Senior Service Designer

Are you looking to make an impact? We are looking for a Senior (Sr.) Service Designer to lead a design team. This is a leadership role at MO. In your work and through your design leadership you will improve customer experiences for 30MM+ American citizens and foreign nationals across the Department of State’s consular services. Additionally, we are looking for this person to be a leader and... cultural steward of the design team at MO, responsible for defining best practices and approaches that support a 21st century government, as well as building a diverse team and an inclusive culture that supports our people as we grow. In this position, you will be working in a small, cross-functional team of Researchers, Designers, Product Managers, and Technical practitioners to understand and synthesize customer needs, strategize improved service delivery, and design innovative solutions inside various services within the Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA). If you have experience integrating HCD practices into the deployment of impactful, scalable digital services and enjoy simplifying complexity into intuitive experiences, we’d love to hear from you. 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 design 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 CX strategy, aligning user needs, business objectives, and technical capabilities to deliver exceptional user experiences • Client Engagement: Act as the primary client contact for service design matters, presenting and defending design decisions. Collaborate closely with clients to deeply understand their needs, provide strategic insights, and ensure alignment between design solutions and their goals • User-Centric Discovery: Implement mixed-method discovery approaches that uncover deep insights into people’s (customer) behaviors, desires, and pain points. Use these insights to inform and shape the service design strategy • Prototyping and Testing: Lead the co-design, testing, and iteration of low and high-fidelity prototypes to validate assumptions, uncover design opportunities, and deliver solutions that resonate with people (customers) • Design System Implementation: Collaborate with product management, design and development teams to ensure the successful implementation of service 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 customer-centered design principles and practices What we’re looking for • 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 (customer/user) advocate, with a strong command of 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 Service Design Leadership: An exceptional history as a service design leader, evident through your contributions to experience strategies, design systems, products, services, and customer experiences that not only delight users but also yield substantial business outcomes. Your expertise will extend to fostering organizational alignment and guiding teams through the design process, from uncertainty to clarity • Versatile Research Proficiency: Passion for and high competence in conducting research across both undefined problem spaces, utilizing design research and strategic thinking to frame opportunities, as well as clearly defined problem spaces, employing co-creation, CX and UX research and testing to envision and optimize products and features for the market • Organizational Excellence: Excellent organizational skills that enable you to seamlessly manage 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