Senior Service Designer

Are you looking to make an impact? We are looking for a Senior (Sr.) Service Designer to lead the design contributions to a cross-functional team and partnership. You are capable of designing the product user flows and associated user interfaces in accordance with all deliverables required by the VA.gov platform and the VA.gov Design System team. You have experience with abstracting work into systems and components for both reuse and providing detailed guidance for engineers, as well as in designing forms in government and non-government contexts (e.g. health care, financial, insurance, etc.).

How will you spend your time? 85% of your time will be spent on billable work, and roughly 15% of your time will be spent maturing our HCD practice at MO and mentoring more junior HCD team members.

Successful candidates will have a track-record of building and sustaining high-performing teams at scale. The willingness to dive in and build new systems and processes, sometimes from scratch, is essential, as is leading through influence within a matrixed environment. Previous experience working in a client services organization (i.e., consulting or a digital agency) is helpful but not required. A passion for our mission and civic design is a must-have.

What You’ll Do

• Program/Project Leadership: Lead and oversee complex engagements, ensuring the seamless integration of service design practices into overall project management. Shape program/project-level service design strategy, aligning user needs with organization systems and technical capabilities to deliver exceptional service experiences
• Client Engagement: Act as the primary client contact for service design matters, presenting and defending customer experience decisions. Collaborate closely with clients to deeply understand their organizational context, provide strategic insights, and ensure alignment between service strategies, design solutions and organizational goals
• User-Centric Discovery: Implement mixed-method discovery approaches that uncover deep insights into people’s (user and stakeholder) behaviors, desires, and pain points. Use these insights to inform and shape service design as well as organizational change strategies
• Documentation and Prototyping: Facilitate co-creation and participatory design interactions, document complex systems and insights in accessible frameworks and immersive storytelling, and translate insight into service prototypes and experience stories to inform the development of digital solutions.
• Sustaining Design Implementation: Collaborate with product management, design and development teams to ensure the successful implementation of designs, maintaining consistency and accessibility across civic tech products
• Metrics and Impact Analysis: Utilize data-driven insights to analyze the effectiveness and impact of design solutions, driving continuous improvement and innovation
• Mentorship and Design Leadership: Work with MO leadership to build and mature a diverse and inclusive HCD Community of Practice with industry presence. Provide guidance and mentorship to more junior designers, fostering their growth and development within the team. Influence clients and stakeholders to embrace user-centered design principles and practices

What We’re Looking For

• Government/Civic Tech Experience: Familiarity with and experience in designing web sites and web applications using USWDS, both on VA.gov and other government web sites, as well as forms in government and non-government contexts (e.g. health care, financial, insurance, etc.).
• Passion for Design for Change: Demonstrated commitment to social impact design and recognized leadership within the civic design community
• People-Centric Advocacy: Extensive experience as a people (user and stakeholder) advocate, with a strong command of participatory design methods, accessibility, Section 508 compliance, and a nuanced understanding of the challenges posed by user research barriers in the public sector and healthcare domain (e.g., PRA, HIPAA)
• Exceptional Design Leadership: An exceptional history as a service design lead, evident through your guidance in ecosystem mapping and contributions to stakeholder engagement strategies, as well as seamless integration of user interactions with solutions across experience touchpoints that not only delight users but also yield substantial business outcomes and desired organizational change. Expertise that extends to fostering organizational alignment and guiding teams through the design process, from uncertainty to clarity
• Versatile Research Proficiency: Proficiency in conducting mixed-methods research and co-creation to create deep context understanding, outline problem spaces, frame opportunities and iteratively envision and optimize services, products and features
• Organizational Excellence: Excellent organizational skills that enable you to seamlessly manage or contribute to multiple high-profile, medium-to-high complexity projects within a dynamic organizational environment
• Empowering Leadership and Collaboration: Strong leadership qualities coupled with effective collaboration skills, encompassing articulate verbal, non-verbal, and written communication. Your ability to lead high-performing teams hinges on your aptitude for persuasion and influence, fostering a cooperative approach rather than a rigid command and control structure