About the Role

Reporting to: Director of Design and Experience, Head of Design Profession. As part of your role, you may be required to deputise for the Head of the Design Profession, Digital Services. 

About us

The Open University (OU) is the largest university in the United Kingdom and reaches across all four nations. It is a global leader in higher education and research, using a model of open supported learning to deliver world-renowned teaching and learning content to over 200,000 students every year. 

The OU is committed to equality, diversity, and inclusion, fostering an environment where different perspectives, ideas, knowledge, and cultures are valued and celebrated. We actively encourage applications from all underrepresented groups and strive to create a supportive workplace for all through our policies, services, and staff networks.

About the role

If you are a Senior Design leader looking for a new opportunity, we would like you to join our existing Design community that is quickly developing in its maturity. We would love you to help us shape and create successful products and services using an agile and user-centred approach, caring deeply about our users’ needs and the future of education. 

The OU is developing its digital capabilities as part of its ongoing digital transformation journey. We are moving towards organising ourselves differently, and we are starting to do this by forming ‘Product groups’ that have clear user outcomes and building on our Professions. This role will be both a Practice Lead as the Head of Service Design in the Design Profession, and a Group Design Lead in one of our new Product Groups. You will be responsible for leading a team of Service Designers as part of the wider Design Profession and responsible for working as a Group Design Lead as part of a Product Group. You will work closely with a Group Product Lead and a Group Engineering Lead, to ensure we deliver products and services that align with user needs, business goals, and are buildable and scalable. 

Come and be part of an organisation that transforms lives and communities, opening a world of possibilities for everyone.
 

Key Responsibilities

As a Senior Design leader, you will:

• Demonstrate a passion, enthusiasm, and a deep understanding of the Service Design practice, can act as an expert and advocate for Service Design approaches and therefore be a key influencer on how it can be applied across the OU.
• Be a thought leader, informal coach, career advisor and champion for professionals in the Service Design community. Establishing, leading and continuously developing a team and community in support of professional Service Design.
• Contribute to the development an overall Design strategy for the OU and helping to create an actionable roadmap to develop the maturity of the existing Design profession.
• Champion, advocate, and influence at a strategic level for Design across the OU, providing confidence to senior stakeholders, demonstrating how Design is core to being able to deliver ‘Being Service Led’ as an organisational approach.
• Establish and embed leadership and agile ways of working as a Group Design Lead within a multidisciplinary delivery team. Demonstrating how a Senior Design role can work as part of the wider Design community and within a multidisciplinary team.  
• Establish and develop our Design communities of practice and embed this as an effective way of working at the OU, actively encouraging community leadership to be shared and community led.
• Further develop and clarify our Design practices at the OU, developing a discipline that has clear supported career pathways, succession planning, internal development opportunities, is diverse, inclusive, equitable and capable. Creating shared standards, processes, best practice, approaches, and methods for use by the Design community. As part of this, you’ll ensure standards are developed, maintained, and appropriately shared.
• Be a visible internal and external thought leader, sharing work openly and establishing close links with relevant professional bodies and networks. 
   

Skills and Experience

• Education: A degree in Design or in a Design related field or the equivalent in extensive and relevant professional experience 
• Professional experience: Significant experience in the Design industry, including time spent as a Lead Designer or manager in Service Design. An expert understanding of Service Design methods, standards, and principles. Have extensive knowledge and experience in scoping and designing simple end to end services. 
• Leadership skills: Strong and demonstrable leadership skills, being able to balance being part of leading a profession, being a leader in agile multidisciplinary teams, being a leader in the wider Design community, as well as the ability to collaborate with senior stakeholders and other teams across the OU.  
• Effective decision-making skills: Can think critically, analyse complex data and user research to understand user needs and be able to make pragmatic design decisions supported by evidence and clear reasoning. 
• Strategic thinking: Excellent strategic thinking, we want you to have a strong strategic mindset with the ability to develop and execute Design strategies that align with business objectives and can balance both strategic and operational needs.  
• User focus: Champion the user needs across the development of products and services, applying strategic thinking to provide the best service for the end user.
• Agile experience: Experience of being a design leader in agile teams and the ability to manage budgets where necessary and timelines.
• Learning together: A love for learning new stuff, have an interest in and up-to-date industry knowledge with Design trends, use of Generative AI, emerging technologies, new Design methods, attending and participating in conferences and participating in Design forums.  
   

Essential Requirements

As part of the application process, you will be expected to submit your CV and a Supporting Statement (maximum of 1000 words) that demonstrates how you meet the essential criteria listed above. Flexible working patterns will be considered.

It is anticipated that a hybrid working pattern can be adopted for this role, where the successful candidate can work from home and the office. However, as this role is contractually aligned to our Milton Keynes office it is expected that some attendance in the office will be required when necessary and in response to business needs. We anticipate this being on a weekly/fortnightly basis. 

*Early Close: We may choose to close the application date early if we reach a high number of applications. However, if you would still like to apply before the deadline originally advertised do not hesitate to contact us and we can discuss this with the Chair of the panel.

Please see more detailed information to support your application in the full Job Description found here.