Service Designer

Code for America is looking for a talented Staff Service Designer who will work with a multidisciplinary team of designers, researchers, engineers, and policy experts to analyze problems and create solutions for public services that are simple enough for everyone to use. As an experienced individual contributor (IC), you’ll be responsible for seeing the bigger picture of the front-to-back, end-to-end, and digital and non-digital touchpoints that make up the experience of someone interacting with a government program or service in the US. You will be expected to identify and advocate for elegant yet practical service design solutions to measurably improve program outcomes for families while minding technology and policy constraints.

About the role: 

As a Staff Service Designer at Code for America, you will play a critical role in transforming public services by designing end-to-end experiences that meet real human needs. You’ll lead service design efforts across multiple projects focused on improving complex government systems. You will work within cross-functional teams to map current and future states, co-create solutions with partners, and drive systemic change that improves outcomes for millions. In this role, you’ll also mentor junior designers, shape strategy with internal and external stakeholders, and champion human-centered design best practices across the organization.

This role will report to a Design Manager and is expected to travel no more than 10% of the time.

Code for America is based in California and can employ those who reside full-time within the United States. This is a remote position.

In this position you will:

• Design Process:
  • Independently lead service design execution across multiple large and complex projects or workstreams as an individual contributor.
  • Demonstrate strong analytical and creative thinking on how to improve the end-to-end, front-to-back, and multi-modal user experience across your assigned product, project, or portfolio.
  • Understand the relevant policies, infrastructure, technology, and system constraints that affect the experience within a given government service.
  • Highlight potential gaps and areas of opportunity for improvement across the whole service, including client,staff, or processes, focusing holistically on all channels of interaction.
  • Use common service design methods and artifacts to document proposed service interventions and clearly communicate your understanding to the team and
  • • government partners of current and proposed future state of a service, such as journey maps, service blueprints, system diagrams, and ecosystem maps.
    • Define ways in which a service intervention’s impact can be measured and how impact metrics ladder up to stakeholder goals and user needs.
    • Participate in planning and carrying out user research activities and synthesizing research findings, typically in partnership with qualitative user researchers;
    • Create and test design interventions and/or hypotheses by creating low, mid, or high-fidelity prototypes. Use these to generate useful feedback and iterate towards the best solution for people impacted
  • Partnership and Collaboration:
    • Partner closely with individual contributors and managers from other disciplines (e.g., engineering, research, product, data science, and program) to find elegant but practical solutions to design challenges.
    • Design and facilitate collaborative sessions/workshops with internal and external stakeholders to gather input on design directions, identify priority user stories to focus on, and drive alignment around strategic design directions.
    • Develop and maintain collaborative, professional  relationships with government partners, CBOs, and advisory consultants necessary to achieve successful project outcomes.
    • Deliver presentations to internal and external partners that capture attention and convey key messages succinctly, using storytelling techniques and visual communication to highlight client and worker experience.
    • • Participate in project or portfolio conversations and provide your input as a service design subject matter expert to inform strategic decisions about project and product direction
    • Team Health and Mentorship:
      • Participate in operational and best-practices initiatives within the Service Design discipline and the broader User Experience department.
      • Act as a mentor to support more junior design staff in their work by pairing, coaching, and raising the quality bar of outputs.
      • Deliver constructive critical design feedback to UX and service design peers.
      • Serve has a champion of Service Design across the organization, participating in teaching and learning opportunities, and evangelizing human-centered design.
      • Contribute to the organization’s credibility and thought leadership in design.
    • Other duties as assigned

About you:

• At least 6 years of service design and/or design strategy experience, with 2 years at a senior or staff level
• Direct experience working in government services, public policy, civic service design, civic tech, or social impact design in the public sector
• Demonstrated ability to design, test, implement, and measure complex multi-channel experiences that include technology systems, business processes, policy constraints, and client-facing artifacts
• A portfolio of service design work that outlines your design process, deliverables, and impact
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple high-priority initiatives and complex workstreams, including early-stage discovery as well as delivery of tactical design improvements to existing processes and technical systems
• Experience mentoring designers and communicating the value of design to stakeholders and cross-functional partners.
• Willingness to travel for research and partner collaboration (up to 10% of the time)
• Ability to work collaboratively within a multidisciplinary team
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, agile software development environment
• Passion for our mission of making government services better for people who need them.

It’s a Bonus if you have:

• Experience working on projects or technologies related to Medicaid at the state or federal level
• Native or professionally proficient fluency (written and verbal) in Spanish