfolio demonstrating knowledge of user research, service mapping, the end-to-end customer journey, processes and systems, and the impact on customer experience (you will be asked to provide a copy of this when applying)

Why Co-op?

Here you’ll do work that matters. We’re a commercial organisation with a purpose beyond profit, you’ll have an opportunity to help us build a stronger Co-op and stronger communities. You’ll also get a package that includes:

* competitive salary
* coaching, training and support to help you develop
* pension with up to 10% employer contributions
* annual incentive scheme
* 28 days holiday (rising to 32 in line with service)
* discounts on Co-op products and services

Building an inclusive work environment

We’re actively building diverse teams and welcome applications from everyone. But simply having a diverse workforce is not enough. We aim to build an inclusive environment, where everyone can contribute their best work and develop to their full potential. We celebrate our differences, and recognise the importance of teams reflecting the communities they serve.

We can make reasonable adjustments to our interview process according to your needs. And we offer a flexible working environment so you can adjust your hours to suit your personal circumstances. You can find out more about Co-op people policies at coop.co.uk/peoplepolicies.

As part of your application you’ll need to complete an online assessment. It will take you around 12 minutes to complete this test.