Content Designer

All DBS employees contracts are office-based by default at one of our two sites (Liverpool and Darlington). However, as per the Right to Request Flexible Working legislation, employees are eligible to apply for a remote or hybrid work arrangement which (if approved) take effect after six months if transferring from another government department, or after successfully completing probation as a new joiner. Requests will be considered in line with business need and the requirements of the role. Informal hybrid working arrangements are also available from day one.

Job Summary

The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) helps employers make safer recruitment decisions. We do this by providing information to help employers decide if individuals are suitable to undertake certain work, especially with roles involving regular contact with vulnerable groups.

We also protect the public by barring people from working and volunteering in certain roles if they pose a risk to vulnerable people.

We are committed to being an employer that attracts, develops, retains, and engages diverse talent that is representative of the communities we serve. We want all our staff to be able to bring their ‘whole self’ to work.

We mostly work remotely, with our team members spread across multiple locations. There are also opportunities to work in our Liverpool and Darlington offices.

We're working towards making government services and information simpler, clearer and faster for everyone. To do that, we need Content Designers who can design high quality, user focused content, and who understand technology and people.

We work together. You'll be expected to work with the whole team on any of our projects. Sometimes at short notice. That could mean working with developers, service designers, policy specialists, legal teams, senior management - anyone we need to produce world class online products and services.

We're looking for Content Designers who can work within ambitious and aspirational multi-disciplinary agile teams. We've got a range of products at DBS so the successful candidate will work on different aspects of the discipline.

You'll be an expert practitioner who can write and map user stories, assure quality, develop content strategies and review the work of others.

You'll lead on cross-government content projects and contribute to the cross-government content community.

Job Description

In this role you will:

• Lead on the design and evaluation of content plans and strategies to ensure business and user needs are met
• Use needs analysis to relate what users need to existing content, identifying gaps and overlaps
• Develop and manage relationships within DBS and with other government departments
• Manage relationships with the DBS Content Manager for GOV.UK and subject matter experts to make sure our content is up to date, to style and meets user needs
• Line manage Junior Content Designers, monitoring their performance and supporting their career development

You Will Be:

• Accountable for all content on your project team, managing the needs of users and advising the team on content design best practice
• Working across projects and departments, as needed, to provide content design support and expertise
• Designing and maintaining a service that will help users to succeed first time
• Working with colleagues in legal and policy teams to design content such as cookies policies, privacy policies and data protection statements that meet legal requirements, but are also easy for users to understand
• Promoting the importance of content design across the organisation
• Working closely with User Researchers to identify and respond to user needs through research activities
• Taking an active role in show and tells to present your work to peers and senior staff, including CEO level
• Scoping, commissioning, writing, editing and publishing high quality user-centred digital content
• Designing, updating and maintaining prototypes
• Making sure user journeys are the best they can be
• Working with Performance Analysts to effectively monitor the performance of content and identify ways to improve it
• Working with a multi-disciplinary agile team to understand user behaviour and feedback
• Providing constructive criticism to your colleagues to help improve the skills and work of the team
• Working in an agile way with rapidly changing deadlines, workloads and goals
• Focusing on outcomes rather than solutions and activities
• Advocating for the user and their needs in everything you do

Further Information

To view the DBS Recruitment and On-boarding Privacy Notice, please click the link below:

DBS Recruitment and On-boarding Privacy Notice - GOV.UK

This privacy notice covers personal data collected during the recruitment, security clearance and on-boarding process.

