[Hiring] Head of Service Design @Williams Lea

Role Description

The Head of Service Design is a senior, hands-on design leader who establishes and leads Williams Lea’s design function, spanning UI/UX, service design, and product research under a single reporting line. This role focuses on integrated human-plus-AI service delivery, designing coherent experiences as capabilities fold the new Williams Lea core technology platforms over the next 12–18 months.

Key Responsibilities

• Design system and cross-cutting standards:
  • Establish, own, and evolve the Williams Lea design system including tokens, components, interaction patterns.
  • Set and uphold cross-cutting standards on interaction conventions, accessibility, and research methodology.
• Domain-specific design partnership:
  • Partner with product managers on domain-specific design decisions.
  • Provide design leadership across domain teams through quality of contribution and partnership.
  • Coach and assure quality for designers working within each domain.
• Service design — integrated human and AI experience:
  • Lead the design of the integrated human-plus-AI service experience.
  • Map end-to-end client journeys identifying critical AI-to-human and human-to-AI hand-offs.
  • Design interfaces for all user groups and personas.
• Product research as a practice:
  • Establish and scale product research across the four product domains.
  • Build research methodology that PMs cite as a material input to their decisions.
• Platform Council participation:
  • Serve as a standing member of the Platform Council, representing service and product design.
  • Ensure collaborative design of the platform with product, engineering, and end-users.
• Build and lead the team:
  • Hire, develop, and retain a small, high-quality design function of approximately 4–6 people.
  • Set the hiring and quality bar through personal contribution to design work.
  • Contribute directly to design work alongside leading the function.

Qualifications

• 10–12 years in product and service design, with at least 3–4 years of team-building and leadership experience.
• Proven experience leading a design team of 4–6 designers while continuing to contribute directly to design work.
• Strong in at least two of UI/UX, service design, and product research.
• Credible experience in service design spanning digital products and human service delivery.
• Experience designing for enterprise B2B contexts, ideally in regulated industries.
• Experience establishing or owning a design system that serves multiple products or business units.
• Strong grounding in user-centred design, service design methods, and design thinking.
• Strong knowledge of accessibility (WCAG) and inclusive design practices.
• Excellent stakeholder communication skills.
• Collaborative working style, partnering effectively with product managers, engineering, and operations leadership.
• Experience designing AI- or automation-enabled products.
• Understanding of front-end development principles (HTML, CSS).

Benefits

• 25 days holiday, plus bank holidays (pro-rata for part time or fixed term roles).
• Salary sacrifice schemes, retail vouchers including TechScheme.
• Life Assurance.
• Private Medical Insurance.
• Dental Insurance.
• Health Assessments.
• Cycle-to-work scheme.
• Discounted gym memberships.
• Referral Scheme.