Lead Service Designer – Utility Warehouse
We’re looking to hire our first Lead Service Designer to drive strategic systems thinking, exceptional collaboration, and advanced design craft at Utility Warehouse. You will be responsible for defining the bar for seamless, end‑to‑end customer experiences, ensuring that work across our digital, human, and operational touchpoints aligns with a clear Service Vision and delivers measurable user and business outcomes.
While other Leads focus on specific product interfaces, your domain is the full customer lifecycle. You will lead complex, multi‑service initiatives that span entire business units (digital platforms, contact centres, back‑office operations, and digital/non‑digital communications). You will be a respected guide to Heads of Product, Engineering Leads, and senior cross‑functional stakeholders, guiding them to make decisions that balance customer needs, operational feasibility, and commercial priorities across all five of our core services.
Responsibilities
* Lead Service Definition: Own the creation of Service Blueprints and Customer Journey Maps, ensuring accuracy across both front‑stage digital interactions and back‑stage operational processes.
* Strategic customer experience: Help shape the Service Strategy for the entire customer lifecycle, prioritising the roadmap to impact the most critical journey stages and support goals of reducing friction and maximising digital adoption.
* Architect Cross‑Channel Flows: Design unified experiences across digital and non‑digital channels, defining the strategy for effective self‑serve and clear, supportive human escalation pathways.
* Ensure Operational Feasibility: Embed with operational teams to navigate process constraints and technical debt, ensuring service designs are scalable and grounded in reality.
* Drive Strategic Alignment: Partner with Product Owners, Engineers, and Operations Managers to align roadmaps and decision‑making with the holistic service vision.
* Influence Leadership: Translate research and design strategies into actionable insights, guiding senior stakeholders including Operations and Commercial leads.
* Elevate Practice Standards: Lead maturity of the Service Design practice by establishing standards for mapping and metrics, while coaching peers in Systems Thinking.
* Cultivate Design Maturity: Mentor and coach peers (including UX Designers and Product Owners) to adopt a Systems Thinking approach, broadening their scope to consider the wider operational and business context.
Qualifications
* Significant years of experience in UX design with a speciality in end‑to‑end Service planning and delivery across multiple channels.
* Deep expertise in service blueprinting at scale, end‑to‑end journey mapping and applied system thinking, and recognition as a respected leader whose work influences priorities beyond digital screens.
* Ability to shape business direction through deep operational and UX insight.
* Strong planning and delivery skills, highly visible across UX, Product, Engineering, and Customer Operations.
* Established best practices for Service Design delivery, documentation, and measurement in complex, multi‑service organisations.
* Trusted mentor supporting designers and product managers across multiple teams, specifically mentoring Service Designers and other designers on advanced service blueprinting, systems mapping, and aligning design decisions with operational realities.
* Experience within highly regulated consumer services sector (Energy, Telco, Financial Services).
* Ability to partner with leadership to define success metrics for reducing customer friction and increasing self‑serve adoption.
* Proven experience mentoring and coaching Designers and Product Managers in design thinking.
Benefits
* Competitive salary. Salary benchmarked against industry and disclosed during initial conversation.
* Performance bonus: annual discretionary bonus ranging from 15-40%.
* Flexible working, optional four‑day working week (90% pay for 90% impact).
* Work-from-anywhere: can work abroad for up to three weeks, twice per tax year.
* Holiday: 25 days plus bank holidays, with option to trade up to five days each year.
* UW discounts: Save on our services and gain free Cashback Card.
* Future planning: matched‑contribution pension scheme and life assurance (up to 4x salary).
* Family first: policies designed to help you and your family thrive.
* Flexible benefits: allowance for private health insurance, dental insurance, or gym membership.
* Sabbatical: eight‑week paid sabbatical after four years of service.
* Growth: dedicated learning and development budget and bi‑annual promotion cycles.
* Inclusion: belonging groups that help shape our culture.
* Events: company‑wide celebrations including the Great Big Get‑Together and Good‑Hearted Go‑Getter Awards.
Equal Opportunity
We provide equal opportunities, a diverse and inclusive work environment, and fairness for everyone. You are welcome to apply no matter your age, disability, gender, marriage or civil partnership status, pregnancy and maternity status, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation. Please don’t be afraid to ask about what we can do to support your needs. All requests will be carefully and fairly considered.
Background check: if successful, you will be subject to a background check. Incomplete or unsatisfactory checks or failure to disclose required convictions may lead to withdrawal of an offer.
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