User Centred Design Principal

Bristol, London, Manchester or Swansea.

Our aim at Made Tech is to use human-centred technology to improve our society. We believe putting people at the heart of designing, building and delivering public services leads to better outcomes for everyone.

Our User Centred Design Principals are responsible for leading and delivering on strategically significant and complex client engagements across our portfolio of public sector clients.

We believe that great delivery stems from:

• a thorough understanding of our clients and their needs
• strong practice skills and subject matter expertise
• excellent leadership
• a clear vision of lasting and effective change in a public sector environment 
• the ability to translate meaningful strategy into effective implementation

We expect our User Centred Design Principals to bring all of this and to enthuse our design teams and clients with the same passion.

The successful candidate will lead the user centred design aspects of one or more of our client engagements while overseeing the wider delivery within the account (or industry) when appropriate.

They will bring thought leadership and best-practice, honed through hands-on experience in both the private and public sector.  They will work with user researchers,  data analysts and client product owners to make ongoing recommended improvements to drive better user and business outcomes.

They will often be responsible for translating a product vision into a UX strategy that can deliver a category leading user experience, driving impact and reach across multiple user groups.

Working in an Agile delivery setting alongside product designers,  the User Centred Design Principal will oversee and be responsible for the hands on delivery of usability improvements and end to end journeys across all channels including app and web.

They will be comfortable blending the just in time delivery of key design artefacts into the delivery teams  with continuous discovery and ideation of longer term features and usability improvements.

They will also coach and develop team members on their engagements providing them with detailed performance feedback, as well as monitoring overall delivery to achieve the highest levels of client satisfaction.

In addition, our User Centred Design Principals are responsible for engaging with our clients to understand their challenges and build lasting, trusted advisor relationships. They will also oversee multiple and concurrent client deliveries to help ensure quality and drive the sharing of best practice across our engagements and industries.

Key Responsibilities

Our User Centred Design Principals are members of the Strategy and Design Practice leadership team. Part of their responsibility is to develop the capability of the practice to meet business needs and to accelerate the growth of the practice, their account and the wider business.

User Centred Design Principals are responsible for the practice and service line-specific delivery elements of an engagement/ account as well as shared ownership for the overall delivery of client outcomes. They leverage client and delivery insight to support the account and industry teams to identify opportunities and develop client solutions.

The right person for this role will do this by combining their design experience, leadership skills and industry network with Made Tech's unparalleled experience of delivering digital services and digital transformation for the Public Sector.

Your role at Made Tech

• Collaborate with clients to understand their needs and provide solution advice in your role as a trusted advisor and shape solutions that leverage Made Tech's wider capabilities and credentials
• Assess project performance as a part of the billable delivery team, QA design deliverables and outcomes, and ensure client satisfaction. 
• Deliver design elements alongside client and Made Tech delivery teams 
• Coach and mentor team members as well as providing direction to enable them to achieve their engagement outcomes and to develop their careers
• Act as a UCD authority to provide oversight and ensure alignment with internal and industry best practices. Ensure engagement experience is captured and used to improve standards and contribute to Made Tech knowledge
• Work as part of a wider consulting team on large scale transformation and lead change projects in the public sector
• Participate in business development activities, including bids and pre-sales within the account, industry and practice. Coach team members on their contributions and oversee the relevant technical aspects of the proposal submission
• Undertake people management responsibilities, including performance reviews and professional development of your engagement and and practice colleagues
• Serve as a thought leader within Made Tech, our account engagements and the wider public sector and represent the company at industry events

Skills, Knowledge & Expertise

Throughout the interview, we’ll be assessing for skills in the following areas:

• Public sector understanding
• Senior client stakeholder engagement
• Leadership
• Commercial skills, growing our practice

At this point, we hope you're feeling excited about Made Tech and the job opportunity. Even if you don't feel that you meet every single requirement, we still encourage you to apply. Get in touch with our

talent team

if you’d like an informal chat about the role and your suitability before applying. We are hiring for this role directly, so will not respond to any CVs sent via external recruitment agencies.

Job Benefits

For this role, you’ll first have an initial call with a member of our talent acquisition team.

We’ll then have a two-stage virtual interview process meeting with members of our Strategy & Design leadership team as well as our account leadership team.

Finally, you’ll have a chance to meet with a member of our exec team - we’re invested in helping you be a success here!

If you need this job description in another format, or other support in applying, please email talent@madetech.com.

We believe we can use tech to make public services better. We also believe this can happen best when our own team represents the society that actually uses the services we work on. We’re collectively continuing to grow a culture that is happy, healthy, safe and inspiring for people of all backgrounds and experiences, so we encourage people from underrepresented groups to apply for roles with us.

When you apply, we’ll put you in touch with a member of our talent team who can help with any needs or adjustments we may need to make to help with your application. We’ve put together

this blog

as a resource to share more about reasonable adjustments and some examples of what this could include. We also welcome any feedback on how we can improve the experience for future candidates.

We’re committed to building a happy, inclusive and diverse workforce. You can get a sense of what it’s like working here from

our blog, where we talk about mental health, communities of practice and neurodiversity

(as well as our client work and best practice).

Like many organisations, we use Slack to foster a sense of community and connection. As well as special interest groups such as music, food and pets, we also have 10+ Slack channels dedicated to specific communities, allies, and identities as well as dedicated learning spaces called communities of practice (COPs). If you’d like to speak to someone from one of these groups about their experience as an employee, please do let a member of the Made Tech talent team know.

We are always listening to our growing teams and evolving the benefits available to our people. As we scale, as do our benefits and we are scaling quickly. We've recently introduced a flexible benefit platform which includes a Smart Tech scheme, Cycle to work scheme, and an individual benefits allowance which you can invest in a Health care cash plan or Pension plan. We’re also big on connection and have an optional social and wellbeing calendar of events for all employees to join should they choose to.

Here are some of our most popular benefits listed below:

30 days Holiday

- we offer 30 days of paid annual leave plus bank holidays

Flexible Working Hours

- we are flexible with what hours you work

Flexible Parental Leave

- we offer flexible parental leave options

Remote Working

- we offer part time remote working for all our staff

Paid counselling

- we offer paid counselling as well as financial and legal advice