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Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust
About
Contact
[email protected]Senior Service Designer and User Centred Design Practitioner
Accepting applications until: 09-Aug-2026 23:59
Vacancy status: Open
Accepting applications until: 09-Aug-2026 23:59
Key details
Location
- Gwefan
- Health Innovation Manchester, CityLabs 1.0
- Cyfeiriad
- Nelson Street
- Tref
- Manchester
- Cod post
- M13 9NQ
- Major / Minor Region
- Manchester
Contract type & working pattern
- Contract
- Permanent
- Oriau
- Full time
- Flexible working
- Compressed hours
Salary
- Cyflog
- £57,528 - £64,750 Per annum / pro rata
- Cyfnod cyflog
- Yearly
- Gradd
- (NHS AfC: Band 8a)
Specialty
- Prif leoliad
- Senior Service Designer & User Centred Design Practitioner
Trosolwg o'r swydd
Health Innovation Manchester is seeking a driven, adaptable and collaborative Senior Service Designer & User Centred Design Practitioner to help deliver meaningful healthcare innovation. This is an exciting opportunity to shape innovation programmes, ensuring the needs, experiences and perspectives of users are at the centre of designing and delivering solutions that improve health and care outcomes.
About the Role
You'll play a key role in shaping the future of health and care innovation across Greater Manchester. Working across a diverse portfolio of programmes, you'll lead service design, user research, co-design and service improvement activities to ensure services, pathways and innovations are designed around the needs of the people who use them.
This is a varied and influential role combining hands-on delivery with leadership and function development. You may be facilitating co-design workshops with patients, clinicians or community partners, analysing service pathways, developing service blueprints, supporting innovation implementation, or presenting recommendations to senior stakeholders. Using evidence, insight and creativity, you'll tackle complex challenges and help translate ambition into practical, deliverable solutions.
This role is based at Health Innovation Manchester, an innovation network organisation hosted by Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. Learn more about our work: https://healthinnovationmanchester.com/
Advert
You'll thrive here if you're passionate about understanding people's needs and turning insight into action. You're someone who enjoys working with complexity, bringing together different perspectives and helping teams make sense of challenges in a way that leads to meaningful improvement.
You'll be equally comfortable facilitating a co-design workshop, leading a service redesign project, mentoring colleagues or presenting recommendations to senior stakeholders. You'll have the confidence to work independently, the judgement to navigate ambiguity and the interpersonal skills to bring people together around a shared vision for change.
As a senior member of the User Centred Design team, you'll support and develop colleagues, champion high-quality practice and help strengthen our organisational capability in user research, service design, co-production and engagement. You'll act as a trusted partner to programme teams, providing expert advice and helping ensure that decisions are informed by evidence, insight and lived experience.
Above all, you'll be motivated by creating better outcomes for patients, communities and the health and care workforce, ensuring that accessibility, inclusion and user-centred thinking are embedded in everything we do.
Gweithio i'n sefydliad
Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) is the largest provider of specialist services, and our Oxford Road Campus in Manchester, the largest health academic campus in Europe - what better place to shape and develop your leadership career.
We deliver care to over 1 million patients & users each year through our 10 hospitals and extensive community services. Our 30,000 plus strong workforce is central to our success and innovation.
You will play a pivotal part in supporting our operational excellence and strategic ambitions. You’ll work collaboratively with clinical and non-clinical teams, driving improvements that enhance patient experience, staff wellbeing, and service efficiency across the Trust.
MFT offers a dynamic, inclusive environment where your leadership, ideas, and expertise are valued. You’ll have access to professional development, digital tools and opportunities to contribute to transformational projects that shape the future of healthcare delivery.
We are committed to supporting your growth and wellbeing, recognising the vital role you play in our organisation’s success.
Join us and help shape the future of our Trust—make a real difference to our teams, our services, and our communities, and fundamentally, our patients.
Swydd-ddisgrifiad a phrif gyfrifoldebau manwl
To find out more about the key responsibilities and the specific skills and experience you’ll need for this role, take a look at the Job Description & Person Specification attachments under the ‘Supporting Documents’ heading.
Explore ‘Inside MFT – Your Candidate Place’
To help you feel confident, prepared and fully informed before you apply, we invite you to explore Inside MFT – Your Candidate Place. This welcoming one‑stop hub gives you a real sense of who we are — what we stand for, how we reward and support you, and the many ways we care for you as you care for others. You’ll also find practical hints and tips for submitting a great application, along with the essential information you need to know before you apply.
To access ‘Inside MFT – Your Candidate Place, simply click on the relevant PDF document under the ‘Supporting Documents’ section and once opened, you can where either scan QR code or click on the link provided.
Closing vacancy listings early
We welcome applications from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences.
To help us manage applications fairly and give each one the time it deserves, our adverts may close early if we receive a high level of interest. Early applications are therefore encouraged.
Diversity Matters
MFT is committed to promoting equality of opportunity, celebrating and valuing diversity and eliminating any form of unlawful discrimination across our workforce, ensuring our people are truly representative of the communities we serve. All individuals regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation are encouraged to apply for this post. As an inclusive employer, we are here to support you. If you have any special requirements to help you with your application, please contact the manager named below.
Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in your application
Here at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, we’re proud to be ALL HERE FOR YOU—for our patients, our communities, and each other.
