Flexible Location: NES is a remote friendly employer supporting office, remote and hybrid working. We’re happy to talk about how you want to work.
Work Pattern: Fixed-term, Full Time, 37 hours per week
Fixed-term or Secondment until March 31st 2025
** for NHS applicants, an NHS secondment will be offered in the first instance. For non-NHS applicants, a fixed-term or secondment would be considered.
You must have eligibility and entitlement to work in the UK which is required to be maintained throughout your period of employment.
Who We Are
NHS Education for Scotland (NES) is the national health board with statutory responsibilities to effect sustainable change through workforce development, education and training across the health and social care system in Scotland, while working at UK level with partner organisations.
NES Technology Service has created a strategic programme for the transformation of digital based services to allow NES to become a leading digital organisation in Scottish Health, digital by default and fully aligned with the Scottish Government’s technology strategies.
Our Technology
We are in the business of providing safe, secure and innovative technology products and services that aim to improve outcomes across education, training, workforce, health and care in the public sector in Scotland.
The Opportunity
While to date the majority of the products that NES Technology Service develop are for use by the health and social care workforce, we are now tasked with working on new national scale digital services for the general public. This is an exciting new portfolio of work and we are looking for an experienced design leader to lead our cross-disciplinary public-facing design work.
Do you want to play a lead role in ensuring new public-facing digital services are both valuable and usable by people across Scotland?
Do you enjoy defining and directing design work across the disciplines of user research, service design, UX, UI and content design?
Do you enjoy establishing and overseeing efficient and impactful design operations and other valuable reusable assets?
Do you work well with technology and product professionals, ensuring design talent can seamlessly provide their expertise throughout the product life cycle?
Do you enjoy understanding and articulating user behaviours, needs and motivations to help teams design systems that reflect a deep understanding of t
Working within the User Centred Design team you will have the opportunity to set the direction for some genuinely scalable public-facing services and also help develop and position a growing team of design professionals across specialisms.
Does this sound like you?
What We Love to See
A Design Lead for Public-Facing Services needs to offer a broad range of skills and experience, if you can offer some or all of these, we’d love you to apply:
• Proven experience as a senior design leader and manager
• Ability to collaboratively plan and oversee work in a range of design disiplines
• An extensive understanding of design techniques in a digital context for new and existing products
• Track record in establishing processes for valuable and reusable design assets from active design work
• Experienced in collaborating with multi-disciplinary digital teams including product managers and technical leads
• Demonstrate honesty, integrity, care and compassion when dealing with others, utilising tact and persuasion skills when necessary
• Ability to work on own initiative, to organise and prioritise workload and to meet strict deadlines.
Benefits Which Matter
As a valued employee of NHS Scotland, you can enjoy an extensive range of benefits including:
• Life-work balance - with opportunities for flexible working and remote working
• Generous NHS pension scheme
• Annual incremental progression (up to the maximum of the salary band) plus annual NHS salary scale review
• Annual Leave - 27 Days increasing in line with service plus 8 days public holiday
• NHS discounts and more
Diversity and Inclusion
Developing a successful national service for Scotland is impossible without ensuring we consider the diverse needs, perspectives and backgrounds of everyone in Scotland in our work.
We are focused on hiring the very best talent available for NES, and actively encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds and aim to ensure everyone is treated fairly, with respect and has a positive recruitment experience – regardless of the outcome.
It’s not essential to be in a design leadership role right now. You may be returning from a career break (e.g. maternity, paternity, caring for others) or returning to user research after working in another field. Your experiences elsewhere can bring a fresh perspective to our work.
If you are considering applying and feel it would be helpful to discuss this initially, please contact rohan.gunatillake@nhs.scot
Next Steps
**NHS candidates will be considered firstly on a secondment basis, and so are strongly encouraged to discuss this with their current NHS employer at the earliest opportunity, ideally prior to application.
Our recruitment process is currently 100% remote and if successful you would initially work remotely, working from our offices as operationally required.
All applicants who are shortlisted for interview will be contacted by e-mail.
Online interviews (including a presentation) will take place between 17th – 20th December 2024. The presentation topic will be sent to candidates selected for interview.
For further information please refer to the Job Information Pack below.
Unless otherwise stated the deadline for applications is 23:59 hours on the closing date. Please note, CVs will not be accepted.
Proud member of the Disability Confident employer scheme
Disability Confident
About Disability Confident
A Disability Confident employer will generally offer an interview to any applicant that declares they have a disability and meets the minimum criteria for the job as defined by the employer. It is important to note that in certain recruitment situations such as high-volume, seasonal and high-peak times, the employer may wish to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled people and non-disabled people. For more details please go to
Disability Confident.
