Head of Service Design in Croydon

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 UK’s 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.

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.

Person specification

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.

HMLR believe that a blended approach to where you work that enables some time working from home, as well as in the office may give you an improved experience and has clear business benefits. We expect everyone to spend at least 60% of their working time in the office. Beyond this expectation, there is no one size fits all approach (and we can spend up to 100% working in the office if we prefer).

Qualifications

Recognised qualification in digital design, technology or related subject.

Behaviours

We’ll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Seeing the Big Picture
• Leadership
• Communicating and Influencing
• Changing and Improving
• Making Effective Decisions

This vacancy is using Success Profiles, and will assess your Behaviours, Strengths and Experience. Please copy and paste an anonymous CV into the online application form when prompted and provide details of your career history and qualifications, including a recognised qualification in digital design, technology or related subject.

The personal statement section (in no more than 1,000 words) must be used to provide details of how you meet the essential experience criteria listed in the attached job description.

In the event of a high volume of applications, we reserve the right to assess against the lead essential experience criteria listed below first:

• Extensive experience as a senior service designer or design leader working on complex services or systems.

Please review your application form before clicking ‘submit’ – once you have submitted, you will not be able to amend your application. Ensure your application form is received by the closing date for receipt of applications.

The sift will take place shortly after the closing date. If successful at the shortlisting stage, you will be invited to attend a virtual, blended interview including a pre-prepared presentation. Interviews will be held in person at the Coventry Office week commencing Monday 20 April 2026.

The blended interview will assess the behaviours listed in the job description, as well as the strengths associated with the role. We want to hear your first, unrehearsed, natural response to the strength questions, and so we don’t advertise which strengths are being tested. The best way to prepare for strengths questions is to reflect on what you identify as your own personal strengths, and your preferred ways of working.

Candidates can refer to notes within their interview, but they should be used as a prompt only.

HMLR is accredited to the Disability Confidence Scheme, which denotes organisations which have a positive attitude towards disabled people. Disabled applicants who meet the minimum essential criteria at the shortlisting stage may be invited to attend an interview.

If any candidate requires the panel to consider a reasonable adjustment or there is anything else they would like the panel to take into consideration, they are asked to notify us of this at application stage where possible or during the process as soon as it becomes a requirement.

Please note, 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.

Contact point for applicants: Recruitment team.