Centred Design Apprentice (Service Designer Level 6 Apprenticeship)
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Company: Essex County Council
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Location: Essex, CM1 1QH
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Type: Apprenticeship
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Salary: £28,003.00 per year
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Sector: Business and administration
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Ref: NAS-2000039245
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Application Deadline Date: 05/07/2026
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Start Date: 01/09/2026
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Positions Available: 1
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Working Week: Fixed Term Contract – 24 months. Full-Time. Anywhere Worker . Please note this vacancy is available as a fixed term contract or secondment opportunity for up to 24 months.
Brief Description
As a User-Centred Design Apprentice, you’ll work as part of a team designing inclusive services based on real user needs. You’ll help understand and improve services from end-to-end, looking at both the user experience and how services are delivered behind the scenes.
Future Prospects
This is a great opportunity to build practical skills, gain a recognised qualification, and start a career designing services that make a real difference to people’s lives.
Vacancy Detail
- Support the promotion of user-centred design across the council by working in the open, sharing learning with colleagues, and helping to raise awareness and understanding of the diversity of users of government services.
- Work as part of multidisciplinary teams to support the design of end-to-end digital services that meet user needs and business objectives within identified constraints and standards.
- Use established service patterns and standards to help create consistent user experiences across services, as well as efficient service delivery built on common components.
- Contribute to iterative design cycles by helping prototype ideas at a range of fidelities, assisting with gathering feedback and making updates to designs based on evidence.
- Support the planning, facilitation, analysis and documentation of user research activities.
- Use qualitative and quantitative data to assist in mapping user journeys and summarising findings into clear, accessible insights that inform design decisions.
- Use appropriate tools, visualisations and communication methods to help explain user needs, challenges, and design ideas to colleagues and stakeholders and build shared understanding.
- Support the design of services that consider both internal processes and external user experiences. Help identify opportunities where design improvements can contribute to more effective and efficient service delivery.
- Support ethical research practice by following defined consent, privacy and equality processes.
- Specific individual and shared targets and objectives are defined annually within the performance management framework.
You will work collaboratively with others to:
- Carry out user research to understand people’s needs
- Map user journeys to show how people experience services
- identify pain points and opportunities for improvement
- Design, prototype and test new ideas
- Share what you learn and help build understanding of user-centred design across the council
During the apprenticeship, you will develop the skills, knowledge and practical experience to:
- Design end-to-end services
- Map user journeys and identify opportunities for improvement
- Prototype and test solutions with users
- Use data to evaluate and improve services