Service Designer

176022

£49,861

Permanent

DFE - Education and Skills Funding Agency - Data Science

Digital
Other

Flexible working, Full-time, Job share, Part-time

1

Coventry, West Midlands (region), CV1 2WT : Manchester, North West (region), M1 2WD : Sheffield, Yorkshire and the Humber (region), S1 2FJ

Data Science is part of the Department for Education (DfE) Service within Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA). We are a fast-paced Data Service providing functions that cover data capture, governance, visualisation and analytics. Supporting funding, payments, performance monitoring and policy development. As an organisation, we are committed to developing our people and the next generation of data and technology leaders.

Our Department is responsible for education, children’s social services, higher and further education policy, apprenticeships and wider skills in England, and equalities. We work to achieve a highly educated society in which opportunity is equal for all, no matter your background or family circumstances.

This is an exciting opportunity to work in our Data Science department as a Senior Service Designer.
In this role you will:

• Be an experienced service designer with a strong user centred design practitioner background, skilled in designing good services

• Work with the teams and stakeholders to capture the entire perspective of your service and set the vision, involve your team, stakeholders and users and build feedback and validation into your ways of working.

• Have knowledge of digital approaches and technology to understand how services can work better.

• Prototype services or parts of them, facilitate groups of people to contribute effectively to re-design them.

• Create diagrams and sketches that clearly communicate users’ journeys, interactions and other behaviours through services.

• Communicate clear rationale and evidence base for proposals or design decisions.

• Work effectively with and influence a wide range of stakeholders.

• Use hypotheses in design, make evidence-based design decisions and facilitate others in an organisation to do so.

• Design in line with the government service design manual, service standards and design patterns.

• Provide leadership for the User Centred Design team.

You will ensure that we design good services, that are accessible to our users, championing user centred design across the organisation. You will lead on developing cohesive digital services that support accurate and timely funding to schools and colleges, and support the implementation of key government policies. You will be rewarded knowing that you are making a real difference, supporting operational and policy decisions for the Department for Education (DfE).

Responsibilities

Essential Criteria

• User focus. You know how to give direction on which tools or methods to use. You are experienced in meeting the needs of users across a variety of channels. You’ll have significant experience collaborating with teams and stakeholders to help define the problem that needs to be solved. You can bring insight and expertise in how user needs have changed over time to ensure these are met by the business.

• Facilitation. You’re confident using facilitation and co-design approaches and service design methodologies to bring users, stakeholders, and individuals together to frame problems, agree on shared purpose and shape a design process to deliver desired service outcomes.

• Leadership and guidance. You can build consensus between services or independent stakeholders. You can identify problems or issues in the team dynamic and rectify them. You engage in varying types of feedback choosing the right type at the appropriate time and ensuring the discussion and decision sticks. You can bring people together to form a motivated team and help create the right environment for a team to work in. You know how to facilitate the best team make-up depending on the situation.

• Evidence- and context-based design. You know how to design systems for use across multiple services and can identify the simplest approach out of a variety of approaches.

• Digital perspective. You have the ability to apply a digital understanding to your work. You can identify and implement solutions for assisted digital.

• Prototyping. You are experienced in using a variety of methods of prototyping your vision and engaging others with how the world could be.

• You know how to share best practice and can coach others. You can look at strategic service design end to end. You know how to involve your team, stakeholders and users and build feedback and validation into your ways of working.

Applicants currently holding a permanent post in the Civil Service should note that, if successful, their salary on appointment would be determined by the Department’s transfer / promotion policies.
As a member of the DfE, you will be entitled to join the highly competitive Civil Service Pension Scheme, which many experts agree is one of the most generous in the UK.

You will have 25 days leave, increasing by 1 day every year to a maximum of 30 days after five years’ service. In addition, all staff receive the Queen’s Birthday privilege holiday and 8 days’ bank and public holidays.
We offer flexible working arrangements, such as job sharing, term-time working, flexi-time and compressed hours.
As an organisation, which exists to support education and lifelong learning, we offer our staff excellent professional development opportunities.