Person specification

We're Looking For a Content Designer With These Skills:

Essential criteria

• Stakeholder relationship management
• Identify important stakeholders, communicate and build relationships with them in a way that meets their needs, while also meeting user needs
• Work to improve stakeholder relationships by using evidence to explain decisions and reaching consensus
• Strategic thinking
• Have an overall perspective on business issues and an understanding of their wider implications and long-term impact. This could include determining patterns, standards, policies, roadmaps and vision statements
• User-centred content design
• Design content to meet user needs and make complex language and processes easy to understand
• Understand government accessibility requirements and design content that works with common assistive technologies
• Use data, research and evidence to review and evaluate content to make improvements
• Work autonomously
• Content concepts and prototyping
• Understand different prototyping techniques, from paper sketches to coded prototypes, and can use them to visualise content in context
• Choose the best option to make content understandable to different audiences and to demonstrate a proposed approach to content changes or improvements
• Show the value of prototyping to the team
• User focus
• Identify tasks that will provide insights into a problem
• Understand the range of different users who might access content and services, and identify their needs based on evidence
• Formulate hypotheses, gain insights from data and user research and make decisions on findings

Desirable criteria

• Agile working
• Understand agile methodology and how to apply an agile mindset to all aspects of your work
• Have the ability to work in a fast-paced, evolving environment and use an iterative and flexible approach to enable rapid delivery
• Ensure the team has a situational awareness of what each other is working on and how this relates to objectives and user needs

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Making Effective Decisions
• Delivering at Pace
• Managing a Quality Service

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• User-centred content design
• Content concepts and prototyping
• Stakeholder relationship management

Alongside your salary of £42,072, Disclosure & Barring Service contributes £12,188 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

The DBS offers a number of excellent benefits for its employees. These can include:

• Generous annual leave entitlement
• Excellent maternity, paternity and adoption schemes (after a qualifying period)
• Commitment to the health and wellbeing of our employees
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Flexible working opportunities
• Eyecare voucher scheme
• Occupational Health Service including referrals for counselling and physiotherapy
• 24/7 Counselling and Wellbeing Service
• A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

The DBS vision and purpose is to make people safer by being a visible, trusted and influential organisation, providing an outstanding quality of service to all our customers and partners, where our people understand the important safeguarding contributions they make and feel proud to work here. To do this, the DBS is committed to being an employer that is able to attract, develop, retain and engage diverse talent that is representative of the communities we serve, and to be an organisation providing outstanding service to all our existing and new customers, who are diverse and have a range of different needs. We want all our staff to be able to bring their ‘whole self’ to work.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.

To Apply For This Role, Please Provide A:

CV with details of your employment history, skills and experiencePersonal statement of no more than 1000 words

In your CV and personal statement you must demonstrate how you meet the essential and desirable criteria for the role.

The Selection Process For This Role Will Include:

Application screening based on your CV and personal statement. All candidates who are successful at the initial sifting stage, will be invited to interview.

A panel based interview where we will ask you to:

• Give a five minute presentation- Full details of the presentation will be provided before the interview
• Answer questions related to the behaviours and technical skills listed below

At interview we will assess you against the following behaviours:

• Making Effective Decisions
• Delivering at Pace
• Managing a Quality Service

At interview we will also assess you against these technical skills from the essential criteria:

• User-centred content design
• Content concepts and prototyping
• Stakeholder relationship management

The STAR (Situation, Task, Action and Result) technique is a useful method to help structure your answer:

• Situation - provide some brief details about the situation.
• Task - outline what your objective or purpose was during that situation.
• Action - describe what you did in that situation and how you approached it.
• Result - state the outcome, for example: Were the objectives met? What did you learn/gain from being in that situation?

Sift and interview dates

The following timetable outlines indicative dates. Please note, these dates may be subject to change without prior notice.

Closing date: Monday 14 July 2025 at 10amThe initial sift to shortlist applications is the week commencing: Monday 14 JulyInterviews are due to take place the weeks commencing: Monday 21 July and Monday 28 July

Interviews will be held via Microsoft Teams.

Whilst we will endeavour to provide some flexibility with regards to dates wherever possible, it is unlikely that we will be able to offer an alternative date once an appointment has been scheduled.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.

People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.

People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This Job Is Broadly Open To The Following Groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain orindefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).

The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).

The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job Contact:

Name: DBS People Support Team

Email: DBSPeopleSupportTeam@dbs.gov.uk

Recruitment team

Email: DBSPeopleSupportTeam@dbs.gov.uk