Senior Service Designer in Melbourne

We are seeking an experienced Senior Service Designer to join our award-winning design practice and partner with clients to shape and deliver high-quality service outcomes across complex environments. This role is suited to a senior practitioner who combines strong service design capability with strategic thinking, excellent stakeholder engagement and the ability to work with a high degree of autonomy.

You will lead service design activities from research and problem framing through to future-state design and implementation support, producing clear, evidence-based outputs that improve customer, employee and business outcomes with minimal managerial oversight.

Key responsibilities:

• Lead the use of qualitative and quantitative research methods to understand current-state experiences, unmet needs, pain points and opportunities across customer, employee and service ecosystems.
• Synthesise research and operational inputs into clear, evidence-based insights that inform service design priorities, strategic recommendations and decision-making.
• Design current-state and future-state service experiences using appropriate service design methods, including service blueprinting, journey mapping, scenario design and ecosystem mapping, to define actionable improvements and target-state service models.
• Develop customer, user and stakeholder artefacts, such as personas, profiles and behavioural insights, to support shared understanding and guide service design decisions.
• Identify and articulate pain points, unmet needs, systemic issues and service opportunities, translating these into prioritised areas for design and improvement.
• Work across business, delivery and technical stakeholders to define problems, align on priorities, shape opportunities and support the implementation of service improvements.
• Plan and facilitate workshops, working sessions and stakeholder forums to align on complex problems, generate ideas, make decisions and progress service design outcomes.
• Define success measures for target-state services and support the evaluation of outcomes over time, using customer, operational and business metrics to assess impact and inform continuous improvement.
• Communicate and present with credibility to a wide range of audiences, including senior executives, delivery teams, technical specialists and client stakeholders.
• Lead service design workstreams with minimal oversight, taking ownership of approach, outputs and quality of delivery, and providing senior-level design advice in ambiguous or complex environments.
• Influence senior stakeholders through clear storytelling, structured recommendations and evidence-based design rationale.
• Contribute to the uplift of design practice through mentoring, quality assurance and the sharing of service design methods and approaches.

What success looks like:

• Leads complex service design work independently, with minimal oversight, and delivers clear, high-quality outputs from discovery through to service improvement.
• Builds credibility with clients and stakeholders through strong facilitation, structured thinking and evidence-based recommendations.
• Translates research, insight and complexity into practical service designs that balance customer needs, business priorities and delivery feasibility.
• Influences decisions and direction through clear communication, strong design rationale and confident engagement with senior stakeholders.
• Contributes to stronger design practice outcomes through mentoring, quality assurance and the consistent delivery of work that creates measurable impact.

Essential skills and experience:

• Experience: 7+ years’ experience in service design, customer experience or related roles, including leading complex projects and producing high-quality outputs with minimal supervision.
• Research Methods: Strong capability in selecting and applying qualitative and quantitative research methods to generate insights, frame problems and inform service design decisions.
• Service Design Artefacts: Advanced capability in developing journey maps, service blueprints, process maps and other artefacts that communicate complexity clearly and support decision-making.
• Service Design and Strategic Thinking: Strong command of human-centred and service design principles, with the ability to apply them in complex environments to solve problems, shape direction and improve services.
• Communication and Influence: Excellent written, verbal and visual communication skills, with the ability to engage, influence and present effectively to senior stakeholders, clients and delivery teams.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Ability to work effectively across cross-functional teams, including business stakeholders, product, delivery, technology and operational teams, to build alignment and progress outcomes.
• Problem Solving: Strong analytical and strategic problem-solving capability, including the ability to navigate ambiguity, identify root causes and develop practical, evidence-based recommendations.
• Human-Centred Mindset: Deep understanding of customer and user needs, balanced with business objectives, operational realities and technical feasibility.
• Facilitation: Strong facilitation skills, including the ability to design and lead workshops that align stakeholders, resolve ambiguity, generate ideas and support decision-making.
• Autonomy and Delivery Management: Ability to work independently, manage priorities and deliver high-quality outputs with minimal oversight in fast-paced and evolving environments.