Health Innovation Manchester is seeking a driven, adaptable and collaborative Senior Service Designer & User Centred Design Practitioner to help deliver meaningful healthcare innovation. This is an exciting opportunity to shape innovation programmes, ensuring the needs, experiences and perspectives of users are at the centre of designing and delivering solutions that improve health and care outcomes.
About the Role
You'll play a key role in shaping the future of health and care innovation across Greater Manchester. Working across a diverse portfolio of programmes, you'll lead service design, user research, co-design and service improvement activities to ensure services, pathways and innovations are designed around the needs of the people who use them.
This is a varied and influential role combining hands-on delivery with leadership and function development. You may be facilitating co-design workshops with patients, clinicians or community partners, analysing service pathways, developing service blueprints, supporting innovation implementation, or presenting recommendations to senior stakeholders. Using evidence, insight and creativity, you'll tackle complex challenges and help translate ambition into practical, deliverable solutions.
This role is based at Health Innovation Manchester, an innovation network organisation hosted by Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. Learn more about our work: https://healthinnovationmanchester.com/
You'll thrive here if you're passionate about understanding people's needs and turning insight into action. You're someone who enjoys working with complexity, bringing together different perspectives and helping teams make sense of challenges in a way that leads to meaningful improvement.
You'll be equally comfortable facilitating a co-design workshop, leading a service redesign project, mentoring colleagues or presenting recommendations to senior stakeholders. You'll have the confidence to work independently, the judgement to navigate ambiguity and the interpersonal skills to bring people together around a shared vision for change.
As a senior member of the User Centred Design team, you'll support and develop colleagues, champion high-quality practice and help strengthen our organisational capability in user research, service design, co-production and engagement. You'll act as a trusted partner to programme teams, providing expert advice and helping ensure that decisions are informed by evidence, insight and lived experience.
Above all, you'll be motivated by creating better outcomes for patients, communities and the health and care workforce, ensuring that accessibility, inclusion and user-centred thinking are embedded in everything we do.
Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) is the largest provider of specialist services, and our Oxford Road Campus in Manchester, the largest health academic campus in Europe - what better place to shape and develop your leadership career.
We deliver care to over 1 million patients & users each year through our 10 hospitals and extensive community services. Our 30,000 plus strong workforce is central to our success and innovation.
You will play a pivotal part in supporting our operational excellence and strategic ambitions. You’ll work collaboratively with clinical and non-clinical teams, driving improvements that enhance patient experience, staff wellbeing, and service efficiency across the Trust.
MFT offers a dynamic, inclusive environment where your leadership, ideas, and expertise are valued. You’ll have access to professional development, digital tools and opportunities to contribute to transformational projects that shape the future of healthcare delivery.
We are committed to supporting your growth and wellbeing, recognising the vital role you play in our organisation’s success.
Join us and help shape the future of our Trust—make a real difference to our teams, our services, and our communities, and fundamentally, our patients.
To find out more about the key responsibilities and the specific skills and experience you’ll need for this role, take a look at the Job Description & Person Specification attachments under the ‘Supporting Documents’ heading.
Explore ‘Inside MFT – Your Candidate Place’
To help you feel confident, prepared and fully informed before you apply, we invite you to explore Inside MFT – Your Candidate Place . This welcoming one‑stop hub gives you a real sense of who we are — what we stand for, how we reward and support you, and the many ways we care for you as you care for others. You’ll also find practical hints and tips for submitting a great application, along with the essential information you need to know before you apply.
To access ‘ Inside MFT – Your Candidate Place, simply click on the relevant PDF document under the ‘Supporting Documents’ section and once opened, you can where either scan QR code or click on the link provided.
Closing vacancy listings early
We welcome applications from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences.
To help us manage applications fairly and give each one the time it deserves, our adverts may close early if we receive a high level of interest. Early applications are therefore encouraged.
Diversity Matters
MFT is committed to promoting equality of opportunity, celebrating and valuing diversity and eliminating any form of unlawful discrimination across our workforce, ensuring our people are truly representative of the communities we serve. All individuals regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation are encouraged to apply for this post. As an inclusive employer, we are here to support you. If you have any special requirements to help you with your application, please contact the manager named below.
Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in your application
Here at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, we’re proud to be ALL HERE FOR YOU—for our patients, our communities, and each other.
As part of our commitment to fairness, transparency, and personal integrity, we ask all applicants to ensure that their job applications reflect their own experiences, skills, and motivations. While AI tools can support spelling, grammar, or formatting, we expect that the content of your application—especially personal statements and responses to role-specific questions—is written by you. This helps us get to know the real you and ensures that our recruitment process remains equitable and meaningful for everyone.
Thank you for helping us uphold the values that make our Trust a place where people belong, grow, and thrive. We look forward to receiving your application.
Health Innovation Manchester is the Health Innovation Network for Greater Manchester, hosted by Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. Health Innovation Networks are the innovation arm of the NHS, comprising of 15 organisations across England who work collaboratively, both nationally and locally, to deliver spread and adoption of new innovation for the benefit of patients and clinicians.
Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) is the largest provider of specialist services, and our Oxford Road Campus in Manchester, the largest health academic campus in Europe - what better place to shape and develop your career.
MFT offers a dynamic, inclusive environment where your leadership, ideas, and expertise are valued. You’ll have access to professional development, digital tools and opportunities to contribute to transformational projects that shape the future of healthcare delivery.
We are committed to supporting your growth and wellbeing, recognising the vital role you play in our organisation’s success.
Join us and help shape the future of our Trust—make a real difference to our teams, our services, and our communities, and fundamentally, our patients.
