Job Title: Lead Service Designer - Police Staff - Technology - Counter Terrorism Policing HQ
Salary: The starting salary is £71,121, which includes allowances totalling £3,009.
The salary is broken down as £68,112 basic salary, which will increase annually until you reach the top of the scale £72,953. Plus, a location allowance of £2,009 and a non-pensionable allowance of £1,000.
Location: West Brompton
Background
The Counter Terrorism Policing Headquarters (CTP HQ), on behalf of the government and the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), ensures that the CT Network has the funding, capabilities and resources it needs to deliver CONTEST effectively and to keep people safe from Terrorism. It does this through the provision of corporate services as well as national operational tasking and co-ordination. It houses unique national CT capabilities that support the entire network as well as overseeing delivery of CT Policing across the regions to ensure that it operates in a way that is both effective and efficient. Crucially, the HQ represents CT Policing’s interest within government and with wider stakeholders, ensuring that the policing contribution to CONTEST is both understood and appreciated.
Within CTP HQ the Digital, Data, Analysis & Technology (DDAT) Directorate has responsibility for guiding the CT Network’s exploitation of data and analytical capability and leading the integration of new technology to support our national security mission. The Directorate works closely with other principal areas of CTPHQ to ensure coherence with our technology development, transformation and compliance and assurance functions, helping to ensure that our use of data is always lawful, ethical and proportionate and uses the best available capability without ever compromising our vital public trust. Work within the pillar also involves setting up new processes and ways of working in high-profile environments. In order to achieve this, staff within the pillar work closely with the other teams across the CT Network and CTP HQ and with partners in the MPS, leading on shaping and implementing the new DDAT strategy and developing future data capabilities.
Job Summary
The Lead Service Designer role provides strategic leadership to ensure services are user-centred, driving improvements in satisfaction, accessibility, and effectiveness. It champions the reduction of duplication, streamlines processes, and ensures services operate seamlessly end-to-end, rather than as isolated components.
They will achieve this through setting vision, strategy and direction against the following areas:
Leadership & collaboration
- Leading and developing the transformation of CTP to a Design Thinking organisation
- Leading Service Design detail for CTP strategic directives such as partner alignment,
- Responsible for communicating design strategy across organisation boundaries
- Lead and Influence senior stakeholders and advocate for service-led approaches, working closely with Product Managers, Business Analysts, Developers and Operation teams
- Lead the review of requirements in order to make financial commitments
- Lead the engagement of third party suppliers and partner support teams in order to address commercial considerations related to Service Design
- Manage expectations for long term budget adjustments aligned to the Service Roadmap
- Accountable for the long term development of the ‘new team’ with appropriate technical training packages, developing learning pathways and identifying further opportunities for the team in collaboration with partners, meeting the expectations of the delivery teams and the organisation strategy
- Responsible for guiding the organisation in how to use evidence to improve services
Research and Discovery
- Leading qualitative and quantitative research (interviews, workshops & data analysis)
- Identify user pain points, service failures, and technical development opportunities
- Engage with frontline staff, users, and stakeholders to uncover insights
- Engage with partner organisations and academia via the Counter Terrorism Research Laboratory (CTRL)
Design & Mapping
- Accountable for the engagement and management of Technical Service Managers and Programme Directors to develop current and future design concepts
- Accountable for ensuring service design is inclusive, accessible and environmentally sustainable
- Responsible for identifying risks, opportunities and constraints in technology and policy to shape design
- Responsible for ensuring security principles, guidelines and processes are embedded in Service Design
- Lead in the development of user systems thinking to understand and design for complex technical service environments with creation of service maps, user journeys, personas, and ecosystem diagrams
- Lead co-design sessions and workshops with users and stakeholders, developing user stories/ epics
Prototyping and testing
- Ensure the secure development and management of prototypes within policy constraints
- Ensure the development of tooling requirements to maintain the security posture for CTP
- Lead on work with UX/UI designers and develops technical prototype & service concepts,
- Test service designs with real users iteratively to validate assumptions, gathering feedback and work with developers to refine the service accordingly
PERSON SPECIFICATION:
Knowledge
- Extensive knowledge and experience of Service Design Principles, prototyping & iterative service development
- Extensive knowledge and experience of Agile delivery
- Extensive knowledge and experience of ITIL 4 /5
- Seasoned practitioner in use of Prince2 methodology and/or other Project Methodologies/frameworks (e.g. Association of Project Management)
- Seasoned professional who delivers throughout complex multi-delivery mechanisms, using both Agile and Prince2, navigating complex governance and risk management.
