Discipline Head, Content Design

Job Description

Summary

• Role Title: Discipline Head, Content Design
• Salary: £72,000-£99,000 with a London-weighting of £80,000-£110,000
• Location: Bristol, London, Manchester or Swansea with hybrid-working policy
• SFIA Level 6
• We are open to flexible working or a part-time working pattern for this role

Note: This is a role within our user-centred practice and not a marketing role.

This role will likely close applications by 5th April.

About Made Tech

Made Tech helps the public sector use technology to make a positive impact on society – fast. As a purpose-driven organisation, we believe the outcomes we create are more important than the technology we deliver. That means putting people at the heart of how we design, build and deliver public services.

Our user-centred practice (content designers, interaction and service designers, user researchers, product managers and business analysts) is central to that mission. We work alongside colleagues in delivery, engineering, data, transformation and managed services to deliver transformative public services, powered by human-centred technology, that lead to better outcomes for everyone.

Made Tech has grown quickly, and has bold ambitions for the future. We know that growth and change can be unsettling (as well as exciting), so we are looking for people who enjoy this challenge, and want to help others thrive too.

Our content design team work with a large and varied array of local and central government clients, including the Government Digital Service, the Met Office, the Ministry of Justice, Home Office and NHS England. We help them build services that are simple, clear and fast for their users to get what they need. One recent example is our work with the Met Office on accessibility.

About the role

This role leads, supports and develops our growing team of 7 content designers. You’ll report directly to the Head of User-centred Practice and work alongside 3 other Discipline Heads (Interaction and Service Design; Product Management and Business Analysis; and User Research) to define and develop best practice and flourishing professional communities.

As a relatively new role, this is an exciting opportunity to define the overall strategic approach to content design at Made Tech, grow the practice with our clients and collaborate with senior leadership colleagues to integrate design with multidisciplinary agile delivery. You’ll set standards, define propositions and playbooks, and represent content design to our clients, our teams and through contribution to the wider industry. We have strong foundations in place with an already established community of talented content designers. You will help us grow that community, our business and our impact.

This role is split roughly 50:50 between supporting the content design team and client-facing activity such as new business development, leading projects and strategic consultancy. It has a target billable utilisation of 25%. Your client-facing responsibilities will be a mix of specialist content design consultancy and leading multidisciplinary user-centred design teams.

Key responsibilities

• develop and grow a profitable content design practice at Made Tech, in ways that effectively meet client needs and help us grow as a business
• make Made Tech a place where content designers can flourish and grow, through a thriving and supportive community of practice, and supportive, safe and trusted team environments which nurture talent and get the best out of our people
• define what ‘good’ looks like for our already talented team of content designers, and hold them accountable for producing high quality outputs and deliverables. Hire and line manage content designers, develop their skills, and help them progress in their careers. Establish processes and tools to support them such as career pathways, learning and development plans, methods, tools, and delivery standards
• develop our capabilities, propositions and playbooks to create a uniquely Made Tech way of embedding content design and strategy into the design and delivery of digital services
• coach our teams and clients on how to apply the best of user-centred, agile and lean methodologies to digital public services, leading high-performing multidisciplinary teams and directing work that creates value for clients and society
• work closely with our clients’ senior leadership to shape strategy and workstreams that will achieve their vision and organisational goals, demonstrating how user-centred approaches can add value to their organisation and increasing their design maturity
• play a pivotal role in identifying / qualifying new opportunities, responding to client needs and winning work. You must be able to shape compelling strategy, proposals, statements of work and roadmaps, and influence adoption of those proposals among senior management of public sector organisations.
• maintain a broad technical knowledge of content design best practice, including emerging practices and methods
• maintain and grow your professional network as a content design leader. Leverage your track record and expertise to contribute to thought leadership, marketing content and events.

Requirements

Key skills & experience

Must have:

• Experience leading a content design team
• Hands on experience of content design and content strategy
• Designing digital services in large, complex organisations
• Writing briefs and planning delivery of user-centred design projects (scope, vision, roles, duration, tasks, costs etc…) and successfully selling those proposals to senior management
• Working in multidisciplinary, agile digital teams
• Strong understanding and working knowledge of government or NHS design standards and style guides
• Strong understanding of agile and lean ways of working
• Strong understanding of user-centred design and research practice

Desirable:

• Designing public services in central government, local government, healthcare or the charity/voluntary sector
• Working in a professional services firm such as a consultancy or design agency
• Leading multidisciplinary digital teams
• Collaborating with technologists and developers
• Growing design maturity and adoption of user-centred ways of working in large organisations
• Working with sales teams to win new work
• Working with related content disciplines such as SEO, information architecture or comms

At this point, we hope you're feeling excited about Made Tech and the job opportunity. Even if you don't feel that you meet every single requirement, we still encourage you to apply. Get in touch with our talent team if you’d like an informal chat about the role and your suitability before applying.

Note: We are hiring for this role directly, so will not respond to any CVs sent via external recruitment agencies.

Our application process

• Screening call - This will be with one of our Talent Team. It usually takes 25-30 minutes via Google Meet. It is the first chance for us to find out more about your experience, relevant skills and for you to ask us more about the role.

• 1st stage interview - This will be with one of our Content Design team alongside a member of our UCP Leadership team.

• Final stage interview - This will be with our Head of User Centred Practice (Sophie Dennis) and our Chief Delivery and Transformation Officer (Tim Bardell).

Support in applying

If you need this job description in another format, or other support in applying, please email talent@madetech.com.

We believe we can use tech to make public services better. We also believe this can happen best when our own team represents the society that actually uses the services we work on. We’re collectively continuing to grow a culture that is happy, healthy, safe and inspiring for people of all backgrounds and experiences, so we encourage people from underrepresented groups to apply for roles with us.

When you apply, we’ll put you in touch with a member of our talent team who can help with any needs or adjustments we may need to make to help with your application. We’ve put together this blog as a resource to share more about reasonable adjustments and some examples of what this could include. We also welcome any feedback on how we can improve the experience for future candidates.

Benefits

Life at Made Tech

We’re committed to building a happy, inclusive and diverse workforce. You can get a sense of what it’s like working here from our blog, where we talk about mental health, communities of practice and neurodiversity as well as our client work and best practice.

Like many organisations, we use Slack to chat to each other. The Slack groups that have formed give an idea of the diversity within Made Tech. If you’d like to speak to someone from one of these groups about their experience as an employee, please let one of the Made Tech Talent Team know.

The groups are:

• antiracist-activists
• disability
• lgbtqiaplus-allies-and-activists
• neurodiversity
• parents-carers
• womxn-in-tech

Benefits

We are always listening to our growing teams and evolving the benefits available to our people. As we scale, as do our benefits and we are scaling quickly. We've recently introduced a flexible benefit platform which includes a Smart Tech scheme, Cycle to work scheme, and an individual benefits allowance which you can invest in a Health care cash plan or Pension plan. We’re also big on connection and have an optional social and wellbeing calendar of events for all employees to join should they choose to.

Here are some of our most popular benefits listed below:

30 days Holiday - we offer 30 days of paid annual leave

Flexible Working Hours - we are flexible with what hours you work

Flexible Parental Leave - we offer flexible parental leave options

Remote Working - we offer part time remote working for all our staff

Paid counselling - we offer paid counselling as well as financial and legal advice