Head of Design - Contract

The Head of Design is an expert practitioner with broad industry experience who defines and assures design best practice while influencing, leading, and mentoring others. You will be responsible for leading the entire design team, including service design, interaction design, content design, and accessibility, to deliver user-centered and inclusive public services.

This is a senior leadership role that requires you to influence both design and organisational strategy and priorities. You will collaborate with colleagues across GovTech Barbados and the wider public sector and focus on creating the right conditions and environment for designers to do their best and most effective work.

About the team

The GovTech Barbados team is responsible for developing multi-disciplinary, user-centered digital teams within the Government of Barbados. Our goals are twofold: first, we want to deliver tangible impact to citizens through excellent public service design and delivery. Second, we want to build a sustainable and enduring digital mindset, skillset, and culture within the government. It’s an exciting time to join us as we accelerate our delivery phase. We are taking an agile, lean approach to this work, learning as we go from our end-users, public servants, and global experts in digital transformation.

About the role

As the Head of Design, you are the leader of the design profession. You will set a clear vision for design across the organization, working with senior leaders to ensure that design is a core part of our strategy, policy, and delivery processes. You will lead and develop the design team, shaping career paths and recruiting talent to build our capability. You will champion a culture of learning, experimentation, and evidence-based design, ensuring that user insights are at the heart of everything we do.

Key responsibilities

• Strategic leadership: Set the vision for design and lead its integration into the GovTech Barbados’ strategy. Work with senior leaders to ensure design is included early in policy, digital, and technology decisions to inform effective outcomes.
• Design capability development: Lead, coach, and mentor the entire design team (including service, interaction, content, and accessibility). Develop specialist design capability by shaping career paths and recruiting diverse talent.
• Design excellence and assurance: Define and assure best practice across all design disciplines. Develop and introduce more effective methods of communicating design, working in the open, and designing collaboratively.
• Champion for users and accessibility: Measurably improve the practice of inclusive, accessible, and sustainable design for government services across the organisation. Own the overall approach to accessibility risk and ensure services work for everyone.
• Evidence-based practice: Embed a practice of hypothesis-driven, iterative design. Guide the organisation in how to use evidence from user research to improve services and ways of working.
• Stakeholder engagement: Direct the strategic approach for stakeholder relationships, gaining support for design decisions from senior leaders and influencing across organisational boundaries.
• Content strategy: Develop and lead the strategy for content that meets user needs and organisational objectives, overseeing the entire content life cycle to ensure quality and effectiveness.

Essential attributes

• You are an expert design practitioner with broad industry experience and the ability to lead design across a whole organisation.
• You are an exceptional leader and communicator, able to gain support for your design strategy from senior leaders and coach others to communicate design effectively.
• You are passionate about designing for everyone, with a deep understanding of how to make services inclusive, accessible, and sustainable.
• You are a strategic thinker, able to ensure design becomes a critical part of the development and implementation of organisational strategy.
• You excel at designing together, with the ability to plan and run design sessions with senior stakeholders and help teams connect across organisational boundaries.
• You are committed to evidence-based and iterative design, with experience embedding agile and hypothesis-driven practices within teams and leading on the prototyping and iteration of complex ideas.
• You are a strong advocate for user needs, with the ability to give direction on which tools and research methods to use and apply strategic thinking to provide the best service for the end user.

Contract details

• Contract duration: One (1) year, with potential to extend
• Pay commensurate with qualifications and experience will be offered
• We prefer hybrid (remote and in-person) work, but we will consider entirely remote candidates

Reporting to

Mark Boyce, CEO, GovTech Barbados, or his designate

Terms of Reference

Terms of Reference for this contract are available here: Head of Design