Lead Service Designer, User-Centred Service Design Team

The User-Centred Service Design Team 

This role is part of the User-Centred Service Design (UCSD) team. The purpose of our team is to ensure the Bank's services, products and change initiatives work for the people who rely on them every day. We combine service design, user research, content design and UX/product design to help teams look beyond systems, processes and requirements, and understand the human experiences that sit behind them. 

What makes us distinct is that we operate at the intersection of strategy, delivery and people. We work with some of the Bank's most complex and important programmes, helping teams navigate ambiguity, uncover hidden risks, challenge assumptions and design solutions that are genuinely useful, usable, and adopted by people within the Bank and regulated financial firms.   

We are also focused on strengthening the Bank to become a more user-centred organisation. This includes building a Bank-wide community of practice, design standards, training, coaching, and advisory services.  

We are a curious, collaborative and pragmatic team. We care deeply about understanding how things really work. We bring together different perspectives and help others see problems in new ways. Our ambition is not simply to deliver good design, but to improve the quality of decision-making, change and service delivery across the Bank.  

While the Bank is a public organisation, we are independent of the UK Government and do not follow DDAT or GDS frameworks. We seek practitioners who can adapt their approach to navigate our complex environment, demonstrate flexibility and pragmatism when needed, and bring a proactive, solution-focused mindset to their work. 

 

Service Design at the Bank of England 

Service Design at the Bank is concerned with some of the organisation's most complex challenges. Our service designers work on problems that cut across business areas, technologies and organisational boundaries, helping teams understand how users, data, processes, decisions and services connect.  

A typical engagement might involve shaping the future operating model for a major new business function, untangling a complex operational process, or understanding how data moves through the organisation and the services that surround it.  

We are looking for someone who is energised by complexity, systems thinking and organisational change, and who is comfortable spending as much time discussing governance, operating models and service delivery as they are user needs and journeys. 

 

Role Overview 

We are looking for an exceptional Lead Service Designer to join the User-Centred Service Design team at the Bank of England.  

The job is expected to cover three primary responsibilities: 

1. Lead Practitioner – A senior service design practitioner who can join a complex programme, identify gaps and opportunities from a user and service perspective, and help stakeholders make better-informed decisions. You will embed user-centred approaches within strategic change initiatives, shape the direction and scope of work, advise on user-centred design resourcing requirements, and influence the design of effective and adoptable solutions. You will also get into the detail on projects, acting as an expert individual contributor.  
2. Practice leadership – You will act as the professional lead for the Service Design discipline within the User-Centred Service Design function, accountable for its overall health, quality and continued development. You will help define how Service Design is practised within the Bank, maintaining and evolving the approaches, ways of working, standards and accumulated knowledge that enable the discipline to be effective. As a recognised authority in your field, you will provide professional leadership to service designers across the organisation, supporting them to deliver high-quality work, make sound decisions and grow their capability. You will help identify future capability needs, shape recruitment and succession plans, and ensure the discipline continues to evolve in response to organisational priorities and emerging challenges. You will have line management responsibility of two or more practitioners. 
3. A member of the User-Centred Service Design leadership team, helping shape the direction, priorities and effectiveness of the wider function. You will act as a trusted adviser to the Senior Manager, contributing to decisions on strategy, workforce planning, investment, resourcing and organisational priorities. You will bring professional judgement, challenge and perspective to leadership discussions, helping