Lead Service Designer

At Capita we are looking for a Lead Service Designer to be responsible for leading on service design strategy and activities throughout project life cycles. You will advocate for the understanding of the bigger picture, build relationships, and facilitate the adoption of analysis and synthesis techniques to generate valuable findings.
Additionally, you will mentor and support team members, communicate research findings clearly, collaborate with internal teams and clients, and ensure that services meet user needs and maintain high quality.

Job title:

Lead Service Designer

Please note that this role is a Fixed Term Contract until 30th June 2026.

What you’ll be doing:

• Lead service design strategy; overseeing a service design coordination and possibly multiple workstreams within agile or waterfall environments.
• Advocate for service design through reaching out to other disciplines and building relationships.
• Facilitate the project teams to adopt a wide range of analysis and synthesis techniques, and to continually assure, improve and innovate their practices to generate clear and valuable findings.
• Review work from others, offer feedback, support and provide advice. Mentor and support others where service design is involved.
• Understand user and business needs and have a solid foundation in research and user experience.
• Draw on extensive knowledge to design thinking and deliver the most appropriate research approaches, adapting methods and using new ones where appropriate.
• Independently organise and plan all the required supporting documentation and materials for service design findings and analysis throughout a project life-cycle in a timely manner.
• Clearly communicate research findings and methods within the team and to clients – adapting your style and language to suit their knowledge level and background.
• Set approaches for projects in collaboration with the project team.
• Represent your own and the departments service design expertise during early engagements with potential clients (at events, client meetings, introductory meetings).
• Advocate the importance of service design to different levels of stakeholders and communicate the importance of it throughout the delivery lifecycle.
• Support the Head in maintaining and establishing good design practices and building a team of experts who are passionate about design and solving problems.
• Suggest opportunities on how to improve the quality of our services, and provide suggestions based on user research and data and ensure what we are building adheres to user needs.
• Build relationships across different internal teams and work closely with development to understand the art of the possible.

What we are looking for:

• Committed service designer with a proven track record, preferably working within local or central government or experience with complex systems.
• Communicate confidently and eloquently on complex topics to a range of audiences.
• Proactive in self-learning and upskilling to stay on top of industry insights.
• Proven experience as a highly skilled service designer and able to analyse user needs to user requirements.
• Develop relationships across the business, lead teamwork and champion its importance, work with people outside your discipline, delegate tasks, take and offer critique well, offer your help, seek out people’s opinions early, share the workload.
• In-depth understanding of GDS, design thinking, UCD methodologies and.
• Strong communication skills. Able to explain ideas and rationale to internal team members and external stakeholders. Consistently applies active listening and emotional intelligence to build effective interactions.
• Excellent comprehension of corporate environments, ways of working and processes, stakeholder management whilst sharing a positive outlook that they can make improvements.
• Extensive experience working on a range of complex projects across industries and able to communicate service design analysis clearly.
• Enjoys and excel in unraveling challenging project situations towards creating user‑centered solutions that benefit the users and share their passion with others.

Please note that this role is a Fixed Term Contract until 30th June 2026.

About Capita

Capita is an outsourcer, helping clients across the public and private sectors run complex business processes more efficiently, creating better consumer experiences.

Operating across 8 countries, Capita’s 34,000 colleagues support primarily UK and European clients with people-based services underpinned by market‑leading technology.

We’re a vital support service for our clients, enabling the everyday interactions that we expect to run seamlessly, to run seamlessly.

Check out our website www.capita.com for more information

What’s in it for you?

• 23 days’ holiday pro rata with the opportunity to buy extra leave.
• Company matched pension, life assurance, 15 weeks’ fully paid maternity, adoption and shared parental leave, paternity pay of two weeks and plenty more.
• Volunteering for our charity partners or a cause of your choice – opportunity to take a paid day out of the office.
• Access to our Employee Network Groups, which represent every strand of diversity and allow colleagues to connect and learn from each other on an open, inclusive platform.
• Opportunity to gain additional qualifications through our Learning Academy or apprenticeships to help develop your career.

Unlock Your Potential with Capita

At Capita, your career can take you wherever your ambition leads. You\’ll become part of a diverse network of talented, forward‑thinking professionals working across a wide range of disciplines and sectors. We’re committed to your growth — offering endless opportunities to expand your skills, explore new paths, and advance your career.

Join us and discover a career with purpose. #CareersWithPurpose

Customer first, always. Fearless innovation. Achieve together. Everyone is valued.

What we hope you’ll do next:

Choose ‘Apply now’ to fill out our short application, so that we can find out more about you.

We’re an equal opportunity and Disability Confident employer, which means we recruit and develop people based on their merit and passion. We’re committed to providing an inclusive, barrier‑free recruitment process and working environment for everyone. If you need the job description or application form in an alternative format (such as large print or audio), or if you’d like to discuss other changes or support you might need going forward, please email reasonableadjustments@capita.com and we’ll get back to you.
For more information about equal opportunities and process adjustments, please visit the Capita Careers website.

Location:

United Kingdom

Time Type:

Full time

Contract Type:

Fixed Term