About Homes England

Homes England is responsible for making sure that people in England have homes that meet their needs. Right now, we do that by funding people who want to build homes, making sure that land is available to build on, and by helping people to buy homes that they can afford.

We were established in 2017, and since then we’ve been working towards our mission of becoming the UK government’s housing accelerator.  A disruptive organisation in the heart of government that can build the housing market that this country and the people who live here need.

The housing market is always changing though, and with it so should we.

We’re embarking on ambitious period of transformation, but this isn’t the kind of transformation that’s just about digitising our existing services and making them more efficient.

We need to build products and services that will fix the housing market we have today, whilst building an organisation that will be able to respond to the challenges of tomorrow.

Enabling good people to have good ideas and get things done is how we’ll get there, and that’s where you come in.

Job Description

Summary/Role purpose:

Service designers work with user researchers, market analysts, economists and policy makers from across the organisation to design end to end services that meet both the needs of individual users and the societal outcomes we want to achieve.

As a Senior Service Designer, your job will be to fundamentally reimagine the way that our services work from the ground up. Working with skilled multi-disciplinary teams to design, prototype and build multi-channel cross government services that change lives.

If you’re passionate about simplifying services and want to be part of a new wave of service design in government, this is a chance to work on services that matter, with people who value design and create work you’re proud to talk about.

Summary of job accountabilities and responsibilities:

• Work on the design of a large or complex service area and ensure it contributes to the wider organisational objectives and strategic priorities
• Use evidence to challenge assumptions, negotiate with senior stakeholders and rationalise design decisions
• Set the strategic direction of multiple complex services
• Guide, support and mentor other more junior designers
• Work with other specialists to design and create organisational and financial structures that support delivery of new services
• Understand user needs and identify where separate interactions with government should act as one service that meet that need
• Design collaboratively and in the open, engaging all relevant stakeholders in the design process and adapting it if necessary
• Identify opportunities for reuse and the development of patterns and standards

Person Specification

Summary of the key skills, knowledge and abilities:

• We’re looking for people who are passionate about fixing the housing market and making government work better for users. We welcome people from a diverse range of backgrounds at Homes England. This specific role requires a person who:
• Has demonstrable experience designing effective end to end services within complex and interdependent user journeys.
• Has a design related degree or relevant experience designing services
• Confident working at pace as part of several multidisciplinary teams delivering in agile ideally through experience.
• Can effectively communicate sophisticated design ideas and concepts to specialists, non-specialists as well as negotiate them with senior decision makers.

Key competencies:

• Explaining your work clearly to non-designers, and leading design workshops with colleagues from multiple disciplines and levels of seniority
• Sketching and prototyping of design ideas in order to reduce complexities in existing services, and creating new ones
• Understand and utilise user research, working with User Researchers

Summary of the values and key behaviours:

• Collaborative/Diverse: Working on multiple teams with colleagues from varied backgrounds and specialities. View the user at the expert.
• Commercial: Working autonomously towards agreed outcomes
• Learning/Ambitious/Creative: Use your imagination. Be able to admit when something isn’t working and re-iterate to a better solution

What you will get from us:

• The chance to work on something that really matters in a place that values your skills and expertise
• A supportive and inclusive working environment where the organisation’s leadership puts people first
• A range of training and development opportunities suited to your needs
• A growing design community devoted to sharing experiences

How to Apply

Further details and how to apply can be found on Civil Service jobs.