Senior Service Designer

Are you looking for an exciting digital role where you can make a difference as part of a supportive and innovative multi-disciplinary team?

This is a fantastic opportunity to join The Scottish Government in the Social Security Programme Division as a Senior Service Designer helping to deliver vital benefit for the people of Scotland.

The Social Security Scotland Programme Directorate has been created to design and implement devolved benefits for Scotland, enabling the delivery of 16.5 million payments per year, to an estimated two million people.

This vacancy sits within the Programme Management and Delivery Division and will support our various teams within the programme.

Working with the latest tools, technologies and methodologies we aim to develop user-centred system, services and processes that build capability and enable the delivery of devolved benefits in Scotland.

This post attracts a £5,000 DDaT pay supplement after a 3 months DDaT competency qualifying period. Pay supplements are temporary payments designed to address recruitment and retention issues caused by market pressures and are subject to regular review.

This post plays a key role in the end-to-end journey of a service. This helps a user complete their goal and government deliver a policy intent.  Their work may involve the creation of, or change to, transactions, products and content across both digital and offline channels provided by different parts of government.

Senior service designers work with service managers and programme directors to develop design concepts whilst championing the involvement of citizens, service users and stakeholders throughout the design process.

What we offer

We offer meaningful and careers, the chance to develop skills in an inclusive culture, and flexible working to support a healthy work-life balance.

Our benefits package includes:

• Competitive civil service salary and additional digital pay supplement of £5000 per year (after qualifying period of 3 months).
• Contributory pension package (employee contributions 5.45 – 7.35% employer contributions 27.1 – 27.9%).
• Generous leave allowance – 5 weeks, rising to 6 weeks after 4 years. In addition, the Scottish Government observes 11.5 days public and privilege holidays.
• Flexible working arrangements with the option to accrue additional days off.
• Hybrid working options with base locations in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
• Learning and development opportunities to help you reach your professional and personal potential.
• Career progression – join a well-established digital community with excellent opportunities for career advancement.
• Health and wellbeing support including 24 hour access to our Employee Assistance Programme.
• Employee discount scheme.

As a Senior Service Designer you will:

• Support the design and implementation of services, strategies, and policies to ensure business requirements and user needs are being met.
• Advocate for inclusive, collaborative, user centred service design practices and embed them into service design and delivery.
• Advise on which service design tools and methods to use.
• Work with user researchers to understand and meet the needs of users across a variety of channels.
• Champion design for users for whom assisted digital and / or accessibility technologies are required to access a service.
• Facilitate co-design with design teams, citizens services users, and other stakeholders.
• Prototype and validate proposed design solutions using a variety of prototyping tools.
• Identify and understand constraints, communicate these and work within them (including challenging the validity of constraints where appropriate whilst ensuring standards are being met).
• Make and guide on design decisions and communicate how decisions have been reached.

Additional Duties of this Role:

• Participate in and/or support programme and project assurance activities.
• Contribute to DDaT community such as by participating in events and reviewing processes, tools and guidance.
• Line manage the Social Security Directorate service design team.
• Other duties as required by SG to support wider corporate activities.

Competencies

People Management

Communications and Engagement

Improving Performance

Analysis and Use of Evidence

DDaT

Essential Digital Data and Technology (DDaT) Criteria 

1. Experience in a digital service design setting, designing and delivering a wide range of service design activities including: support team members to understand the value of design, negotiating design briefs and service developments, leading service design activates, and delivering service outcomes based on user, staff and organisational needs.
2. Ability to choose and apply appropriate user-centred design methods (from data gathering, idea &concept generation, and prototyping) for different design life cycle phases and situations.
3. Ability to communicate design approaches and insights effectively in such a way as to stimulate conversation and collaboration.
4. Knowledge of other user centred design practices and experience of collaborating with them for service delivery.