As part of our commitment to fairness, transparency, and personal integrity, we ask all applicants to ensure that their job applications reflect their own experiences, skills, and motivations. While AI tools can support spelling, grammar, or formatting, we expect that the content of your application—especially personal statements and responses to role-specific questions—is written by you. This helps us get to know the real you and ensures that our recruitment process remains equitable and meaningful for everyone.
Thank you for helping us uphold the values that make our Trust a place where people belong, grow, and thrive. We look forward to receiving your application.
Health Innovation Manchester is the Health Innovation Network for Greater Manchester, hosted by Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. Health Innovation Networks are the innovation arm of the NHS, comprising of 15 organisations across England who work collaboratively, both nationally and locally, to deliver spread and adoption of new innovation for the benefit of patients and clinicians.
Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) is the largest provider of specialist services, and our Oxford Road Campus in Manchester, the largest health academic campus in Europe - what better place to shape and develop your career.
MFT offers a dynamic, inclusive environment where your leadership, ideas, and expertise are valued. You’ll have access to professional development, digital tools and opportunities to contribute to transformational projects that shape the future of healthcare delivery.
We are committed to supporting your growth and wellbeing, recognising the vital role you play in our organisation’s success.
Join us and help shape the future of our Trust—make a real difference to our teams, our services, and our communities, and fundamentally, our patients.
Applicant requirements
Person specification
Knowledge and Skills
Meini prawf hanfodol
- Strong understanding of UCD disciplines and capabilities, including user research, service design, business analysis, participatory design, co-production
- Skilled in selecting and applying appropriate UCD methods to complex service challenges.
- Strong facilitation skills, including the ability to manage sensitive, contentious or emotionally charged discussions.
- Ability to communicate complex information clearly, sensitively and effectively to a range of audiences.
- Ability to identify and apply creative solutions to the representation and communication of complex information and to the delivery of engagement activity.
- Ability to synthesise research, engagement and data insights to form evidence-based recommendations.
- Strong analytical skills, with the ability to interpret qualitative and quantitative data.
- Ability to work autonomously, manage competing priorities and meet deadlines.
- Strong interpersonal skills with the ability to build effective working relationships across disciplines and organisations.
- Knowledge of accessibility standards, inclusive design and approaches to reducing health inequalities.
- Experienced in presenting to large audiences with barriers to understanding due to language barriers, cultural differences, beliefs, or health conditions.
- Ability to produce high-quality written outputs, visual artefacts and presentations.
- Strong attention to detail, with proven capability to operate at detail and strategic level in response to contextual need
Meini prawf dymunol
- Knowledge of NHS service models, operational pathways, commissioning and digital transformation context.
- Understanding of ethics, safeguarding and governance requirements relating to public engagement and research.
Experience
Meini prawf hanfodol
- Senior level experience in planning and delivering user research, service design or co-design activity in complex organisations (health, public sector or similarly regulated environment).
- Significant experience leading service discovery, service redesign or implementation modelling activities
- Experience in communicating and modelling ways of working or changes to procedure and practice.
- Experience working with NHS, UK public sector, health innovation networks, or similar health innovation ecosystems.
- Track record of delivering high-quality UCD artefacts such as blueprints, user journeys, research insights and service models.
- Experience of leading large-scale UCD activity in a complex organisation or ecosystem.
- Experience in managing or coordinating multidisciplinary teams.
- Experience of working as a UCD Practitioner in a multidisciplinary project setting
- Experience working with clinical, operational, health system or public service colleagues to redesign services or pathways.
- Experience facilitating workshops, engagement sessions and collaborative design activities.
- Experience applying inclusive, accessible and equitable design approaches.
- Experience balancing multiple projects, deadlines and competing priorities.
- Experience supporting public engagement, PPIE or community-based co-production activity.
Meini prawf dymunol
- Experience working within the NHS or health and social care system.
- Experience applying national standards, policies or regulatory frameworks within service models (e.g., NHS England, NICE, CQC).
- Demonstrable awareness of NHS systems, data flows and coding requirements
Qualifications
Meini prawf hanfodol
- Educated to master’s degree level or equivalent professional experience in a relevant field (service design, user research, business analysis, human factors, social sciences, health services research, etc.).
- Postgraduate qualification or equivalent professional experience in a relevant field (service design, user research, business analysis, human factors, social sciences, or other health services research).
- Training or significant experience in user research, service design, business analysis, systems thinking or related UCD methodologies.
- Evidence of continuous professional development relevant to UCD practice.
Meini prawf dymunol
- Professional certification linked to service design or user research; business analysis; research or evaluation; change, transformation or delivery; coaching or facilitation.
Further details / informal visits contact
- Enw
- Lauren Constable
- Teitl y swydd
- Head of User Centred Design
- Cyfeiriad ebost
- [email protected]
- Gwybodaeth i gefnogi eich cais
If you would like to know more about the role, or schedule an informal conversation, please contact the Recruiting Manager, Lauren Constable [email protected]
If you have problems applying, contact
- Address
- Parkway 1
- Parkway Business Centre
- Recruitment Office 1st Floor
- Princess Road
- Manchester
- M14 7LU
- Telephone
- Resourcing Department: 0161 276 6198
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