Lead Service Designer (Hiring Immediately)

The starting salary is £71,121, which includes allowances totalling £3,009. The salary is broken down as £68,112 basic salary, which will increase annually until you reach the top of the scale £72,953. Plus, a location allowance of £2,009 and a non-pensionable allowance of £1,000.

Location: West Brompton

Background

The Counter Terrorism Policing Headquarters (CTP HQ), on behalf of the government and the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), ensures that the CT Network has the funding, capabilities and resources it needs to deliver CONTEST effectively and to keep people safe from Terrorism. It does this through the provision of corporate services as well as national operational tasking and co-ordination. It houses unique national CT capabilities that support the entire network as well as overseeing delivery of CT Policing across the regions to ensure that it operates in a way that is both effective and efficient. Crucially, the HQ represents CT Policing’s interest within government and with wider stakeholders, ensuring that the policing contribution to CONTEST is both understood and appreciated.

Within CTP HQ the Digital, Data, Analysis & Technology (DDAT) Directorate has responsibility for guiding the CT Network’s exploitation of data and analytical capability and leading the integration of new technology to support our national security mission. The Directorate works closely with other principal areas of CTPHQ to ensure coherence with our technology development, transformation and compliance and assurance functions, helping to ensure that our use of data is always lawful, ethical and proportionate and uses the best available capability without ever compromising our vital public trust. Work within the pillar also involves setting up new processes and ways of working in high-profile environments. In order to achieve this, staff within the pillar work closely with the other teams across the CT Network and CTP HQ and with partners in the MPS, leading on shaping and implementing the new DDAT strategy and developing future data capabilities.

Job Summary

The Lead Service Designer role provides strategic leadership to ensure services are user-centred, driving improvements in satisfaction, accessibility, and effectiveness. It champions the reduction of duplication, streamlines processes, and ensures services operate seamlessly end-to-end, rather than as isolated components.

They will achieve this through setting vision, strategy and direction against the following areas:

• Leadership & collaboration
  • Leading and developing the transformation of CTP to a Design Thinking organisation
  • Leading Service Design detail for CTP strategic directives such as partner alignment
  • Responsible for communicating design strategy across organisation boundaries
  • Lead and Influence senior stakeholders and advocate for service-led approaches, working closely with Product Managers, Business Analysts, Developers and Operation teams
  • Lead the review of requirements in order to make financial commitments
  • Lead the engagement of third party suppliers and partner support teams in order to address commercial considerations related to Service Design
  • Manage expectations for long term budget adjustments aligned to the Service Roadmap
  • Accountable for the long term development of the ‘new team’ with appropriate technical training packages, developing learning pathways and identifying further opportunities for the team in collaboration with partners, meeting the expectations of the delivery teams and the organisation strategy
  • Responsible for guiding the organisation in how to use evidence to improve services
• Research and Discovery
  • Leading qualitative and quantitative research (interviews, workshops & data analysis)
  • Identify user pain points, service failures, and technical development opportunities
  • Engage with frontline staff, users, and stakeholders to uncover insights
  • Engage with partner organisations and academia via the Counter Terrorism Research Laboratory (CTRL)
• Design & Mapping
  • Accountable for the engagement and management of Technical Service Managers and Programme Directors to develop current and future design concepts
  • Accountable for ensuring service design is inclusive, accessible and environmentally sustainable
  • Responsible for identifying risks, opportunities and constraints in technology and policy to shape design
  • Responsible for ensuring security principles, guidelines and processes are embedded in Service Design
  • Lead in the development of user systems thinking to understand and design for complex technical service environments with creation of service maps, user journeys, personas, and ecosystem diagrams
  • Lead co-design sessions and workshops with users and stakeholders, developing user stories/ epics
• Prototyping and testing
  • Ensure the secure development and management of prototypes within policy constraints
  • Ensure the development of tooling requirements to maintain the security posture for CTP
  • Lead on work with UX/UI designers and develops technical prototype & service concepts
  • Test service designs with real users iteratively to validate assumptions, gathering feedback and work with developers to refine the service accordingly

How to apply

To begin your career at the Met, please click the “apply button”. The application process requires a comprehensive CV, a Personal Statement, and an online application form. In your Personal Statement, you should explain your interest in the position and illustrate how your skills and experiences make you a suitable candidate. Please note that you should not submit two copies of your CV, and ensure that your documents are saved in either PDF or Word format, clearly labelled as CV and Personal Statement.

Completed applications must be submitted by 23:55 on 7 September 2026.