Interaction Design Industrial Placement 2026
Our Industrial Placement scheme offers ambitious and capable undergraduates the opportunity to gain valuable experience working alongside diverse and highly skilled experts in their field. You will be working on projects that really matter and will make a difference. The Met Office purpose is to help people stay safe and thrive. To achieve this, we need to understand the people we serve and their needs.
The user‑centred design team at the Met Office includes user researchers, interaction designers, content designers, service designers and accessibility specialists, working across different areas of the business to help solve real world problems by putting the user at the heart of Met Office products and services. The Industrial Placement for interaction design will work closely with the interaction designers and service designers in the team to provide support ensuring that our products and services meet the needs of users. They will support with discovering the best way to let users interact with our products, identifying user issues and generating multiple solutions to a problem. They will be involved in activities to enable our user‑centred design team, including maintaining design systems and guidance documentation, providing support with user recruitment and testing, and advocating user‑centred design across the business.
Key Duties
* Provide support for user‑centred design teams including user recruitment, note taking, documenting design decisions, maintaining design systems and guidance documentation
* Be supported to work collaboratively with teams, understanding the importance of team dynamics, collaboration and feedback
* Understand the importance of using data and evidence to make design decisions and use this information to collaboratively come up with solutions to problems
* Recommend design decisions and be able to describe the reasoning behind them
* Follow direction to create prototypes to demonstrate and test potential solutions
* Work in an open‑minded and iterative way
* Follow the Government Digital Service Standards and user‑centred design best practice guidelines to ensure solutions are focused on user needs
* Communicate effectively with technical and non‑technical colleagues, supporting multidisciplinary discussions
* Be an advocate for the UCD team within the Met Office and be able to explain why interaction design and user‑centred design is important
* Be part of the UCD community of practice and champion user‑centred design
Assessment & Criteria
1. Lead Criteria: Awareness of prototyping. Explain what prototyping is, why and when to use it and be passionate about putting this into practice. Experience using design software (such as Figma).
2. Evidence‑based design: Create designs for digital products and understand the value of using evidence to inform design decisions.
3. Agile thinking: Understand the benefits of agile working and the different roles in a multidisciplinary team. Align with the value ‘we keep evolving’ and be willing to iterate your work.
4. User focus and advocacy: Explain how user‑centred practices can be used to build products that ‘keep evolving’ to changing user behaviour and needs. Champion a user‑focused approach with colleagues.
5. Better together: Communicate effectively with stakeholders and team members and present design decisions and ideas. Be an active member and advocate of the user‑centred design community.
6. Studying in digital design or similar: The panel may perform a preliminary sift of the lead criteria as indicated above.
How We Can Help
If you have any questions or would like to discuss this opportunity further, please contact us at careers@metoffice.gov.uk.
If you’re considering applying and need support to do so, please get in touch. You can request adjustments either within your application or by contacting us. Should you be offered an interview, please be aware there may be a selection exercise which could include a presentation, written test or a scenario‑based activity. You can select in your application to be considered under the Disability Confident Scheme. To be invited to interview/assessment under this scheme, your application must meet the essential criteria for the role.
We understand that great minds don’t always think alike and as an equal opportunities employer we welcome applications from those with all protected characteristics. We recruit on merit, fairness, and open competition in line with the Civil Service Code. We can only accept applications from those eligible to live and work in the UK – please refer to GOV.UK for information. We require Security clearance, for which you need to have resided in the UK for at least 3 of the last 5 years to be eligible, 2 of these years must be immediately preceding the point of your application. You will need to achieve full security clearance within your first 6 months with us. Security Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed.
Benefits & Package
* Salary of £27,170
* Annual Leave starting at 27.5 days
* Access to discounted shopping, inclusive of retail, leisure and lifestyle brands
* Met Office contributes £7,871 towards your membership of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme
* Temporary position until July 2027, with possible opportunity to apply for the Graduate Development scheme upon completion of your university studies (subject to programme availability and a successful application)
Why Join Us
The Met Office provides life‑changing, often life‑saving work. We are Great Place to Work UK certified and featured on the Best Workplaces in Tech 2023 and 2024 lists, as well as the 54 Best Workplaces for Women 2023 list.
Our values: We are a force for good, experts by nature, live at the heart of decision‑making, better together, and keep evolving to push boundaries for our customers.
All hiring decisions at the Met Office are made by people, not AI. We welcome applications that use AI tools for support in drafting or refining, as long as they accurately reflect your own skills and experience.
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