Job Opportunities in Australia

• Location: Canberra
• Position Type: Ongoing | Full-time/Part-time
• Salary: $90,199-$136,660

About the roles
As an Innovation Lead (EL1) or Innovation Designer (APS6), you will play a crucial role in establishing our innovation practice alongside our maturing design team. Your mindset will need to be the same, whether your skills and experience is well matured or still being refined. You will call on your curiosity, creativity, critical thinking and empathetic mindset to navigate ambiguity from ideas to implementation. You will be able to reflect on your experience in design and innovation to identify or support opportunities to translate our agency vision and mission into innovative and service-oriented solutions, while assisting to build capability and support across the organisation.

As an Innovation Designer (APS6) within the Enterprise Design and Innovation Team you will:

• Support the Innovation Lead to establish our agency’s innovation practice and framework;
• Contribute to the design and delivery of workshops, ideation sessions and innovation labs to help generate ideas;
• Help integrate innovation into the agency ecosystem, making it a continuous effort rather than a one-time event;
• Work closely with internal stakeholders and customers to identify trends, needs and operational opportunities;
• Take part in research and analysis to inform decisions and challenge current thinking;
• Will seek opportunities to inspire curiosity and innovation among colleagues; and
• Seek to develop your own learning and be ready to share new skills with colleagues through information sharing and articles that can be shared via intranet and information sessions.

As an Innovation Lead (EL1) you will:

• Lead the establishment of our agency’s innovation practice and framework;
• Design and facilitate workshops, ideation sessions and innovation labs to generate, prioritise and test ideas;
• Lead the design of an innovation framework to integrate innovation into the agency ecosystem, making it a continuous effort rather than a one-time event;
• Work closely with internal stakeholders and customers to identify trends, needs and operational opportunities and align them to agency priorities;
• Oversee and take part in research and analysis to inform decisions and challenge current thinking;
• Design and run enterprise-wide events that inspire curiosity and innovation among colleagues;
• Seek to develop your own learning and be ready to share new skills with colleagues through information sharing and articles that can be shared via intranet and information sessions; and
• Develop and deliver learning opportunities through mentoring, coaching and curriculum design.

What to Expect
In your day-to-day functions, you'll need to be comfortable with uncertainty, even with your experience in innovation and design, your knack for generating creative ideas, and your proficiency in design and project management tools. You'll come ready to learn every day, and your excellent communication skills will demonstrate your ability to listen and remain open-minded, ensuring you never ignore the voice of the customer or become overly attached to any specific framework. It would be fantastic if you could visually capture your ideas, experiences, and insights in clear visuals that convey the essence of conversations, engagements and ideas that you are leading or participating in. All this while you:

• Think like an innovator -The ability to think creatively, challenge assumptions, and embrace uncertainty.
• Are genuinely curious - Have a passion for exploring new ideas, technologies, and methodologies or re-imagining old ones.
• Know design thinking really well - Proven experience in design thinking – “users/synthesis/insights/protypes”.
• Collaborate as and when needed - Ability to build and facilitate partnerships and engage stakeholders – not everyone, all the time.
• Think outside your space - There is a larger system around that needs to be considered to implement innovative strategies.
• Tell THE story - Effective synthesis and communication allows you to share what you uncover and relate it to the challenges that matter to diverse audiences.
• Make things look good - Visuals… clear, solid visuals. All those insights on one page.
• Embrace ambiguity and uncertainty - Be comfortable with experimentation, learning from failure, and navigating complex systems.

Our ideal candidates
To be successful in these roles, human-centred design will be in your DNA. We don't expect you to excel at everything, all the time, however you'll have mastered some of the desired qualities and expertise, below (appropriately to the role you choose) and show how you're developing in others. You might even have unique skills we haven't considered yet, which could be the missing ingredient we didn’t know we needed. Above all, authenticity and the way you think will be key to success, so be ready to share how you see yourself embodying the following “personas” that will create this emerging capability:

• Innovation Visionary - Develop and implement bold innovation strategies that improve services and customer experience while you foster a culture of curiosity, experimentation, and continuous learning.
• Service Design Pioneer - Lead the design and delivery of user-centred, co-created services that address complex challenges while applying design methods, tools, and techniques.
• Collaborative Catalyst - Build and maintain diverse partnerships, facilitating multi-disciplinary teams and stakeholders, while crowdsourcing ideas and participation.
• Design Thinking Custodian - Embed design thinking, user research, prototyping, testing and trialling into workflows, while coaching and mentoring colleagues and teams to adopt a human-centered, empathetic approach.
• Curious Researcher - Conduct research, explore your new world and pursue insight from across the system, while identifying opportunities to innovate, disrupt and grow.
• Mindset Shift Agent - Challenge assumptions, conventions and silos, while embracing experimentation, learning from failure, and continuously improving.
• Visual Guru - Convert complex data, insights and conversation into engaging, articulate visuals, while keeping the message accurate and sharing the story for those who weren’t there.

Eligibility

• Citizenship – To be eligible for employment with the ACIC, applicants must be an Australian citizen.
• Security Clearance - The Australian community expects ACIC employees to maintain the highest levels of security and integrity. Successful applicants will be required to obtain and maintain a minimum Negative Vetting 1 security clearance.
• Pre-Employment Screening – All candidates must satisfy an Organisational Suitability Assessment (OSA) prior to being offered employment at the ACIC.

The ACIC is committed to diversity and inclusion. We celebrate and champion diversity to ensure we reflect the community we serve, and pride ourselves on our vibrant culture. We welcome applications from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, women, people with disability, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, those who identify as LGBTIQ+, neurodiverse, mature aged employees and carers.

More information about our conditions is available in the ACIC Enterprise Agreement 2024-2027 on our website.
Candidate Information Kit - APS6 EL1 Innovation Designer_Lead, Canberra
Candidate Information Kit - APS6 EL1 Innovation Designer_Lead, Canberra