About the Design Practice at GovTech
The Design Practice within GovTech’s Government Technology Office is dedicated to enabling positive, user-centred impact in government digital services. Our mission is to ensure design drives meaningful outcomes for the people who use public services every day.
We set high design standards, promote best practices, and support GovTech teams in applying human-centred design across the product development lifecycle. Our focus is not just on doing design well, but on making sure design actively shapes what gets built—and why.
To achieve this, we invest in our designers’ growth, equipping them with the tools, guidance, and community they need to thrive. We are building more hands-on support systems, whether by training and/or hiring design managers or by ensuring our team structures enable better oversight. We also cultivate a strong learning culture that encourages experimentation, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
We work to build deep partnerships with product managers, engineers, and senior leadership—ensuring that design is not an afterthought, but a strategic input from the start. Whether we’re advising on complex policy-driven challenges or improving everyday digital touchpoints, we help teams understand complex ecosystems of users and their needs, so that we can design with impact.
By embedding design from the core of decision-making to development, we aim to deliver better public services—and to grow a practice that shapes not only what government builds, but how it builds it. If you're passionate about using design to drive systemic change, this is where your work will matter.
What you will do as a Principal Designer, Design Practice
You work to influence and lead design direction at the highest level in the organisation. You work with program leadership and cross-functionally with peers to help achieve the overall objectives of the Design Practice.
As a Principal / Lead Designer - UX Design, you will:
Work with senior leaders, program leaders, and product owners to ensure the continuous and valuable presence of design across product phases, from discovery through delivery, and into measurement and iteration.
Advocate for the user at all stages of development, while aligning design solutions with organisational metrics and strategy.
Work with teams as needed to reframe system complexity into usable, inclusive and coherent experiences that align with policy, tech and operational realities.
Interface with your peers in engineering and product to integrate design with technical architecture, systems and existing compliance/legal framework.
Work with programs and teams to consult on using end-to-end design work for complex, ambiguous and high impact programs.
Frame user experience at a service or system level, so that teams and programs can design for connected touchpoints and real-world constraints.
Be the practice lead in your domain of expertise. Set the standards in design processes, methodology and outputs, constantly push to improve the quality and standards of the work within your domain and program.
Evangelise and lead in systems thinking, design-led thinking and strategic thinking at the top level of the organisation.
Expand the sphere of influence of design across GovTech and across the WoG.
Track and manage design KPIs and OKRs across the programs under your purview. Take the necessary steps to ensure alignment across all designers within the programs.
Proactively share and expand the knowledge of design and designers in GovTech.
Train, teach and mentor more junior designers.
Be the resident expert in your domain.
Actively be on the lookout for new design tools, methods and processes to improve designer engagement and output.
