Senior Service Designer

Job Title: Senior Service Designer

Permanent

Grade D - £45,091 – £51,356

Consultation grade - subject to formal evaluation under the Pay Equity Review

Working 36.5 hours per week

We are seeking an experienced Senior Service Designer to join the Product function at Birmingham City Council, helping to design and improve services that make a real difference for residents, businesses and colleagues across the city.

This role is ideal for a senior service design practitioner who enjoys working on complex, end‑to‑end services, leading discovery and design activity, and supporting organisations to adopt user‑centred, evidence‑based ways of working at scale.

As part of Digital and Technology Services, you will play a key role in shaping how Birmingham designs and delivers public services in the internet age. You will work closely with colleagues across product, design, data, technology and service areas to ensure services are accessible, inclusive, efficient and focused on real user needs.

Alongside hands‑on delivery, this role includes a strong coaching and culture‑building element. You will help embed service design thinking, user‑centred practice and continuous improvement across the organisation.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Leading service design across complex, high‑impact services, from discovery through to live and continuous improvement.
• Designing end‑to‑end services that meet genuine user needs while balancing organisational, policy and technical constraints.
• Working closely with product managers, delivery teams and service colleagues to shape service visions, outcomes and roadmaps.
• Planning and running research, discovery and co‑design activity to understand problems, test ideas and inform decisions.
• Using qualitative and quantitative evidence to improve services, measure impact and support continuous learning.
• Championing accessible, inclusive and trauma‑informed design at every stage of delivery.
• Applying agile and iterative ways of working to help teams learn quickly and improve services over time.
• Coaching and supporting other designers and service teams, helping to grow service design capability across the council.
• Acting as a role model for user‑centred design, collaboration and our organisational values.

About You

This role is well suited to someone with strong service design experience who is motivated by public service and solving complex problems at scale.

You will bring:

• Experience leading service design work in multidisciplinary, agile environments.
• Confidence designing services that span people, processes, policy and technology.
• Strong communication and facilitation skills, with the ability to influence and collaborate with a wide range of stakeholders.
• Experience using research, data and evidence to inform design decisions and demonstrate impact.
• A mindset of curiosity, optimism and continuous learning, with confidence to challenge assumptions and the status quo.

Above all, you will share our commitment to designing accessible, inclusive and user‑centred public services, and to using design to deliver better outcomes for Birmingham’s communities.

Why Join Us?

• Work on services that directly improve the lives of Birmingham’s residents and communities.
• Be part of a growing Product and User‑Centred Design function at the heart of a large, complex organisation.
• Collaborate with skilled multidisciplinary teams across design, product, data and technology.
• Help shape how service design and user‑centred thinking are embedded across Birmingham City Council.
• Develop your career in a supportive, learning‑focused environment committed to continuous improvement.
• Contribute to the transformation of digital and non‑digital services in one of Europe’s largest local authorities.

Please upload your up-to-date CV via the attachments part of your application, this is required for shortlisting. Unfortunately, we cannot consider any applications without a CV attached 

We encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that represents the communities we serve. Our data tells us that for this level of role, ethnic minorities are underrepresented and therefore we will use positive action to support us to achieve diverse shortlists. This may mean that recruitment times are a little longer, but we think this is worth it to achieve our aim.

Birmingham City Council is an accredited Disability Confident Leader employer, and we are committed to employing, retaining and developing all of our people.

We want to ensure your recruitment journey with us is a positive and equitable one, so please let us know if there are any reasonable adjustments, additional support, accessibility needs, or if there is any way in which we can support you through your application.

For any informal enquires please contact: Resourcing@birmingham.gov.uk 

A Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check will be undertaken.

Proof of Right to work in the UK will be required for all applicants in accordance with UK Home Office requirements, before any employment offer can be confirmed.

Job Description and Person Specification - A10430 Senior Service Designer JDPS (2).pdf