Lead Interaction Designer

Join a team at the heart of the global economy! The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) and Inspire People are partnering together to bring you an exciting opportunity for Lead Interaction Designers who can work with minimal support while influencing and mentoring others. You will work out the best way to let users interact with services in terms of both overall flow and at the level of individual design elements. Salary between £52,000 to £65,600 (dependent on competency and location) plus excellent Civil Service benefits. Flexible, hybrid working from London, Cardiff, Salford, Edinburgh, Belfast, Birmingham, or Darlington.

You'll be working in a multidisciplinary team alongside alongside policy experts, user researchers, content designers, product managers and technology experts, where you'll develop innovative approaches for digital products that are part of integrated services across DBT.
To be effective in this position, you will need to understand the needs of users and stakeholders and be able to communicate this in an engaging way, whether this is by creating prototypes to test an idea and inspire the team and stakeholders or creating design patterns that can be used across our services to ensure consistency and scalability.

In this role you will:
* create user-centred design patterns
* understand user needs and how to design services that meet them
* create and iterate prototypes to test and communicate ideas
* work with user researchers and front-end developers to turn concepts into user-centred design
* explain design decisions and how they were impacted by user research
* welcome the constructive criticism of your work and be able to constructively review the work of others
* ensure that design work is consistent, both internally and with the rest of GOV.UK
* Ensure that accessibility and usability are built into designs from the outset, and meet web standards and GDS/GOV.UK design principles
* contribute to the wider community of designers in the department and government
* line manage and mentor less experienced colleagues in your profession

Essential Skills and Experience
You'll have demonstrable experience of:
* Finding the simplest, shortest and fastest solution for users
* Championing user research and making decisions that meet user needs
* Interpreting the needs of technical and business stakeholders and managing their expectations
* Using variety of methods of prototyping and looking after end-to-end design of a service
* An understanding of Agile and how to apply it to the design and development of digital services
Desirable Skills and Experience:
* An understanding of service design and how to consider the wider context of what you are working on and the strategic aims of the organisation
* Past experience of designing for data, data visualisation and simplifying complex information

Benefits
* Extensive learning and development tailored to your role, with budget for training, qualifications or professional membership of a recognised body
* An environment with flexible, hybrid working options such as condensed hours
* A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
* A Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%
* Annual leave starting at 25 days per annum plus statutory bank holidays rising to 30 days with service
* Three paid volunteering days a year
* Employee benefits programme offering retail discounts, a season ticket loan for public transport, and a cycle to work scheme

How to Apply
This vacancy is using Success Profiles, and will assess your Technical Skills and Behaviours.

As part of the application process you will be asked to upload a CV and a personal statement which outline your experience, skills and fit for the role. Your personal statement must be a maximum of 750 words. You can use bullet points and subheadings if you prefer. As well as evidencing the criteria you should also touch upon why you're interested in DBT and in this role. Inspire People will assess your application against the essential criteria listed above to compile a longlist of applications. If you are progressed through, your application will then be sifted by DBT hiring managers.

How you'll be assessed
At the interview stage for this role, you will be asked to demonstrate relevant technical skills and behaviours from the Success Profiles framework. A role-specific list of these can be found below. There will be a technical task as part of the interview process, details of which will be sent out beforehand.

Technical skills
There will be a technical element within the interview where you will be asked questions about your specific professional skills and knowledge relating directly to the job role.

We will assess you against the following technical skills:
* Agile Working
* Evidence- and context-based design
* Strategic thinking
* User focus
* Leadership & Guidance
The capability framework for this role can be found here. This details the critical skills required for interaction designers working in government. DBT has adapted these to reflect the specific demands and focus of the Lead Interaction Designer role in this department.

Behaviours
We will assess you against the following behaviours:
* Changing and Improving
* Making Effective Decisions
* Communicating and Influencing?

Security Clearance Details
This role requires you to undergo Security Clearance. The requirement for SC clearance is to have been present in the UK for at least 3 of the last 5 years.