Head of Service Design

HM Land Registry's services form part of the critical national infrastructure, safeguarding land and property ownership valued at 8 trillion. This enables over 1 trillion worth of personal and commercial lending to be secured against property across England and Wales. For 160 years we have played a key role in the UKs economic stability and growth.

We are now looking for an experienced senior service designer, or design leader with experience of working on complex services or systems to join us as Head of Service Design to help transform these critical services for the future.

Open Session

If you would like to find out more about the role, the Service Design profession and what its like to work at HMLR, a Hiring Manager Q&A session where you can virtually 'meet the team' will be held via MS Teams on Tuesday 4th August 12:30pm.

Book your virtual seat:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1994296414260?aff=oddtdtcreator

Check out the video below to find out what it is like working in Digital Careers at HM Land Registry.

This is a senior leadership role within the User Centred Design team in Customer and Strategy, offering a unique opportunity to shape how HMLR designs and delivers its services.

As the lead for Service Design, you will set the strategic direction for the discipline, guide and inspire multidisciplinary teams, and champion the value of service design across the organisation.

You will play a pivotal role in ensuring service design informs, shapes and delivers HMLR's service strategy and supports the effective delivery of policy intent.

Working closely with the Head of User Centred Design, you will be responsible for ensuring services are user centred, effective, and bring measurable value to the organisation.

As an experienced service design expert operating in an agile, digital environment, you will act as a role model and advocate for the evolution of our services within HMLR, government, and the wider industry.

This is a complex and challenging role that will see the re-design of many paper-based and legacy services and the transformation of our data into something innovative and fit for purpose, that will change the future of land registration.

Main duties:

• You will be leading, motivating, and growing talented Service Designers, working with the Head of User Centred Design to set the direction of design within HMLR.
• Work with the Deputy Director of Digital Services, Lead product managers, Head of UCD and Business design to realise the service vision to deliver on HMLRs Business design and service Strategy.
• Influence both design and organisational strategy and priorities; putting forward the case for Service led design to senior stakeholders and colleagues across disciplines and departments and presenting strategic service design thinking with product leads at programme and exec boards such as ExCo, communicating the value and future vision for end-to-end services.
• You will be responsible for growing and developing the Service design capability, line-managing and mentoring Service Designers, supporting their professional development and evolving service design standards.
• Youll work with the Head of UCD and other design leads to set design direction and good practice within the directorate including advocating for user-centred design with leaders outside of digital and data.
• You will be working across multiple, high-profile projects, working collaboratively with colleagues to design and iterate end to end services that support user needs, and ensure we are delivering secure, efficient, trusted and increase customer satisfaction, advocating for accessibility and inclusion in service delivery as well as in the development of teams. This role will be engaging their team of service designers to design the future state of our digital services, understanding HMLRs wider role in the property sector and the different customers and users within it.
• Make and justify difficult service design decisions characterised by high levels of risk, impact and complexity while having a wider understanding of how advances in technology, data, and AI impact the diversity users of government services.
• You will be overseeing the development of high-quality service design artefacts such as journey maps, service blueprints, and prototypes to communicate design intent and test ideas. Coaching and mentoring to support the teams in identifying the right tools or methods to solve challenges and different problems for users.
• With the head of UCD evolve the design community across service design, content design and interaction design. Lead, motivate and empower teams, using coaching and mentoring to support the teams in identifying the right tools or methods to solve challenges and different problems for users.
• Help teams to understand the wider service context of a project or product, coordinating work across multiple projects, and working in an agile, multidisciplinary, and collaborative environment.
• Work with Head of UCD and senior colleagues at a leadership level across T&T and Service delivery to ensure a joined-up, agile and consistent approach to the design and delivery of the organisations customer-led, digital services.
• Coach teams through service assessments against standards.

To meet the requirements of the role, you will be a highly experienced service designer, or design leader, with a strong track record of working on complex services and systems, operating confidently at senior level.

With hands‑on expertise in service design, you will be skilled in applying and standardising service design practices, methodologies, frameworks and tools to drive meaningful improvements to user experience and organisational outcomes.

You will be recognised as a service design expert, with proven experience of leading, developing and empowering service designers.

You will be highly effective at building positive, trusted relationships with a wide range of stakeholders, using strong communication, influencing and persuasion skills to build credibility for service design at all levels.

You will understand the bigger picture for a service to uncover long‑term challenges and opportunities and working with senior leaders to shape these into a compelling vision for the future.

For more information about the role, please see the attached Job Description and Candidate Pack.

HMLR expect everyone to spend at least 60% of their working time in the office.

This role will require regular travel and overnight stays away from the home office.

Visa Sponsorship

Please note that we will only offer sponsorship for a skilled worker visa where a role is in a certain business critical category. This role does not meet that category, and we will not sponsor a skilled worker visa.

You must ensure you have the appropriate right to work in the UK before applying.