Service Designer

**About Us**:
**THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF 809 CONNECTED BUSINESSES**

Digital and Innovation in Westminster City Council is a world of extraordinary stories, where creative and enterprising people put local residents and businesses first.

Today, Westminster is the most connected borough in London. But, when David joined us in the mid-2010s, small businesses were still struggling to get connected to fibre. Without gigabit-capable broadband, some companies even resorted to biking memory sticks around the city, simply to share files with clients.

Although still in a junior role, David took the initiative and successfully made the business case for £2.8 million of European funding to support connectivity for small businesses across Westminster. Feedback from businesses has been overwhelmingly positive as the project has enhanced their communications with clients. The new connectivity allows them to make video calls and work remotely. As the pandemic hit and many more people needed to work from home, it became clear just how vital this investment had been.

Fast-forward a few years. Westminster is leading the way for connectivity, as a result of the project businesses are thriving, and David is heading up a service of his own responsible for delivery of the Smart City strategy.

**The Role**:
As a Service Designer you can make your own powerful contribution to Westminster’s success. You’ll work across our entire Digital and Innovation portfolio, supporting activities throughout IT and technology with a particular focus on our ambition to build a city that supports and celebrates all its communities. You could be asked to work in a number of different ways, from being part of a team focused on improving product, to joining a project team using Agile methodologies to deliver agreed outcomes, to being a member of a service team delivering against a set of requirements.

Driving change to our organisation’s culture, you’ll work to specify and design end-to-end services for our most complex and interdependent services. Helping to define user needs, business objectives and the scope, constraints, evaluation and prioritisation of user stories, you’ll identify and mitigate design challenges. We’ll also expect you to work with senior leaders to determine service opportunities and specify effective business solutions - these will include improvements in information systems, data management, practices, organisation and equipment.

But your work won’t stop here - you’ll also support service areas as they map their business flows, and prototype services and interactions to help them understand the possibilities of transformation. It will be your job to ensure that the views of all parties, including end-users, are fully considered, verified and validated, and that appropriate prioritisation is applied to meet business objectives. In addition, we’ll expect you to contribute to the iterative design and development process, and use data and narratives to improve the services we provide.

Please refer to the **Job Description** for more information.

**About You**:
With a good understanding of service design principles, practices and methods, and well developed knowledge of product development methodology, frameworks and principles, you’ll be up to speed with the latest technologies, including cloud technology, agile delivery and software practices. In addition, we’ll expect you to understand the principles and benefits of user research, the cross-government DDAT framework, systems thinking and service design.

It’s important that you have the ability to work in multi-disciplinary teams to design, build and improve services, and the skills to help unlock creative thinking. Capable of facilitating cross-organisational work and helping the disparate parts of an organisation map and understand its interdependencies, you’ll be adept at building positive relationships with a wide range of stakeholders. With this in mind, you’ll possess superb influencing, persuasion and communication skills.

With experience of working in service design teams to help an organisation understand and solve complex problems, you’ll be ready to guide design decisions in complex service areas, help stakeholders see opportunities, and lead process change while plotting the path forward. We’ll also expect you to possess the ability to understand technical complexity and risks, run collaborative design activities, and help services build and deliver on their visions of transformation.

**What We Offer**:
Westminster is an amazing place. We are home to more than 200,000 residents from all backgrounds, over 50,000 vibrant and vital businesses and three-quarters-of-a-million people work in Westminster. Westminster City Council’s strategy is to work towards a Fairer Westminster. A Fairer Westminster is one in which our communities are at the heart of our decision-making and help to determine the city’s future. By working di