Service Design Lead

You will be joining a cross-functional team of product managers, engineers, UX designers and researchers that sits at the heart of Bauer Media’s operations. The team is based primarily in Manchester with stakeholders across the UK.

There is no existing service design function, no established tooling, and no mature practice to inherit. You will be getting in at the very beginning standing up the practice, selecting the right tools and methods, and defining the design standards that we build on. Service design will sit at the heart of bringing technology and customer experience together, defining what best-in-class looks like.

The Difference you will make:

Your job is to understand the experience of users end to end.  Not just the screens they interact with, but the decisions, handoffs, workarounds and moments of friction that shape their working day. You will design across the full service. Front stage and back stage, digital and operational turning that understanding into experiences that feel obvious to the people using them.

This is a fast-moving, high-expectation environment. You will balance the depth of good discovery with the speed of visible delivery. If you have worked in a setting where showing early, tangible progress matters as much as long-term thinking, this will feel familiar.

You will have direct accountability for service design. Decision-making is collaborative. This is not one person working in isolation but you are expected to own the direction, define the standards and hold the quality bar. 

This is a foundational hire. The role could grow into leading a broader service design team as the organisation evolves. That is a possibility, not a promise but what is clear is that you will be shaping the practice from the ground up.

We expect you to play a central role in defining what success means and making progress visible to the whole team.

Your role:

Your responsibilities will include but not be limited to:

• Map the full service experience across workflows. Every touchpoint, every handoff, every moment where confidence builds or breaks down. Use service blueprints, journey maps and whatever other tools fit to surface what people actually do.
• Translate insight into actionable design. Work shoulder to shoulder with product and engineering to prototype, test and iterate fast. 
• Facilitate workshops, design sprints and co-design sessions that bring product, engineering and other stakeholders into the design process. 
• Bring coherence across value streams. Work across planning, analytics and insights to make sure the experience holds together end to end across channels, touchpoints and organisational boundaries.
• Define the design standards for the platform. There is no existing playbook. You will establish the tools, methods and quality bar that the practice is built on, and introduce the right tooling to support the work.
• Build design capability across the team. Raise the bar for how product managers, engineers and operational teams see and understand the user experience.
• Champion accessibility and inclusive design. The services you shape will be used by people with different needs, contexts and levels of confidence. 

The Skills you will bring:

• End-to-End Thinking. You design services, not screens. You see front stage and back stage the user-facing experience and the operational reality behind it and you know where the real problems live.
• Research Into Action. You run sharp, evidence-based discovery and turn findings into design decisions quickly. You know how to use a mix of qualitative and quantitative inputs: user research, analytics, operational data and you frame ideas as hypotheses to be tested, not opinions to be defended. 
• Facilitation and Co-Design. You bring people together to solve problems. You design and run workshops, design sprints and collaborative sessions that generate shared understanding and momentum.
• Stakeholder Navigation. You can hold a position for your users while bringing product, engineering and other value streams along. 
• Delivery Pace. You have worked in environments where showing progress early matters. You prototype, pilot and see services through to implementation. You know how to get something in front of users fast and learn from it.
• Inclusive Design. You design for the full range of people who will use and operate the service. Accessibility and inclusion are built into your practice, not bolted on at the end.
• Building From Scratch. You have experience standing up a design practice, or working in an environment where there was no established playbook. You can select and introduce the right tools, methods and standards, not just follow ones that already exist.
• Team Impact. You measure your success by the quality of what the team ships together. You raise the bar for design practice across the organisation. 

This role is based in our Manchester office with hybrid working. There will be some travel to other UK locations to work with stakeholders across the business. 

We welcome people from all backgrounds. A non-traditional career path, experience in a different industry, country or discipline, a different way of thinking these are strengths here, not footnotes. No degree required. We care about how you think and what you have built. Show us evidence of solving real problems for real people.

About Bauer Media Group:
We are a media business focused on creating content that matters to millions of people across Europe. Our offering extends from print and online publishing to audio broadcasting and entertainment, alongside investments in other media related sectors. With more than 500 million copies sold each year, we are one of Europe’s largest Publishers. From women’s and celebrities’ magazines to TV listings to food and special interest, we own some of the most popular publishing brands in Germany, UK, Poland and France – both digital and print.

But not only that. Reaching over 61 million listeners weekly, we operate over 150 radio and podcast brands in nine countries, spanning the UK, Ireland, Poland, Slovakia, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Portugal. Family-owned in the 5th generation, Bauer Media focuses on the long-term, with a consumer-first mindset that guides us across our diverse portfolio. Our workforce of 12,000 shares a common purpose: to deliver content and services that enrich people‘s everyday lives.

What’s in it for you:

• You’ll have 28 days holiday, bank holidays & 2 volunteer days to use.
• Your development matters, so access to our internal training provider – Bauer Academy, is a huge win. 
• We have enhanced Maternity/Adoption, Paternity and Shared Parental Leave Pay.
• You’ll have the opportunity for flexible working. 
• And much more! Find the full details of our benefits here

We are an international employer and equal opportunities are important to us. That's why we welcome everyone in their uniqueness, regardless of e.g. religion, gender, skin color, disability in our house.

We are committed to ensuring our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible to all. If you have a disability or a long term health condition, and need us to make any reasonable adjustments or do anything differently during any stage of the recruitment process, please let us know