Content Designer

Job summary

Discover a career in your hands at HMRC. Whether you're seeking purpose, growth, or a workplace that gives you a true sense of belonging, hear from some of our employees as they share their story about what it’s really like to work at HMRC.

Visit our YouTube channel to watch the full series and come and discover your potential.

At HMRC, we are committed to creating a great place to work for all our colleagues; an inclusive and respectful environment that reflects the diversity of the society we serve. We want to maximise the potential of everyone who works for us, and we offer a range of flexible working patterns and support to make an exciting career at HMRC accessible to you.

Diverse perspectives and experiences are critical to our success, and we encourage applications from all people from all backgrounds with the experience and skills needed to perform this role.

HMRC is one of the largest organisations in the UK and the biggest digital operation in Government. Our digital business runs the IT behind tax and benefits services for 45 million individual and 5 million business customers.

We’re making HMRC services and information simpler, clearer and faster for our colleagues. To do that, we need content designers who will help us design end-to-end services based on user needs.

We want you to come and be part of a multi-disciplinary team and transform the way we deliver HR, Finance, and Procurement services to our colleagues in HMRC, Department for Transport, and Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government – a group of departments known as the Unity Cluster.

This is a collaborative initiative which aims to create a shared operation model, leveraging cloud technology to enhance efficiency and decision making across these departments.

Job description

Content designers work on content that helps to form the end-to-end journey of a service, helping users complete their goal and government to deliver a policy intent.

Their work may involve the creation of, or change to, a transaction, product or single piece of content which could be from across digital and offline channels and be provided by different parts of government.

Content Designer is a role for an individual with proven experience in designing content to meet user needs.

In this role, you will work collaboratively with other user-centred design professionals and business stakeholders to define what will be developed to meet users’ needs. You will produce clear and meaningful content based on user needs, and feed into content strategies.

You will actively engage with and contribute to our active and supportive content design community in HMRC and across government.

Person specification

As a Content Designer, you will:

• Line manage, support and mentor Junior Content Designers.

• Map user journeys and processes.

• Use best practice, data and research to design and iterate usable and accessible content.

• Feed into content strategies for portfolios of work to inform end-to-end journeys.

• Build collaborative relationships with stakeholders, including through workshops and pair-writing sessions.

You will also be expected to:

• Actively participate in the HMRC and cross-government design communities, both digitally and face-to-face.
• Proactively seek new learning opportunities and look to continually improve by gaining feedback from your peers and the business.

Essential Criteria:

You must have:

• Demonstrable skill and experience in developing accessible content for online guidance or transactions and working to style and standard guidelines.
• Experience of journey mapping and needs analysis - being able to take existing content and identify gaps and overlaps.
• Experience of talking about your design decisions and approach to stakeholders of various levels, and convincing them that user needs and a user-centred approach are the right way to design content.
• Experience and an ability to use metrics and user feedback to inform content design.
• Experience of coaching and mentoring other content designers, growing skills, and providing constructive feedback on work.

Further Location Information

Please ensure that you only apply for a location that you are willing and able to work from, as we will only make one offer of employment. Any additional notes included in a ‘Further Location Preferences (optional)’ field within the application form, will not be considered. Please be aware that you cannot change your location preference after submitting your application.

Office closures

For more information on where you might be working, review this information on our locations.

If your location preference is for the following site, it’s important to note that this is not a long-term site for HMRC and we will require you to move to a new building in the future, subject to our location strategy and the applicable employee policies at that time.

This site is:

• Benton Park View, Newcastle - moving to Pilgrims Quarter, Newcastle

You will be given more information about what this means at the job offer stage.

Technical skills

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

• Designing for everyone
• Evidence based design
• Iterative design

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £45,544, HM Revenue and Customs contributes £13,194 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).

HMRC operates both Flexible and Hybrid Working policies, allowing you to balance your work and personal commitments. We welcome applications from those who need to work a more flexible arrangement and will agree to requests where possible, considering our operational and customer service needs.

We offer a generous leave allowance, starting at 25 days and increasing by a day for every year of qualifying service up to a maximum of 30 days.

• Pension - We make contributions to our colleagues’ Alpha pension equal to at least 28.97% of their salary.
• Family friendly policies.
• Personal support.
• Coaching and development.

To find out more about HMRC benefits and find out what it’s really like to work for HMRChear from our insiders or visitThinking of joining the Civil Servic