Senior Service Designer

Job summary

Role: Senior Service Designer

Total Remuneration: £58,281 - £68,621

Pay Supplement:  The base salary for this role is £50,243 - £59,156  This job qualifies for Digital, Data and Technology Annual Pay supplement of 16% which is included in the total remuneration above.   

Pension: 28.97% (RoS contribution)

Annual Leave: 38 days annual holiday, increasing to 42 days with length of service.

Duration: Permanent

Working Pattern: 35 hours per week. We are a flexible employer and will consider a variety of working patterns on a case-by-case basis. For example, compressed hours, term-time working or part-time working.

Location: Hybrid working model. Contractual base either at Meadowbank House, Edinburgh (EH8 7AU), or St Vincent Plaza, Glasgow (G2 5LD). You will be expected to attend one of these locations as required by the role.

• Grade: Senior Executive Officer
• Department: User Centred Design
• Directorate: Digital, Data and Technology 
• Role Reports to: Service Design Lead
• Closing date: 13th September 2026 at 11.59pm
• About Registers of Scotland (RoS)

Join an award-winning organisation recognised for its technology and innovation. Registers of Scotland is a world-leading pioneer in land and property registration. Our full-stack teams design, architect, and build all our registration products in-house. We work to create digital solutions for the people of Scotland. You will get an opportunity to nurture your creativity and develop with us through access to the latest data, software engineering and product delivery techniques.

Inclusion

We welcome applications from all backgrounds and are committed to building a diverse workforce that reflects Scotland. We particularly welcome applications from underrepresented groups in technology and design. Your unique perspective and experience will strengthen our team's ability to create services that work for all our communities.

The Role

We’re looking for a Senior Service Designer to take an end-to-end view of our service journeys, ensuring they flow seamlessly. This will help us deliver effortless digital experiences, build on customer satisfaction, and advance the practice of Service Design across RoS. In this role, you’ll lead design concepts, take ownership of shaping complex services, embed best practices within multi-disciplinary teams, and make informed decisions grounded in research—while mentoring and influencing others.

This is an opportunity for an experienced service designer to create meaningful impact, drive positive change, and influence how our services are shaped and delivered.

Job description

On a typical day you will…

• Provide expert knowledge of service design practices and methodologies at a senior practitioner level and support the delivery of detailed visual customer journey flows across various RoS services
• Visualise end to end services with front and backstage processes in line with user needs and business requirements
• Facilitate workshops to validate and refine the journeys with key customers, colleagues and stakeholders. This includes an overview of why and how customer journeys are important for the organisation
• Gather quantitative and qualitative data to inform the journey mapping, ensuring we understand the experience and pain points for the customer
• Redesign services and/or embed new services focussing on ‘What matters to the customer
• Share understanding of approach to service design and maturity and how this supports the Scottish Government approach (Scottish approach to service design and digital service standards)
• Help to embed Service design thinking into the service area and provide the skills to continue them into the wider business
• Engage in any stage of the service lifecycle as required
• Actively contribute to the design community by sharing knowledge, generating ideas, and embedding design principles
• Be confident in engaging stakeholders and working with established governance forums such as the Service Alignment Team (SAT)
• Facilitate co-design with colleagues in the business areas to produce improvements for services
• Implement improvements across small groups to monitor and assess risk and impact before implementing on a larger scale
• Collaborate with other User Centred Design resource, when required, on overlapping deliveries
• Support any secondary activities as requested by the Principal Designer or Service Design Lead
• Simplify complex ideas, visualise solutions, and adapt to uncertainty while working within organisational constraints
• Remain calm and resilient under pressure, proactively spotting risks and responding to changing priorities

To learn more about RoS and what we offer visit our careers pages or watch this short video

Person specification

Essential Criteria – Skills and Attributes for Success

Technical/ Experience:

We will assess you against the following Experience and Technical skills during the application and assessment process:

• Experience delivering end-to-end service design across digital and offline channels, normally evidenced by at least two years in a similar role.
• Proven track record of influencing teams, mentoring others, and embedding good design practices.
• Experience making informed design decisions based on research, user insights, and organisational goals.

