Senior Service Designer (Ref: 21997)

HM Courts and Tribunals Service · England

Senior Service Designer (Ref: 21997) at HM Courts and Tribunals Service, based in England, paying £58,511 - £70,725 per annum. This is a permanent role.

Salary
£58,511 - £70,725 per annum
Location
England
Contract
Permanent
Posted
17 hours ago
Closes
28 Sep 2026
Sector
Graphic Designer

About 40% above the going rate for graphic designer

Reference 539f883da121a3253c4e970660edb2cb9790ad39

About the role

Job summary

This is a Nationally based role

Job description

We’re looking for a Senior Service Designer who is passionate about designing digital services that are simple enough for everyone to use. You’ll play a key role in building our capability to design and continuously iterate world-class, user-centred, inclusive services for internal and external users. The Digital Delivery team at HMCTS is redesigning and rebuilding our courts and tribunal services around the needs of our users – ensuring our services are accessible, easy to use, digital (where necessary and appropriate) and well supported for all users.

Within Digital Delivery, the User-Centred Design team works with HMCTS projects and programmes to support our core design principle of being user-led in everything we do. As a service designer, you’ll work closely with user researchers, analysts and frontline staff to understand pain points for our internal and external users, then design, test and iterate consistent ways to fix these issues.

Key Responsibilities:

We are looking for a senior service designer with a track record of:

  • designing systems for use across multiple complex services based on user needs and can identify the simplest of a variety of approaches
  • interpreting the needs of technical and business stakeholders, managing stakeholder expectations and hosting difficult discussions in the team and with senior stakeholders to influence progress.
  • making decisions characterised by medium levels of risk and complexity and recommending decisions as risk and complexity increase, building consensus between services or independent stakeholders.
  • bringing people together to form a motivated team and help create the right environment for a team to work in, mentoring and developing the team as needed.
  • leading the design and implementation of strategy, directing the evaluation of strategies and policies to ensure business requirements are being met. (Skill level: expert)
  • identifying, communicating and working within constraints, challenging the validity of constraints when appropriate and ensuring standards are being met.

Essential Skills

  • You will lead on the service design for a complex product or service, as part of a user-centred design and research team.
  • You’ll be comfortable working autonomously to help key stakeholders such as judges, operational leaders, service managers and programme directors understand the importance and value of a user-centred approach to designing court and tribunals services.
  • An expert in evidence- and context-based design, you’ll use insights from research to find, test and refine the best solutions to meet user and business needs across whole user journeys.
  • An advocate for a user-centred approach, you’ll give direction on tools, teams and methods needed to solve user problems and play an active role supporting others in our growing community of practice.
  • You’ll coach, mentor, train and develop other designers, supporting the growth and development of the design team and creating the right conditions for supportive communities of practice to grow and thrive.
  • An experienced and credible strategic thinker, you’ll lead the design, communication and implementation of service strategies and approaches. You’ll evaluate new and existing services against strategies, frameworks, design systems and policies to ensure that user and business requirements are met (and articulate what happens if they aren’t).
  • You’ll work closely with other designers, researchers, analysts and technical experts to help our users complete their goals quickly and easily; minimising support costs (and other failure demand) as well as improving efficiency and reducing the time needed to process applications.

You’ll be expected to:

  • Design services that work for different users across the various channels we offer for court and tribunals service journeys, developing service journey maps, service blueprints and high-level prototypes
  • Work with judges, operational leaders, technical teams and other key stakeholders to facilitate the co-design process; developing a deep understanding of their needs, managing expectations and agreeing service propositions
  • Work as an embedded team member within agile delivery teams, helping manage and visualise outcomes, prioritise work and develop service roadmaps from minimum viable products to full live services
  • Be an active member of HMCTS’ user-centred design community, collaborating with others and using your experience and specialist knowledge to coach and mentor others
  • Support and manage other designers, assuring quality work and behaviours and helping them develop experience through personal development plans and opportunities to rotate between teams
  • Actively participate in user research, helping translate research findings into actionable insight to inform service development

Person specification

Please refer to the Job Description

Behaviours

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

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

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

  • Your presentation will be assessed against GDD Capability Skill 1 - Lead and Design. Details will be sent nearer the time.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £58,511, HM Courts and Tribunals Service contributes £16,950 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).
  • Access to learning and development
  • A working environment that supports a range of flexible working options to enhance your work life balance
  • A working culture which encourages inclusion and diversity
  • A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%
  • Annual Leave
  • Public Holidays
  • Season Ticket Advance



For more information about the recruitment process, benefits and allowances and answers to general queries, please click the below link which will direct you to our Candidate Information Page.

Link: https://justicejobs.tal.net/vx/candidate/cms/About%20the%20MOJ

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behav

Reference: 539f883da121a3253c4e970660edb2cb9790ad39 · Posted 17 hours ago · Closes 28 Sep 2026 · Listed via HM Courts and Tribunals Service

Know someone who'd be great for this? Get a shareable card

Apply for this job

This role is listed via HM Courts and Tribunals Service. Applications are handled on the employer's site.

Apply on employer site

Opens the employer's website in a new tab.

Safe applying: a genuine employer will never ask you to pay for a DBS check, training or equipment, or move you onto WhatsApp before you are hired. If this listing does, report it and do not pay anything.

Report this job
Salary £58,511 - £70,725 per annum
Apply now