Lead Interaction Designer

Salary: £68,000 - 108,000 per year

Requirements:

• We are looking for experience of growing talent and developing design culture by creating a collaborative and inclusive environment, including coaching and mentoring designers and coordinating communities of practice.
• We need knowledge of what good public services look like and how to design in an inclusive, accessible way.
• We need the ability to set design standards and coach others.
• We need a strong grounding in user-centred design, with experience across multiple or highly complex services.
• We need the ability to provide direction on appropriate tools and methods, support agile multi-disciplinary teams, and advocate for user-centred design in a way that is widely understood.
• We need the ability to create high-quality, compelling design concepts, with experience in rapid prototyping.
• We need experience advocating for end-to-end user-centred design at a strategic level, working across teams, departments and organisations.
• We need the ability to interpret the needs of senior leaders and stakeholders, using design thinking to solve complex organisational challenges and influence strategy.
• Experience designing at scale and in technical environments would be desirable.
• We will assess experience, behaviours and technical skills through the application and interview process.

Responsibilities:

• We will lead the profession across multiple complex services within jurisdictional areas, setting direction and supporting designers to champion user-centred design across criminal, civil and family courts, tribunals and cross-cutting services.
• We will define and set standards to assure best practice in user-centred design and develop our design maturity by influencing, leading and mentoring others alongside other design leads.
• We will work with the profession lead to support a culture of learning and experimentation by creating an inclusive, productive environment for designers.
• We will advocate for citizen, professional and judicial users at a strategic level using evidence-led approaches and championing their needs on- and off-line to influence decision-making.
• We will work with other design leads to set an ambitious vision for user-centred design across HMCTS.
• We will define, develop and embed design standards that ensure our design work is consistently inclusive, accessible and easy to use.
• We will work closely with service owners, profession leads and the Head of User-Centred Design to set and communicate strategy, ensuring teams are supported to deliver.
• We will collaborate with other profession leads such as user research, product and software development to champion digital transformation and continuously improve capability.
• We will support the recruitment of a talented and diverse team of designers that meet the growing needs of HMCTS.
• We will support the professional development of designers through coaching, line management and career progression.
• We will champion Communities of Practice that inspire designers to learn, share best practice and collaborate on strategic problems.
• We will collaborate across government as leaders in the cross-government design community, sharing work, learnings and developing best practice.

Technologies:

• Support
• Security
• Web
• UX UI Design

More:

We are HM Courts and Tribunals Service, an agency of the Ministry of Justice supporting the judiciary across England and Wales to deliver justice by running courts and tribunals and processing outcomes. This is a permanent Grade 6 Lead Interaction Designer role within our Digital and Technology Services directorate and our User-Centred Design profession. We are recruiting for three nationally based roles, with a London or national location and an expectation to be office based three days per week in any HMCTS office, subject to business availability. We offer flexible working, an inclusive culture, access to learning and development, a working environment that supports work-life balance, and a Civil Service pension with employer contribution. Our recruitment process uses Government Digital and Data and Success Profiles frameworks, with interview via Teams and a short presentation as part of selection.

last updated 34 week of 2026