Skills
Confident in facilitating transformational change in ways of working to address the Service Design expectations of our diverse needs across business networks. Delivering across the span of security, technology and governance in meeting the challenges of a demanding user base and ensuring alignment with corporate strategy in collaborative environments. The Lead Service Designer will require skills to address the following areas:
- Leading service design expectation towards converging services under Police Reform or other national strategies
- Manage and develop a team of Service Designers to meet the varying needs across portfolios
- Managing budgets across planned service design delivery, balancing risk and mitigation against existing constraints
- Holds authoritive control for approval of service-design artefacts and acceptance criteria prior to transition to BAU
- Within a complex security conscious, multi-agency and partner environments requiring discretion and compliance, ensures ethical design standards are robustly maintained.
- Deliver service design artefacts and governance materials that shape digital and operational service delivery, aligning services to key service design principles.
- Prioritises the work of the Service Design team to meet the obligations of the delivery teams.
- Building and developing a constructive teams, ensuring necessary development through skilling and education towards Service Design Thinking,
- Leading design systems for use across multiple services and identify the simplest of a variety of approaches
- Setting and managing standards, frameworks, and test practices for service design across teams
- Pulling service design into the forefront of planning and delivery to ensure that user centred Service Design is fully integrated into large and complex portfolios.
- Integrating plans of core service components across the service portfolio to maximise operational output and ensure continuous development and improvement
- Controlling prototyping design systems, setting standards and balancing these against user expectations, ensuring effective testing
- Collaborating with the Data Science community to ensure that the range of enhancements provided are reflected and addressed into effective release management
- Developing a collaborative environment for consistent and productive dialogue between Users, Project Management, Service Delivery & Service Operations, at all levels
- Actively championing Service Design Principles, ITIL 4/5 and Agile methodologies including Continual Service Improvement.
Experience
Proven professional with extensive experience in the following:
- Communicating with stakeholders, setting strategic direction and developing process and governance to support achieving development success through effective Service Design
- Delivery within tight budget lines
- Managing risk and security
- Collaborative partnership working
- Addressing culture change to ensure expectations to learn and grow in service design
Vetting
This post requires access to the most sensitive intelligence material on a daily basis. Applicants must hold or be prepared to undergo National Security Vetting (NSV) Developed Vetting (DV) level before taking up the post.
This post requires British nationality (some dual nationals may be ineligible) and a Developed Vetting (DV) clearance.
As the post holder will have access to very sensitive information, there are limitations on travelling to a small number of countries and we will undertake additional security checks as part of the recruitment process. Applications from candidates with close connections to certain countries may take considerably longer to process, or in some cases result in a withdrawal of an offer of employment. Further details will be provided at the conditional offer stage.
Confidentiality Agreement
Applicants should also be aware of the need to sign a confidentiality agreement on taking up the post.
Our Colleague Commitments
Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP) continues to prioritize an inclusive and supportive working environment and culture, where all of our people feel a strong sense of belonging and are empowered to reach their full potential. CTP keeps the nation and everyone in it safe from all manner of threats and as those threats evolve, so do we - that’s why Inclusion, Diversity and Equality (IDE) is the key to supporting our greatest asset, our people.
Our people protect our national security across the UK. In order to continue to deliver against our organizational priorities, we collectively seek to ensure that all colleagues feel respected, supported and valued to fully participate in the delivery of our mission – “working to keep people safe from Terrorism”.
IDE is at the heart of our approach to make the composition of Counter Terrorism Policing more representative of the communities we serve. As Counter Terrorism is rooted in Local Policing, to tackle today’s complex policing challenges, applications from across all backgrounds, cultures and experiences are therefore essential and encouraged. The CTP Network is committed to ensuring that candidates identifying as disabled are able to realize their fullest career aspirations and, as such, will endeavor to accommodate any reasonable adjustments that you may require during the recruitment process. CTP also welcomes applications from candidates seeking flexible working arrangements, such as part-time working, job-share and where the role permits, hybrid working arrangements. All flexible working arrangements should be discussed and agreed with the hiring manager.
How to apply
To begin your career at the Met, please click the "apply button “. The application process requires a comprehensive CV, a Personal Statement, and an online application form. In your Personal Statement, you should explain your interest in the position and illustrate how your skills and experiences make you a suitable candidate. Please note that you should not submit two copies of your CV, and ensure that your documents are saved in either PDF or Word format, clearly labelled as CV and Personal Statement.
Completed applications must be submitted by 23:55 on 24/08/2026.
