NatWest Group
Service Design Lead
How your CV stacks up
Upload your CV to see how well it fits this job role
?%
Join us as a Service Design Lead
In this dynamic role, you’ll have the chance to make an impact by contributing to the development of service design and experience strategy, while overseeing a team of Service Designers and the delivery of associated strategic initiatives.
You’ll lead service design delivery for mid-size and increasingly complex projects, ensuring designs are user-centred, inclusive, and aligned to experience design, business area, and enterprise strategies. This is an opportunity for you, as an evolving leader, to lead teams toward achieving project goals while continuing to develop your own leadership skills and capabilities.
Drive the integration of AI into service design by identifying opportunities from experimentation and pilot programmes, translating insights into best practices that support consistent service outcomes. You’ll also work closely with Design Leadership and Operations to define and implement AI-enabled service design workflows, fostering capability development, and continuous improvement across the design community.
What You'll Do
As a Service Design Lead, you’ll oversee the scoping, direction, and planning of service design for mid-size and increasingly complex projects and programmes while contributing to the overall service design strategy. You’ll lead and execute service design activities across initiatives, ensuring outputs are validated, user-centred, aligned with business needs, and free from barriers that could impact delivery. You’ll also foster strong collaboration across design disciplines and other functions, engaging key stakeholders to maintain alignment and support the effective delivery of projects, programmes, and strategic initiatives.
Reasons to use Rodeo
Start with a chat, not a search bar
Grad scheme, placement, apprenticeship? Not sure what you want yet — that's fine. Your agent talks it through with you and turns "I have no idea" into a shortlist.
It searches the market for you
Every day your agent scans the market matching roles against what actually matters to you, not just keywords on a CV.
Only hits
No noise. No "maybe this fits." Just roles with a clear explanation of why they're right — and where to focus when applying.
We’ll expect you to shape and promote the use of service design guidelines and standards to support consistency and scalability, while continuously developing your own domain knowledge and leadership skills. You’ll also help build team capability by coaching, mentoring, and providing constructive feedback, contributing to the growth and maturity of the practice. Moreover, you’ll act as an escalation point, making project and programme-level service design decisions within defined authority, ensuring that outputs remain user-centred, inclusive, and aligned with project objectives and business goals.
In Addition, You’ll Be
- Ensuring service design is delivering impactful end-to-end experience improvements through seamless cross-channel services that balance innovation, user needs, and organisational constraints
- Enabling collaboration across multiple disciplines and functions for programmes and complex projects, ensuring clarity of responsibilities and deliverables for each discipline
- Clearly communicating the value and impact of service design decisions across projects and programmes to a wide range of audiences
- Acting as a key contact for stakeholders, managing expectations, influencing decisions, and overseeing progress, risks, conflicts, and alignment issues within defined authority, escalating when necessary
- Shaping and evolving guidelines and standards to drive scalability, consistency, quality, accessibility, and inclusion in service design, while ensuring all outputs comply with necessary regulations
The Skills You'll Need
We’re looking for someone with a strong understanding of user-centred design and comprehensive knowledge of redesigning and operationalising services, with solid expertise in embedding accessibility and inclusion throughout the design process. To succeed in this role, you’ll also need proven experience delivering service design for mid-size, increasingly complex projects and programmes, grounded in user research and supported by a portfolio that demonstrates effective end-to-end service design across both front-stage and back-stage elements.
Get help with your application
Your very own career expert that helps elevate your application to the next level.
In Addition, You’ll Need
- Experience defining and leading design projects and programmes at pace, using agile delivery methods
- A track record of leading, coaching, and developing service designers, fostering a culture of continuous learning, high performance, and inclusive practice while supporting career growth and capability development across the team
- Strong skills in design thinking, data analysis, mapping, and facilitation
- Experience working in multidisciplinary teams and effectively collaborating with cross-functional partners, with proven leadership capability
- Strong stakeholder management skills, including clear communication, expectation management, presenting the rationale behind design decisions, and advocating for the value and impact of design
- Experience leading and developing service design talent, including line management, coaching, mentoring, performance development, and fostering a culture of knowledge sharing and continuous improvement
- Driving the adoption of enterprise-approved AI capabilities within service design, translating experimentation and emerging opportunities into scalable ways of working, guidance, and best practice that enhance efficiency and service outcomes
“It took my CV and asked me questions relevant to understanding what kind of jobs to suggest for me. Suggestions were almost perfect. Jobs were exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
Jessica, London
Skills
Location