Service Designer - GDS

Senior Service Designer (GDS Experience)
Rate: £450 per day (Inside IR35)
Location: Remote
Contract: 6 months initial

We're supporting a central government client seeking an experienced Senior Service Designer with strong GDS (Government Digital Service) experience to lead the design and delivery of complex, user-centred public services.

This role sits within a multidisciplinary digital team and will play a key part in shaping services from discovery through to live, ensuring alignment with GDS Service Standards and best practice across government.

You'll be responsible for designing end-to-end services that meet user needs while balancing policy, operational, and technical constraints. Working closely with Product Managers, User Researchers, Content Designers, Interaction Designers, and Technical Architects, you'll help define and improve services used at scale.

You will:

• Lead service design activity across Discovery, Alpha, Beta, and Live phases

• Create and iterate service blueprints and artefacts (service maps, user journeys, ecosystem maps)

• Champion user-centred design principles across senior stakeholders

• Support and collaborate with User Research to translate insight into actionable design decisions

• Identify pain points across complex systems and design practical, scalable improvements

• Ensure services meet GDS standards and are assessment-ready

• Facilitate workshops and co-design sessions with business and technical teams

• Contribute to design community practice and mentor junior designers where required

• Proven experience working on government digital services

• Strong understanding of GDS Service Standards and assessment processes

• Demonstrable experience delivering in multidisciplinary agile teams

• Expertise in mapping complex services across multiple channels

• Confident stakeholder engagement at senior level

• Ability to balance strategic thinking with hands-on delivery

• Experience working within Inside IR35 contracts

• Experience working with Legacy transformation programmes

• Familiarity with accessibility and inclusive design standards

• Previous central government department experience

Reasonable Adjustments:

Respect and equality are core values to us. We are proud of the diverse and inclusive community we have built, and we welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and perspectives. Our success is driven by our people, united by the spirit of partnership to deliver the best resourcing solutions for our clients.

If you need any help or adjustments during the recruitment process for any reason, please let us know when you apply or talk to the recruiters directly so we can support you.