21997 - Senior Service Designer (National)


Company:	Ministry of Justice
Salary:	£58,511 to £70,725 a year
Hours:	Full-time
Location:	National, NP10 8FZ
Working pattern:	On-site
Job type:	Permanent
Posting date:	9 Sept 2026
Closing date:	27 Sept 2026

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Summary

We’re looking for a Senior Service Designer who is passionate about designing digital services that are simple enough for everyone to use. You’ll play a key role in building our capability to design and continuously iterate world-class, user-centred, inclusive services for internal and external users. The Digital Delivery team at HMCTS is redesigning and rebuilding our courts and tribunal services around the needs of our users – ensuring our services are accessible, easy to use, digital (where necessary and appropriate) and well supported for all users.

Within Digital Delivery, the User-Centred Design team works with HMCTS projects and programmes to support our core design principle of being user-led in everything we do. As a service designer, you’ll work closely with user researchers, analysts and frontline staff to understand pain points for our internal and external users, then design, test and iterate consistent ways to fix these issues.

Key Responsibilities:

We are looking for a senior service designer with a track record of:

designing systems for use across multiple complex services based on user needs and can identify the simplest of a variety of approaches

interpreting the needs of technical and business stakeholders, managing stakeholder expectations and hosting difficult discussions in the team and with senior stakeholders to influence progress.

making decisions characterised by medium levels of risk and complexity and recommending decisions as risk and complexity increase, building consensus between services or independent stakeholders.

bringing people together to form a motivated team and help create the right environment for a team to work in, mentoring and developing the team as needed.

leading the design and implementation of strategy, directing the evaluation of strategies and policies to ensure business requirements are being met. (Skill level: expert)

identifying, communicating and working within constraints, challenging the validity of constraints when appropriate and ensuring standards are being met.

Essential Skills

You will lead on the service design for a complex product or service, as part of a user-centred design and research team.

You’ll be comfortable working autonomously to help key stakeholders such as judges, operational leaders, service managers and programme directors understand the importance and value of a user-centred approach to designing court and tribunals services.

An expert in evidence- and context-based design, you’ll use insights from research to find, test and refine the best solutions to meet user and business needs across whole user journeys.

An advocate for a user-centred approach, you’ll give direction on tools, teams and methods needed to solve user problems and play an active role supporting others in our growing community of practice.

You’ll coach, mentor, train and develop other designers, supporting the growth and development of the design team and creating the right conditions for supportive communities of practice to grow and thrive.

An experienced and credible strategic thinker, you’ll lead the design, communication and implementation of service strategies and approaches. You’ll evaluate new and existing services against strategies, frameworks, design systems and policies to ensure that user and business requirements are met (and articulate what happens if they aren’t).

You’ll work closely with other designers, researchers, analysts and technical experts to help our users complete their goals quickly and easily; minimising support costs (and other failure demand) as well as improving efficiency and reducing the time needed to process applications.

You’ll be expected to:

Design services that work for different users across the various channels we offer for court and tribunals service journeys, developing service journey maps, service blueprints and high-level prototypes

Work with judges, operational leaders, technical teams and other key stakeholders to facilitate the co-design process; developing a deep understanding of their needs, managing expectations and agreeing service propositions

Work as an embedded team member within agile delivery teams, helping manage and visualise outcomes, prioritise work and develop service roadmaps from minimum viable products to full live services

Be an active member of HMCTS’ user-centred design community, collaborating with others and using your experience and specialist knowledge to coach and mentor others

Support and manage other designers, assuring quality work and behaviours and helping them develop experience through personal development plans and opportunities to rotate between teams

Actively participate in user research, helping translate research findings into actionable insight to inform service development

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