Senior Service Designer

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About The Role

Join Us as a Senior Service Designer
Designing for impact. Empowering communities. Changing futures.

At Islington Council, we serve with purpose. Our mission is to challenge inequality and create a borough where everyone-especially children, young people, and families-can thrive. We live by our CARE values: Collaborative, Ambitious, Resourceful, and Empowering. These values guide everything we do, and we\’re looking for someone who shares them to join our Strategic Programmes and Strategy team.

Over the next two to three years, we will build on our existing success by delivering a wide-ranging programme that will incorporate the national children\’s reforms to achieve the change we want to deliver.

The Role

As a Senior Service Designer, you\’ll play a leading role in how we design and develop inclusive services for children, young people and adults in their families or family networks that make a real difference to their lives. You\’ll work across complex systems-health, education, social care, housing, and more-bringing together diverse voices to co-create solutions that are equitable, sustainable, and grounded in lived experience.

What You\’ll Do

• Collaborate across multi-agency teams to reimagine services that work for and with our communities.
• Be ambitious in your approach to systems change-framing the right problems, testing bold ideas, and delivering measurable impact.
• Use your resourcefulness to navigate complexity, apply design thinking, and lead multidisciplinary teams with agility through transformation.
• Empower others-from senior leaders to frontline staff to residents-to shape and sustain change through inclusive design and continuous improvement.

What You\’ll Bring

• A deep understanding of service design, systems thinking, and inclusive practice.
• Strong experience of leading complex, multi-agency service design projects focused on residents such as children and families.
• Curious to understand other people\’s experiences with the ability to include equity, accessibility, and culturally responsive design in your work.
• The ability to turn insight into action, and vision into reality.
• Passion, care, courage, connection, and radical leadership so change lands well for our children, families and multi-agency workforce
• Strong creative communication approaches that steer people towards shared goals and supports them to build good connections to the delivery of change

The Strategic Programmes and Strategy service works with the corporate and political leadership to shape the strategic direction for children, young people and adults, and develop or deliver practical responses to key strategic and future challenges including the next generation of service solutions. Equity and excellence are central to our work, delivery is person-centred and creative and a culture of learning, improvement and innovation. For every challenge, we work together to shape a solution or approach to address it. Those we interact with, and support, come from all walks of life, with different lived experiences, and so do we. Our diversity through lived experiences, backgrounds, and subject matter expertise, makes the teams within our service area stronger.

For further information or for an informal conversation about the post, please contact:
Tania Townsend, Head of Strategic Programmes and Strategy
(email protected)

Note to Recruitment Agencies:

We kindly ask that recruitment agencies do not contact us regarding this vacancy. We are managing the recruitment process internally and will reach out directly should we require external support. Thank you for your understanding.

Working for the team, service and our organisation

Islington is a place rich with diversity and culture. As a council our sense of purpose couldn\’t be clearer: we serve. It\’s in the logo. We are committed to challenging inequality in the borough and as one of the largest employers we know that to look after the place and the planet, we have to look after our people. Together we can change the future.

We are determined to create a more equal Islington, where everyone who lives here has an equal chance to thrive.

To do this, everyone who works at Islington Council lives by a set of values which guide us in everything that we do: collaborative, ambitious, resourceful, and empowering. They spell out \’CARE\’, which is what we think public service is all about.

Our offer to you

We are committed to challenging inequality in the borough and as one of the largest employers we know that to look after the place and the planet, we have to look after our people. Our staff benefits include:

• Up to 31 days leave per year, increasing to 36 days after five years of local government service
• A range of flexible working arrangements to maintain a healthy work-life balance, as well as a 35-hour working week
• Learning and development opportunities to maximise your potential
• Competitive pay and a commitment to paying all staff the London Living Wage at minimum
• Excellent local government pension scheme
• Cycle to Work scheme and discounted gym memberships
• Local discounts from restaurants, shops, health and beauty therapists, and more!

Please note: Priority will be given to those at risk of redundancy within Islington Council. Current employees who are part of the redeployment pool must meet the essential criteria for shortlisting to be prioritised.

Workforce Equality, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Statement

We are dedicated to creating an inclusive and equitable workforce, where everyone is treated with dignity and respect. Our workforce strategy places equality, equity, diversity, and inclusion at the heart of everything we do, reaffirming our commitment to fostering a culture of inclusion. We strive to create an environment where all colleagues feel they belong and can safely express their thoughts, ideas, and challenges, without fear of judgement or discrimination.

We maintain a zero-tolerance approach to any unlawful discrimination, harassment, or victimisation on the grounds of any protected characteristics under the 2010 Equality Act, including but not limited to race, disability, sexual orientation, sex, religion and belief, age, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy, and maternity. Any incidents of discrimination will be promptly investigated and addressed in line with our HR policies to ensure a safe and inclusive environment for all colleagues.

We use data to identify and address disparities, ensuring that our policies and practices are transparent and impactful in promoting a diverse representation of backgrounds and perspectives at all levels of the organisation. We look at inequality through an intersectional lens, recognising that different aspects of someone\’s identity can combine to create unique experiences of discrimination and disadvantage.

We know that advancing diversity and inclusion is a continuous journey, and we must listen to our colleagues and learn where we can further improve. We work closely with our Colleague Forums and Trade Unions, supported by active allies from our Corporate Management Team, to monitor and evaluate our practices, identify barriers, and empower colleagues to promote equality and inclusion in the workplace.

Every one of us has a role to play in making Islington Council a truly inclusive workplace. By living out our CARE (collaborative, ambitious, resourceful, and empowering) values every day and embedding the principles of equality, equity, diversity, and inclusion in our work, we can all actively contribute to empowering people and creating a more equal Islington.

Safeguarding

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults, and expects all staff, and volunteers to share this commitment. Some posts are subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Disability Confident Scheme

Islington Council operates a guaranteed interview scheme for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum criteria and we are committed to providing support to applicants who request reasonable adjustments to be made during the recruitment process and throughout their career with us.

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