Behaviours

At application stage, you will be scored against the bolded Behaviours and against all for the assessment:

Working Together

• able to listen to the needs of the technical and business stakeholders, and interpret between them.
• able to manage stakeholder expectations and be flexible.
• Capable of proactive and reactive communication.
• facilitates difficult discussions within the team or with diverse senior stakeholders
• advise others how to effectively plan and run design sessions with a team, users or stakeholders
• adapt a design session to ensure you achieve a useful outcome
• effectively involve the right people throughout the design process
• work across team or profession boundaries, for example with policy teams

Leadership, Communication and Influencing

• works with higher impact or more complex risks
• builds consensus between services or independent stakeholders
• leads others to make good design decisions mentoring others, through pairing & role modelling
• shares best practice and can coach others
• devise teams on how to design inclusive, accessible and environmentally sustainable content or services
• design and deliver ethical content or services that consider the personal and social context of users
• ensure a design meets appropriate standards, for example accessibility regulations

Seeing the Big Picture

• identify and understand constraints across the business or service and is able to communicate these and work within them / able to challenge the validity of constraints ensuring RoS standards are being met
• provide direction on which tools and methods to use by using experience to meet the needs of users across a variety of channels
• help a team understand how user-centred design helps it meet its goals
• help teams align their work to the goals and vision of their organisation
• use risks, opportunities and constraints in technology, systems and policy to shape design

Managing a Quality Service

• visualising and implementing strategic service design end to end, applying different risk methodologies in proportion to the risk in question, with the ability to a pply a digital understanding to their work and to identify and implement solutions for assisted digital
• able to help teams to manage and visualise outcomes and prioritise work effectively
• iterate and improve complex designs based on successive rounds of research
• adapt designs quickly to changes in requirements, priorities or user needs

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £58,281, Registers of Scotland contributes

£16,884 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).

• This job is for you if you want…

Work with purpose: working for the people of Scotland to set the bar for land and property registration worldwide.

Flexible and hybrid working: depending on the role and team requirements, work when and where it’s best for you and your stakeholders.

Benefits: enjoy pay progression, pension contributions of up to 28.97%, up to a year’s parental leave, and 38 days annual holiday, increasing to 42 days with length of service.

Investment in professional development: we invest in all our people so that they have the right skills to be productive and confident in their job.

Diversity and Inclusion: We are an ‘Investor in People’ and a ‘Disability Confident’ employer. We are inclusive, stronger together, and committed to putting our people first.

Positive work culture: RoS is an agile, digital organisation using leading-edge technology. Colleagues understand their role in achieving our strategy and have the autonomy to deliver.

Things you need to know

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.

Selection process details

Stage one - Application Process

To apply, click on 'Apply now' and complete the online application form.

You will need to submit:

• A CV outlining your career history and how you meet the technical/ experience criteria (max 4 pages)
• Complete the application questions that are related to the behaviours and the requirements of the role (maximum 300 words per behaviour

Please note:

• If we receive a high volume of applications, we may complete an initial sift on Technical/ Experience Criteria
• In line with the Civil Service Recruitment Principles, should a high volume of applicants pass the sift stage we may hold a 30-minute discussion with shortlisted candidates to assess the Technical experience criteria.
• Applications that are not accompanied by CVs or responses exceeding 300 words per behaviour will not be considered.
• We would strongly recommend that your statement is written in the  STAR format  (Situation, Task, Action & Result) and suggest preparing your answers using software such as MS Word or Google Docs, and then uploading the file. 
• We strongly advise you review our policy on responsible use of AI in the application process. RoS may contact you for a pre-screening call to verify your responses. 
• Applications and appointments are subject to a strict merit-based assessment process, in line with the Civil Service Recruitment Principles. 

Stage two – assessment

If successful at application stage, you will be invited to an in-person assessment which will include the following:

• Pre-prepared presentation (will be shared with the candidates a week prior to the assessment day)
• Applied case study (the information for this task will be shared on the assessment day)

Guidance on Interview Notes

• You are welcome to bring notes with you to the interview
• Notes can be either handwritten or typed
• Notes should consist of brief prompts, such as key words or bullet points, to help you structure your responses rather than complete answers
• The interview is a conversation, and we are interested in hearing about your experiences in your own words

Information on Success Profiles

For further information on success profiles, visit our Success Profiles.

Recruitment timeline

Closing date: