Strategic Design Director

On behalf of Defra we are looking for a Strategic Design Director (Inside IR35) for an initial 18 month contract with potential for extension. Hybrid working with very frequent travel required, initially to Dartmoor and London, and in 2027 to Cumbria as well.

Supporting England's uplands to flourish

England's uplands are some of our most important landscapes. They are home to communities, farming businesses and internationally important natural environments, yet they face complex and interconnected social, economic and environmental challenges.

The Flourishing Uplands project is pioneering a new approach to rural change.

Working with communities in Dartmoor and then Cumbria we are exploring how government can create lasting social, economic and ecological flourishing by working alongside people in place to create new systems and policies.

We are seeking an exceptional strategic design leader to shape the next phase of Defra’s flagship place-based system change programme. Following 18 months of research and co-design with rural communities, the Uplands project is entering a pivotal implementation and learning phase across Dartmoor and then in Cumbria.

You will sit at the heart of this work. You will be entrepreneurial, a natural builder, able to help others to take their ideas from early concept into delivery, ensuring that interventions are both systemic in nature and responsive to local realities. You will be adept at keeping in mind the robust evidence required for long-term policy and system reform, and the local detail that ensures genuine participatory working.

As a Strategic Design Director your main responsibilities will be to:

• Lead the systemic/strategic design approach for the Uplands project, ensuring interventions reflect whole-system thinking and place-based insight.
• Translate ideas for system change into concrete initiatives and experiments in project locations and lead teams to deliver these. Enable local teams to move from concept to implementation and delivery.
• Lead experiments, prototypes and co-design activity, ensuring they are well-designed, ethically delivered and capable of producing system transformation in practice.
• Provide expert advice and support on the hiring and training of a team to ensure the new skills required for system transformation sit at the heart of Defra and ensure delivery of design work in place.
• Ensure local teams are equipped with the right skills, roles and capabilities to deliver prototypes that lead to action and facilitate system change locally.
• Provide leadership to the ground teams, working jointly with the Head of Place and Implementation.
• Provide quality assurance for the work of place-based design teams.
• Coach, mentor and build capability across the team.
• Work closely with the project Director and other members of the senior team to produce local insights and evidence and build these into policy development and practice.
• Build a strong set of relationships with partners within and outside government to enable project delivery.
• Deep experience in leadership of social systems transformation, strategic/service design, social innovation and/or public sector transformation.
• A track record of working in complex place-based systems involving communities, local government, regulators and national policy stakeholders.
• A track record of moving systems change work from concept to implementation at scale.
• Exceptional synthesis and sense making skills, with the ability to turn ambiguity into clear strategic direction.
• Experience using participatory or place based evidence to shape policy, strategy or system change.
• Confidence operating in politically sensitive, relational or contested environments.
• Strong coaching and capability building skills.

Please be aware that this role can only be worked within the UK and not Overseas.

Disability Confident

As a Disability Confident employer, Defra encourage applications from disabled and neurodivergent candidates. Applications from candidates who identify as having a disability and meet the essential criteria for the role will be prioritised for review. Where application volumes are high, additional role-specific and desirable criteria may be applied as part of the shortlisting process which may include holding active security clearance.

In applying for this role, you acknowledge the following "this role falls in scope of the Off Payroll Working in the Public Sector legislation. Any rates of payment quoted will reflect the gross rate per day for the assignment and will be subject to appropriate taxes and statutory costs. As such the payment to the intermediary and your income resulting from this contract will be different".