Description
The Government Digital Service (GDS) is the digital centre of government. We are responsible for setting, leading and delivering the vision for a modern digital government.
Our priorities are to drive a modern digital government, by:
- joining up public sector services
- harnessing the power of AI for the public good
- strengthening and extending our digital and data public infrastructure
- elevating leadership and investing in talent
- funding for outcomes and procuring for growth and innovation
- committing to transparency and driving accountability
We are home to the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (I.AI), the world-leading GOV.UK and at the forefront of coordinating the UK’s geospatial strategy and activity. We lead the Government Digital and Data function and champion the work of digital teams across government.
We’re part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and employ more than 1,000 people all over the UK, with hubs in Manchester, London and Bristol.
The Government Digital Service is where talent translates into impact. From your first day, you’ll be working with some of the world’s most highly-skilled digital professionals, all contributing their knowledge to make change on a national scale.
Join us for rewarding work that makes a difference across the UK. You'll solve some of the nation’s highest-priority digital challenges, helping millions of people access services they need.
Job description
As Deputy Director Product Design for the Products & Services directorate within GDS Digital Products, your mission will be to lead a team in designing and developing the strategic products that shape the experience between citizen and government across our App and AI experiences. This is a hands-on design role at the centre of digital government, and the teams responsible for delivering next generation digital services.
You will use your significant design experience, digital expertise and innovation leadership to influence, shape, and deliver frontier experiences across the GOV.UK App, while leveraging established products in their next lifecycle phase to meet these new channels.
You will drive new user experiences for app and AI chat interfaces and agentic experiences, as part of multi-channel services and personalised experiences. You will think about the design experience of a range of cohorts, including the next generation of users. You will be working with new design roles within government and ways of working that encompass these new paradigms.
You will be a great collaborator who can rapidly understand and meet user needs, context, and constraints, breaking down perceived barriers to design-led progress.
Critically, this role harnesses two significant design challenges - designing new experiences and developing patterns that do not currently exist for eg, agents for government, alongside developing and delivering user experiences that amplify the next stage of established products like the GOV.UK App. The immediate outcomes include designing the high volume nation scale driving experiences across app, the next phase of GOV.UK Chat including testing of agentic tech with the significant challenge of trust as brand new patterns, alongside designing user experiences in data sharing spaces that are, again, new in government.
Person specification
We're interested in people with:
- demonstrable experience of developing scaled, citizen facing products leveraging AI and/or Agentic technology
- demonstrable experience of developing and iterating nation scale apps
- demonstrable experience of taking complex strategies into pilot user experiences and beyond into deployment, securing the ongoing sponsorship of very senior stakeholders
- demonstrable ability to design, grow and develop high performing design teams, and lead ways of working, in the context of emerging technologies and pattern development, that enable prolific output
- experience in working alongside senior leadership within Legal, Procurement, InfoSec, Cyber and Policy professions to implement innovative designs, at nation scale
- in-depth understanding of design principles, methodologies, and their application at scale in complex digital environments
- a demonstrable track record of delivering and a shipping-mindset
- a systems thinking approach evidenced by an ability to quickly grasp design challenges facing other government departments and support them in devising user-centred strategies that will work for their users/context
- a natural growth mentality and be looking for ways to grow the adoption of design principles and practices across government
- bold leadership with an ability to see disruption opportunities where others only see constraints or legacy approaches
- an analytical approach to prioritisation, comfortable making difficult decisions that progress rapid development and delivery of design-led solutions
Benefits
There are many benefits of working at GDS, including:
- flexible hybrid working with flexi-time and the option to work part-time or condensed hours
- a Civil Service Pension with an average employer contribution of 28.97%
- 25 days of annual leave, increasing by a day each year up to a maximum of 30 days
- an extra day off for the King’s birthday
- an in-year bonus scheme to recognise high performance
- career progression and coaching, including a training budget for personal development
- a focus on wellbeing with access to an employee assistance programme
- job satisfaction from making government services easier to use and more inclusive for people across the UK
- advances on pay, including for travel season tickets
- death in service benefits
- cycle to work scheme and facilities
- access to an employee discounts scheme
- 10 learning days per year
- volunteering opportunities (5 special leave days per year)
- access to a suite of learning activities through Civil Service learning