Met Office
Lead Service Designer
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Exeter, South West England, EX1 3PB
Job Summary
We’re looking for a Lead Service Designer to help us make a difference to our planet.
This job may be suitable for hybrid working, which is where an employee works part of the week in the office and part of the week from home. This is a voluntary, non-contractual arrangement and the location advertised will be your contractual place of work.
Our opportunity is full time, 37 hours per week, but we would also consider applicants wishing to work a minimum of 30 hours per week and we will also try our best to consider those intending to work a job share. Our people are at the heart of what we do and we'll do our best to agree a working pattern that works for everyone.
World changing work
From science to technology, from meteorology to management, and from planning to communication, our expertise helps us stand out as the authority on weather accuracy and climate prediction. We help individuals, industries and government to make better decisions to stay safe and thrive. This is the Met Office. This is who we are.
We’re a force for good - focusing on our environmental and social impact
We’re experts by nature - always learning and developing to do things better
We live and breathe it - putting our purpose at the heart of decision-making
We’re better together - understanding partnerships and inclusivity make us greater
We keep evolving - pushing boundaries to make tomorrow better for our customers
Job Description
Your world of expertise
As a Lead Service Designer, you’ll play a pivotal role in transforming how the Met Office designs and delivers services, ensuring user needs are at the heart of every decision. Working within a multidisciplinary team alongside a Service Owner, you’ll lead our transition from a complex product portfolio to best-in-class end-to-end services. You will influence senior stakeholders and help embed a user-centred, evidence-based culture that delivers meaningful outcomes for government, industry and the public.
Your Key Duties:
- Lead the transition, design and continuous improvement of complex service lines, ensuring services are user-centred, evidence-based and aligned to our customer-centric Met Office strategy.
- Provide strategic direction, quality assurance and leadership across multidisciplinary teams, embedding best practice service design approaches and standards.
- Influence and challenge senior stakeholders, using user insight and evidence to guide decision-making and ensure services meet genuine user needs.
- Develop service strategies, service blueprints, user journeys and other service design artefacts that shape the delivery of effective end-to-end services.
- Champion and grow user-centred design across the organisation by mentoring colleagues, improving service design capability, and promoting inclusive, accessible and sustainable design practices
Person specification
Essential Criteria, Skills And Experience:
Leading strategic design (Lead Criteria):
You are an expert by nature in defining the purpose, impact and stages of transforming an organisation to deliver best-in-class services, aligned with a customer-centric corporate strategy. You can evidence how you have used risks, opportunities, and constraints in technology and systems to shape your design work to improve experiences and meet user needs.
Design communication:
You have experience communicating design strategy across organisational boundaries. You have gained support for design decisions from senior leaders and advocated a user-centred design approach. You can demonstrate how you keep evolving organisations by introducing effective methods for communicating about services and coaching others in how to be more user centred.
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Designing for everyone:
You have experience championing and improving the practices of inclusive, accessible and environmentally sustainable design against measurable criteria. You demonstrate how you are a force for good by ensuring teams design inclusive services that work for everyone.
Designing together:
You can demonstrate how you work better together by effectively planning and running sessions with senior leaders and stakeholders around the organisation to learn about user needs and user-centred design practices. You can coach other designers in how to involve stakeholders of any level in the design process and grow the understanding of service design within an organisation.
Evidence-based design:
You live and breathe hypothesis-driven design and can guide organisations in how to use validated user evidence to establish and improve services. You have experience developing service blueprints, user journeys and other service design artefacts that shape the delivery of effective end-to-end services. You are adept at analysing, synthesising and using evidence to ensure user insights are acted upon.
Iterative design:
You have embedded the practice of iterative design and agile working and helped teams adapt quickly to changes in requirements, priorities, and user needs. You can iterate delivery processes and advise on team structures to enable the effective delivery of services aligning to best practice service design approaches and recognised standards.
The panel may perform a preliminary sift of the lead criteria as indicated above.
Compensation and Benefits
Alongside your salary of £54,515, Met Office contributes £15,792 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).
Our work is life-changing, often life-saving and always life-enhancing. The Met Office is Great Place to Work UK certified. We are also featured on their ‘Best Workplaces in Tech’ 2023, 2024 and 2025 lists, as well as their ’54 Best Workplaces for Women’ 2023 list.
Your total reward package will be up to £75,857 annually, which includes:
- £54,515 base pay.
- An outstanding Civil Service pension, with an average employer contribution of 28.97%.
- Recruitment Retention Allowance (RRA) you will be paid £3,800 per annum as a market supplement to reflect the demand for your skills. Whilst in post, you will be paid this market driven allowance from April 2026 until March 2027 in your monthly pay.
- Annual Leave starting at 27.5 days (plus Bank Holidays) rising to 32.5 days (plus Bank Holidays) after 5 years and option to buy or sell up to 5 days per year of annual leave.
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.
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Selection process details
How To Apply
If you share our values, we’d love to hear from you! Click apply to begin your application. Please complete your career history and provide evidence against each of the essential criteria in the supporting statement questionnaire. We recommend candidates use the CARL method (Context, Action, Result and Learning) for presenting evidence of experience and skills.
Closing date 31 August 2026 at 23:59 with first stage interviews commencing from 14 September 2026. You will hear from us once the closing date has passed.
Using AI in your application
We welcome applications that use AI tools for support in drafting or refining, as long as they accurately reflect your own skills and experience. All hiring decisions at the Met Office are made by people, not AI. For more details, visit our approach to recruitment.
How We Can Help
If you have any questions or would like to discuss this opportunity further, please contact us at careers@metoffice.gov.uk.
If you’re considering applying and need support to do so, please get in touch. You can request adjustments either within your application or by contacting us. Should you be offered an interview, please be aware there may be a selection exercise which could include a presentation, written test or a scenario-based activity. You can select in your application to be considered under the Disability Confident Scheme. To be invited to interview/assessment under this scheme, your application must meet the essential criteria for the role.
We understand that great minds don’t always think alike and as an equal opportunities employer we welcome applications from those with all protected characteristics. We recruit on merit, fairness, and open competition in line with the Civil Service Code.
We can only accept applications from those eligible to live and work in the UK - please refer to GOV.UK for information. We require Security clearance, for which you need to have resided in the UK for at least 3 of the last 5 years to be eligible, 2 of these years must be immediately preceding the point of your application. You will need to achieve full security clearance prior to starting with us.
You will need full Security Check Clearance for this role. Although its not an essential requirement for this post, we may require Service Designers to have or be able to attain a successful Developed Vetting clearance in the future. You can find out more about the clearance process at United Kingdom Security Vetting - GOV.UK
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
Security
Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).
People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.
Medical
Successful candidates will be expected to have a medical.
Nationality requirements
This Job Is Broadly Open To The Following Groups:
- UK nationals
- nationals of the Republic
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