Senior Service Designer (applications reviewed every 2 weeks)

Salary details: £46638 - £56141

(Applications reviewed every 2 weeks)

Location: We’re based in the heart of Woolwich, which is a great place to both live and work. Woolwich benefits from excellent transport links; buses, tubes, trains (just 21 minutes from central London and 10 minutes from The O2), ferries and Crossrail expansion. During the current COVID-19 response you will be working mainly at home; when the pandemic has abated, you’ll have a mixture of home and office-based working.

Who are we looking for?

Our new Digital and Customer Service team are expanding and we are on the lookout for an empathetic, kind and curious person who has already started their career in service design. You will be one of six other service designers.

It’s an exciting time to join our team, as we’ve recently published our first ever digital strategy and want you to be a part of making our strategy a reality. You will help us on our mission to make the Royal Borough of Greenwich a truly digital council and borough over the next four years and beyond.

As a Senior Service Designer, you’ll be welcomed into a thriving, exciting in-house product team, alongside other service designers, user researcher, content designers, business analysts and product managers. It’s essential you’re open-minded, great at working in a team, have experience in designing services that are fast, accessible, joint-up and simple to use. Most importantly you are up for the challenge to make public service more outcome-focused and growing a new practice. We are a new team, so there’s plenty of scope for having your say!

What your role will involve:

You’ll be part of our brand-new in-house product function as part of the Digital and Customer service team. You’ll report to the Head of Product.

As a Senior Service Designer, you’ll take a key role in the service design community across Royal Borough of Greenwich, setting standards and leading service design of new, complex products and services. You’ll directly lead on our most complex, risky and interdependent priority areas, working as part of the multidisciplinary team and partner with service areas, acting as the bridge between transformational goals and the practicalities of product delivery.

As a senior practitioner, you will be working through the entire design and delivery process, from framing problems, understanding and visualising service landscape, improving and reimagining end-to-end service, crafting service details, prototyping service to orchestrating work to support implementation.

What your day-to-day responsibilities will look like 

• Work with different types of service across digital and non-digital channels and methods of access.
• Help colleagues see their services through a people lens with a design state of mind, helping them to map and discover opportunities for transformation in their areas.
• Help colleagues reimagine their services to improve service outcomes and reduce the cost of delivery.
• Contribute to identify design patterns and reusable components to tackle common problems across the organisation.
• Use data, design thinking and agile ways of working to solve problems, test ideas quickly, iterate what you do and embed a learning culture.
• Take a key role in developing and growing the service design community of practice, codifying ways of working.
• Line manage people, helping develop our people and managing performance robustly.
• Actively look for opportunities to improve the internal processes of knowledge management, learning and development, getting feedback, running design critique and meetings, etc.
• Work with senior leaders across the council to help them understand service design, helping them see what’s possible.

Why join Royal Greenwich:

Royal Greenwich is proud to be a borough synonymous with first class modern services. A world class heritage site, our communities are vibrant and diverse, and we pride ourselves on being a well-managed, well-run authority.

We are going through a digital transition and are on the hunt to recruit like-minded team members to be a part of the challenge. We pride ourselves on our values, so you’ll be in an environment that promotes knowledge and skill sharing, so you’ll be working closely with other areas of the business.

Our vision is for a happier, healthier and more joined-up borough using modern technology and data. This was already an urgent need, but the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated both the urgency and the will to change.

Our Royal Greenwich values underpin the work we do:

• Improving residents lives and opportunities
• Demonstrating respect and fairness
• Taking ownership
• Doing things better
• Working together across the Council.

What we offer 

• 28 days’ annual leave 
• Flexible and partly remote working arrangements
• Mental health support, including an external counselling service
• Pension scheme 
• Long service awards
• Learning and development opportunities, including apprenticeships
• Staff networks for mental health, LGBTQ+ support, racial equality and more
• Vouchers for free eye tests 
• Annual season ticket loans 
• Childcare voucher scheme 
• Reduced-rate gym membership 
• Cycle to work scheme 
• Greenwich One Card which entitles you to discounts at local businesses 

Apply for this role 

To apply for this role you must: 

• complete an online application form 
• upload a CV
• write and upload a supporting statement in the form of a cover letter 

It is unlikely that we’ll shortlist you for an interview without a cover letter. A good cover letter will help us know why you’re right for this role. 

To apply, select the “Apply for this job” button. 

Hiring process  

Step 1 – Complete the application form and upload your CV and cover letter. There is no closing date for this role. We’ll review applications every 2 weeks until it is filled. 

Step 2 – If we invite you to an interview, we will give you a task to prepare in advance.

Step 3 – Attend the panel interview. This will usually be a 1-hour video call with up to 3 people like the hiring manager and other team members you would work with. In the interview, you'll talk through the task you prepared and how it shows your capabilities. There will be follow up questions and structured questions to help us assess how you meet the essential criteria in the job description. We’ll ask questions like “tell us a situation when...” and would like you to give examples in your answers. Before the interview ends, you will have the time to ask questions to check if this is the right opportunity for you. 

Talk to us or ask any questions 

If you’d like an informal chat about the role, you can speak to Lingjing Yin (Head of Product) by emailing Lingjing.Yin@royalgreenwich.gov.uk

Please note, we do not accept application by email.

For an informal discussion about this opportunity, please contact Darinka Yoli;    Darinka.Yoli@royalgreenwich.gov.uk     .  

Diversity Statement: Royal Borough of Greenwich values the diversity of its community and aims to have a workforce that reflects this. We therefore encourage applications from all sections of the community.

High Volume Applications: Royal Borough of Greenwich reserves the right to close any vacancy earlier than the advertised closing date should there be a high volume of applications received.

Advert Close: All vacancies close at midnight unless otherwise stated.

Interview Arrangements: During this time, our priority for all of our recruitment activity is to make sure our applicants, hiring departments and new starters are informed, safe and supported. Careful and thorough consideration will be given to interview arrangements and for any essential in-person recruitment, we will ensure this is held in a suitable, secure setting with additional arrangements to ensure any current safety requirements are fully adhered to.

Salary: Salaries advertised are for a standard working week of 35 hours unless otherwise stated. Please use this 'Salary Calculator to help you calculate a pro rata salary.

Interim Working Arrangements: As we review our ways of working, there may be interim working arrangements in place for some of our roles and some roles may still require full or partial essential office attendance. As restrictions ease, alternative working arrangements may be required - please be mindful of this and note the workplace location stated on this advert.

Our Staff Values: Our Staff Values are important to us. Candidates will be continuously assessed against our staff values throughout the recruitment process. Where candidates demonstrate views and behaviours that do not meet the standards of our staff values, we reserve the right to reject their application/ registration.