AMS PSR

On behalf of DWP we are looking for a Senior Service Designer for a 12 month (Inside IR35) contract. Hybrid working based in Manchester, Blackpool or Newcastle.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for welfare, pensions, and child maintenance policy. As the UK’s biggest public service department, it administers the State Pension and a range of working age, disability and ill health benefits to around 20 million claimants and customers. As such, we operate on a scale that is almost unmatched anywhere in Europe and most people in Britain come into contact with us at some point in their lives.

Working with DWP, you will be helping us to drive our priorities to:

• Help people to move into work and support those already in work to progress, with the aim of increasing overall workforce participation
• Help people to plan and save for later life, while providing a safety net for those who need it now
• Provide effective, efficient, and innovative services to the millions of claimants who rely on us every day, including the most vulnerable in society
• Improve experience of our services while maximising value for money for the taxpayer.

DWP Payments are a part of the Critical National Infrastructure and core to DWP business and are processing the payments to 22m claimants. Payment systems have been scoped and developed 10+ years ago, therefore, we are currently planning and scoping a significant transformation to align with the industry changes, direction for transformation driven by the Banking Industry’s Payments Strategy Forum and shaping the banking sector’s Next Generation Payments system. DWP Payments systems process up to 14m payments per day and are critical to ensure that claimants are getting paid at the right time and the right amount.

Service Designers design whole services, both end-to-end and front to back, across business areas or departments in order to reduce or remove issues and problems. They also design services that deliver value to citizens and a positive user experience. They drive awareness of service performance and improvement needs resulting in successful service outcomes.

As a Senior Service Designer your main responsibilities will be:

• Understand user needs and design services that meet them and collaborate with multidisciplinary teams to understand user behaviour and feedback.
• Analyse research findings, data, insight gathering, critical thinking and concept generation.
• Lead workshops to drive actionable outcomes.
• Align and support the communication with product owners and policy colleagues to define the customer journey and articulate the vision for products and services.
• Understand as-is service design and identify improvement opportunities.
• Analyse pain points within services and build design solutions that fulfil user needs and business outcomes.
• Use prototyping methods to communicate ideas and concepts with real users to encourage collaboration and iterative processes.
• Lead the articulation of insights and stories around the strategy and concepts being designed.
• Manage stakeholder needs across different areas with a focus on supporting discussions at senior departmental level.
• Contribute to building an open and collaborative culture within the department and the design community.
• Analyse and identify cost saving opportunities whilst implementing best practice service design.
• Own and create high quality service design deliverables, including personas, experience maps, insights packs, user flow maps, and service blueprints.
• Manage team workload and design approach across deliverables.
• Actively provide support and mentor team members.
• Support the capability and promote service design in and beyond the department.
• Support recruitment for the DWP Digital Product design community.

Essential:

• Good working knowledge and experience of Service Design.
• Strong visual design experience and skills.
• Strong communication skills.
• Experience of working in Agile environment.

Desirable:

• Interaction Design experience.
• User Research experience.
• Public Sector experience.

Please be aware that this role can only be worked within the UK and not Overseas.

Disability Confident 

As a member of the Disability Confident Scheme, DWP guarantees to interview all candidates who have a disability and who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of candidates who have a disability who meet all the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. This scheme encourages candidates with a disability and/or neurodivergence to apply.

In applying for this role, you acknowledge the following "this role falls in scope of the Off Payroll Working in the Public Sector legislation. Any rates of payment quoted will reflect the gross rate per day for the assignment and will be subject to appropriate taxes and statutory costs. As such the payment to the intermediary and your income resulting from this contract will be different".