Design Lead

The Home Office’s mission is to keep the country secure and our citizens safe. Our objectives are to work with other departments across the government to prevent terrorism, cut crime, control immigration, protect the vulnerable and promote growth. Each and every member of HO staff plays a part in delivering these objectives.

The challenges the department faces are significant and can change rapidly in the global environment in which we operate making it one of the most exciting and stimulating departments to work in.

The Migration & Borders (M&B) group is responsible for the immigration system, managing our borders, issuing British passports, running the civil registration system in England and Wales, managing asylum, protection, resettlement and integration services, setting our strategy, business and service design, system performance, a large transformation portfolio to create the Future Border and Immigration system and deliver the Illegal Migration Act.

This is a fantastic opportunity to join the System Design Team, sitting at the heart of MBG. We are accountable for owning and developing the M&B end-to-end strategic design and business architecture and are at the forefront of important and meaningful change that touches the lives of millions of people. We play a leading role in facilitating a genuinely cross-system approach to services, capabilities, interventions, and the way that we work across the system by:

• Championing the move away from overly siloed structures and approaches towards a more joined-up, flexible system approach, exploiting synergies and avoiding duplication;

• Delivering a more integrated approach to intervening against immigration and national security threats across people and goods; and

• Acting proactively to enable the system to respond to crises, rather than reacting, addressing gaps in identifying potential problems and opportunities across the system.

MBG prides itself on being an open and supportive workplace. Much of the work that we do can be challenging, but as a team we collectively embrace the complexity and have a fantastic community of architects and designers who are united by a desire to make a positive impact. We actively embrace diversity and promote equality of opportunity to enable us to reflect the communities that we serve. We provide people with the opportunity to work at pace and deliver in stretching roles. You will learn a lot in your day-to-day work and benefit from a range of excellent wider learning and development opportunities.

We are currently recruiting for two Design Leads to work closely with the business to lead and shape the design for large scale and complex business transformation initiatives as well as smaller scale change to help us improve the services we offer.

You will need to bring teams of skilled people together to drive design direction, to be able to personally translate and impact assess business strategies and to design transitional and target state operating models to help shape the direction of strategic transformation across Migration and Borders.

You will contribute to the link between current and future business models, delivering to the business architecture. You will constructively challenge and act as a critical friend to achieve engagement with key stakeholders to support design, build and deliver to meet user needs.

Design Leads are integral to our work. Working closely with operations strategy, policy, and technology functions, you will lead on interpreting, translating, impact assessing strategic initiatives from a cross cutting business architecture and design perspective. Over time you will become a trusted member of the operational and service delivery teams seen as a trusted advisor and a key individual in driving improvements. This is essential to ensuring strategic requirements are appropriately interpreted and reflected in business solutions that deliver optimal strategic business outcomes. You will work with Business Architects, Business Analysts, Service Design, Data Architecture and Technology Design throughout the change lifecycle to inform, shape and define strategic business design.

If successful, you will initially be assigned to one of our major transformation programmes or services such as Future Border and Immigration System, Illegal Migration Act implementation, Passport Transformation, Civil Registration Transformation or Asylum Transformation. However, over time you may be deployed across a range of transformation or service or capability development activities in support of the Department’s priorities.

You will be expected to demonstrate:

• A strategic mindset – facilitating collaboration, interpreting strategic context, making links across departmental silos, and the change lifecycle;
• A structured approach to problem solving – thinking logically about challenges and opportunities, being able to categorise and abstract concepts to simplify approaches;
• A belief in intentional design – addressing challenges and opportunities systematically, holistically and collaboratively, enabling conscious choice and high-quality decision making.

This role is available on a full time basis with compressed hours. Applications for part-time working would be considered however due to the nature of the role the minimum hours would be 30 hours over 4 days. Job-sharing applications would also be considered.

Where business needs allow, some roles may be suitable for a combination of office and home-based working. This is a non-contractual arrangement where all employees will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of their working time in an office, subject to local estates capacity, by Spring 2024. Applicants can request further information regarding how this may work in their team from the Vacancy Holder (see advert for contact details).

Recruitment and Retention Allowance (RRA)
Candidates with exceptional skills and experience may receive a recruitment and retention allowance (RRA). This allowance is subject to initial review within six months of taking up the post and thereafter an annual review in-line with departmental priorities and could be reduced or withdrawn at any time.