Service Design Lead (12 months - Maternity Cover) in Skipton

Hours: 12 months FTC - Maternity cover. 35 hours per week, hybrid

Salary: £68,000 Per Annum

Closing Date: Sun, 5 Jul 2026

Overview

We’re hiring a Service Design Lead to join our Experience Team. You’ll bring a deep understanding of core service design methods—service blueprinting, journey mapping, systems mapping, and service concept development—alongside strong working knowledge of UX design and user research, and how these integrate within agile product teams. If you put the customer at the heart of everything you do, thrive in a fast‑paced, agile environment, and have a record of designing seamless end‑to‑end experiences that transform how customers interact with organisations, we’d love to hear from you.

Not just another building society. We are the fourth‑biggest building society in the UK, a mutual organisation owned by our members. Skipton values work/life balance and supports hybrid and flexible working where possible. Our newly refurbished head office offers a vibrant and collaborative working space.

Benefits

• Annual discretionary bonus scheme
• 25 days’ standard annual leave + bank holidays, rising by 1 day per year of service to a maximum of 30
• Holiday trading scheme, allowing you to buy or sell additional annual leave
• Matching employer pension contribution (up to 10% per annum)
• Colleague mortgage (conditions apply)
• Salary‑sacrifice scheme for hybrid and electric cars
• Commitment to training and development
• Private medical insurance for all colleagues
• 3 paid volunteering days per year
• Diverse and inclusive colleague networks, including our Carers and Pride Alliance groups
• Well‑being benefits, including our cycle‑to‑work initiative and discounted gym membership

What Will You Be Doing?

• Lead a multidisciplinary team of Service Designers, User Researchers and UX Designers, nurturing a collaborative, user‑centred and outcome‑focused culture.
• Ensure design, research and service activities across product teams align to the Experience Strategy set by the Senior Experience Lead and deliver measurable value for our members and the corporate plan.
• Provide day‑to‑day direction, support and coaching, enabling the team to deliver high‑quality, evidence‑based work within outcome‑focused product environments.
• Oversee the planning and prioritisation of service design, UX and research activities to ensure the right problems are addressed at the right time.
• Drive consistency of practice across all disciplines by maintaining standards, processes, tools and ways of working.
• Guide teams to turn insights, data and journey analysis into clear service recommendations that influence product roadmaps and priorities.
• Lead the creation of service design outputs such as service blueprints, current and future state journeys, concepts and system maps to identify friction points and improvement opportunities.
• Collaborate closely with Product, Engineering, Data, Compliance and Operations teams to ensure end‑to‑end solutions are viable, inclusive and grounded in evidence.
• Facilitate workshops, co‑creation sessions and alignment activities to build shared understanding of problems and opportunities.
• Partner with the Senior Experience Lead to mature the experience practice, shape capability development, influence planning and embed service thinking across the organisation.
• Champion inclusive design, accessibility, evidence‑based decision making and continuous improvement across all experience disciplines.

What Do We Need From You?

• Proven leadership experience within service design or UX discipline, with responsibility for managing and developing practitioners.
• Deep understanding of service design methods—blueprinting, journey mapping, systems mapping and service concept development.
• Strong working knowledge of UX design, user research and how these disciplines integrate to support outcome‑focused product teams.
• Natural curiosity and a drive to explore complexity, understand underlying causes and uncover opportunities for simplification and improvement.
• Strategic mindset with the ability to identify and remove non‑value‑adding steps in journeys, making experiences more seamless and intuitive.
• Confident facilitation skills, with experience running workshops, co‑creation sessions and cross‑functional alignment activities.
• Strong systems thinking capability—able to understand how people, processes, technology and policy shape end‑to‑end service performance.
• Experience turning qualitative and quantitative insights into compelling recommendations that influence product roadmaps and prioritisation.
• Solid understanding of accessibility, inclusive design and human‑centred design principles.
• Strong collaboration and stakeholder management skills, able to create trust, challenge constructively and guide teams through ambiguity.
• Experience delivering end‑to‑end service design and supporting iterative delivery in agile or hybrid environments.
• Ability to produce high‑quality strategic and delivery‑focused outputs, including journeys, blueprints, concepts, insight packs and service recommendations.
• Confidence working through ambiguity, challenging constructively and driving change through evidence‑based decision making.

About Skipton

We care about sustainability and look to the long‑term for both colleagues and customers. Our members are at the heart of everything we do, and we help our team take the next step toward a better future.