The Service and Interaction Design Lead plays a pivotal role within the User-Centred Design team in the Digital Directorate. This is a senior, expert practitioner position, responsible for providing professional leadership and ensuring that the most effective service and interaction design decisions are made to meet the needs of service users.
In this role, you will lead and develop the organisation’s design community, demonstrating a wide range of leadership and management skills, and fostering a supportive, collaborative environment to help shape the HRA’s journey in delivering high-quality digital services for the research community. Working closely with the Head of User-Centred Design and product teams, you will contribute to strategic planning through service design, ensuring that all work is grounded in a user-centred, evidence-based approach to design and delivery.
You will also play a key role in assessing the impact of emerging technologies, ensuring that design solutions comply with legal requirements, accessibility standards, and government guidelines. Your responsibilities will include applying core service design techniques such as blueprinting, prototyping, user journey mapping, and storyboarding to create intuitive and effective services.
In addition, you will champion and clearly communicate the importance of inclusive, equitable, accessible and sustainable public services across the organisation.
The service and interaction design lead will:
Demonstrate excellent communication skills, influencing across multiple groups of people including suppliers, external partners, and senior internal stakeholders, you will form a deep understanding of user and organisational needs.
Lead internal and external activities within the design specialism to develop and convey complex concepts.
Engage with stakeholders to facilitate and foster collaborative approaches to prioritising service and interaction design requirements of users and partners.
Lead a proactive approach to our alignment with the Government Service Standard and work with user centred design colleagues to constantly improve the design of our services.
Work collaboratively with the Head of User Centred Design and the product team to guide both design and organisational strategy and priorities.
Using expert knowledge and previous experience to advise on design standards, methods, tools and applications, so that optimum approaches and solutions are delivered to meet user needs, organisational objectives and policy intent.
Analyse and interpret functional and non-functional design requirements to ensure the overall needs of the business are met from a digital perspective
At the HRA, we are committed to fostering a supportive and inclusive working environment where we actively invest in the development and empowerment of our staff, enabling them to perform at their best. We strive to promote a healthy workplace culture where wellbeing, collaboration, and professional growth are valued and encouraged.
Working at the HRA, we support flexible working, recognising that home based or hybrid arrangements provides us with the most productive environment to work well. Where possible, we’ll offer a working pattern that suits you.
The HRA offers home based contracts for all locations. Newcastle, Manchester and Nottingham based staff can be office based and hybrid working arrangements are also possible. We encourage you to speak with us to explore how this could be accommodated.
We are committed to creating an inclusive workplace that promotes and values diversity. We know from experience that different ideas, perspectives and backgrounds create a stronger, more creative workplace that helps us to deliver the best services. We welcome applications which represent the rich diversity of our community: age, disability, gender identity and expression, ethnicity, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation and other diverse characteristics, and we have policies in place to ensure that all applicants are treated fairly and consistently at every stage of the recruitment process.
Please refer to the attached job description and person specification documents for full details about this role.
When completing your application, ensure you clearly demonstrate how your experience and skills align with the criteria outlined for this position.
We recognise that generative AI tools can be helpful in supporting applicants during the recruitment process, particularly for tasks such as proofreading, structuring, or refining written responses. However, we encourage candidates to use AI responsibly and sparingly. Applications should reflect your authentic voice, personal experiences, and genuine qualifications. Over reliance on AI-generated content can result in generic or inaccurate submissions that fail to meet the criteria or convey your individuality. Misrepresentation of skills, knowledge, or experience, including through AI-generated content, may lead to the rejection of your application, withdrawal of your offer, or your dismissal if you do start with us. If you choose to use AI, please ensure it enhances rather than replaces your own input, and be transparent about its use where appropriate. False and insincere examples go against our values of integrity and transparency.
Important information
We are unable to offer employment under any sponsorship arrangement as we do not hold a sponsorship licence. Applications requiring sponsorship will not be considered.
Applications that do not clearly demonstrate how the essential criteria outlined in the person specification are met will not be shortlisted.
Only the information provided in the application form will be considered. CVs will not be reviewed.
We do not accept applications via recruitment agencies or other third parties.
The HRA reserves the right to close this vacancy early should it receive a sufficient number of applications.
Our fixed term roles are also open to applicants who wish to apply on a secondment basis. Applicants who fit this category are advised to speak with their line manager before applying and visit their organisations Secondments Policy.
Organisational structure and directorate overview
The HRA is made up of five directorates: Approvals, Chief Executive, Digital, Policy and Partnerships and Resources.
This role sits within HRA Digital. The digital directorate is responsible for developing, delivering and supporting complex solutions within the HRA’s portfolio of UK-wide information systems for health and care research. This includes a major programme to build new systems, and to achieve the successful migration and eventual closure of current systems. The directorate owns, develops, and delivers the HRA’s digital strategy in line with government digital and functional standards.
The HRA Digital team is a collaborative, supportive team consisting of HRA employees, secondees, contractors and vendors.
