Lead Service Designer

Lead Service Designers at Made Tech are strategic leaders responsible for helping to shape the Service Design practice, owning the strategic direction of complex, high-impact services, and driving organisational change across multiple client engagements. This role requires an expert Service Design practitioner who operates at the intersection of policy, technology, and operations, significantly influencing senior client strategy and developing the next generation of designers. Success is measured by the improvement of public services and the quality of the Service Design community.

Made Tech wants to positively impact the country's future by using technology to improve society. As a Lead Service Designer, you will move beyond single-project delivery to take accountability for the design and strategic direction of multiple client projects. You will champion and embed Service Design as a strategic capability within client organisations and within Made Tech.

About the role:

• Strategic service practitioner: define the long-term vision, strategy, and roadmap for major public services, ensuring alignment between strategic policy intent, user needs, and practical delivery constraints across the full service lifecycle.

Collaborative and communicative leadership

• Candid-but-kind communicators: Lead challenging conversations with senior stakeholders regarding service blockers, policy constraints, and investment decisions, using data and empathy to drive commitment to user-centred outcomes.

• Growth mindset: drive continuous improvement in the practice, identifying and adopting new strategic Service Design approaches and fostering a culture of experimentation and learning within the community.

Key Responsibilities

Scope

• Assure success: provide design assurance for the successful strategic design and transformation of public services, applying a holistic Service Design lens across technology, policy, process, and the client organisation’s operating model.
• Build design maturity: Lead the uplift of client service design maturity, setting strategic expectations with the most senior stakeholders and leading the delivery of training and briefing programmes.
• Design strategy: define the strategy for designing, prototyping, and testing seamless, multi-channel services, ensuring all organisational, service, and user outcomes are aligned and measured against key performance indicators.
• Championing the practice: champion the practice across Made Tech through leadership within the Community of Practice (CoP) and providing high-level coaching and mentoring support to Senior and midlevel Designers.

Commercial and practice development

• Client relationship leadership: Act as a trusted strategic design advisor to key clients, building deep, enduring relationships that unlock opportunities for transformational work.
• Advocacy and thought leadership: represent and advocate for Service Design externally as a thought leader, generating influential content (talks, blog posts, case studies) that contributes to the definition and elevation of Made Tech's Service Design principles.
• Practice leadership: take shared responsibility for the Service Design community's health, capability, and growth, leading on advanced skills development, mentoring, and setting the hiring strategy.

Skills, knowledge and expertise

• Service Design Mastery: operates as an industry expert in Service Design tools and methodologies (for example, Service Blueprints, Ecosystem Maps, Policy Mapping), defining how teams should apply them for maximum impact.
• Advanced coaching: able to coach and mentor other designers to a high standard, owning the definition and enforcement of the Service Design standards which others will apply across Made Tech engagements.

Key measures

• Evidence of successfully defined and delivered strategic service transformation outcomes for major clients (i.e., tangible, measurable citizen and organisational benefit).
• Substantial impact on the capability, retention, and happiness of the Service Design community, demonstrating effective line management and mentorship of Senior Designers.
• High-quality contributions to winning strategic new business and growth opportunities.
• Consistent positive feedback from colleagues and clients regarding leadership, influence, and the maturity of Service Design standards embedded across programmes.

Job Benefits

We are always listening to our growing teams and evolving the benefits available to our people. As we scale, as do our benefits and we are scaling quickly. We've recently introduced a flexible benefit platform which includes a Smart Tech scheme, Cycle to work scheme, and an individual benefits allowance which you can invest in a Health care cash plan or Pension plan. We’re also big on connection and have an optional social and wellbeing calendar of events for all employees to join should they choose to.

Here are some of our most popular benefits listed below:

30 days Holiday - we offer 30 days of paid annual leave plus bank holidays

Flexible Working Hours - we are flexible with what hours you work

Flexible Parental Leave - we offer flexible parental leave options

Remote Working - we offer part time remote working for all our staff

Paid counseling - we offer paid counseling as well as financial and legal advice

If successful, you will be required to undertake an SC clearance