Senior Service Designer

Service Design Jobs; Virginia; On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Service Design Jobs in the United States is seeking a Senior Service Designer to guide government clients through our Design Intelligence framework, using human-centered methods to tackle end-to-end organizational and experience challenges. You will lead UX strategies for websites, mobile apps, and digital tools to improve how users interact with government services.

You will mentor a design team, conduct user research and workshops, translate findings into personas, journeys, and prototypes,

Qualifications

• Ability to obtain a U.S. government Security Clearance.
• 10+ years of experience in human-centered design and service design, translating user needs into concepts and artifacts.
• 5+ years of experience managing a design team and driving planning and prioritization.
• Proficiency with Sketch, Mural, Figma, InVision, and Adobe Creative Suite.
• Strong portfolio demonstrating ideation, methods, tools, and craft.
• Experience conducting stakeholder and user interviews and co-creation workshops.
• Ability to work in an Agile/Scrum environment and connect research to sprints.
• Ability to operate across multiple workstreams and ecosystems.
• Excellent written communication and presentation skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead design activities related to planning, prioritization, and decision making.
• Lead and conduct user research and usability testing and translate results into iterative designs.
• Frame pain points and opportunities via workshops; define problems and hypotheses.
• Develop personas, user journeys, information architecture, flows, and prototypes.
• Create service blueprints and journey maps to visualize end-to-end experiences.
• Facilitate cross-functional collaboration between product owners, designers, engineers, and stakeholders.
• Design service prototyping using Figma and other tools; test with users and refine.
• Ensure human-centered design across service touchpoints and digital experiences.
• Translate research into actionable recommendations guiding strategy and workflows.

Skills

User research

UX design

Information architecture

Wireframes

Prototyping

Stakeholder management

Agile / Scrum

Cross-functional collaboration

Communication

Strategic thinking

Education

Degree in HCD or Service Design

Tools

Sketch

Mural

Figma

InVision

Adobe Creative Suite

Job description

Overview

As a Senior Service Designer, you will be responsible for guiding government clients through our Design Intelligence™ framework, incorporating human-centered methods to solve end-to-end organization and experience challenges. You will lead development and execution of User Experience (UX) strategies to enhance how people interact effectively with websites, mobile applications, and digital tools. You will apply the latest design methods and technology tools and trend to enhance the overall customer experience (CX) to engage and inspire people seeking lawful immigration.

Contributions

• Manage the design team as well as design activities related to planning, prioritization, and decision making
• Lead and conduct user research and usability testing and translate those results into designs that will improve products in an iterative fashion with other designers, product managers, and engineers
• Participate in all aspects of discovery to understand: client mission and goals; stakeholders, users and their ecosystems; current state journeys; user segments; program and project objectives
• Conduct workshops and interviews to frame pain points and opportunities; define problem statements and validate hypotheses
• Lead discovery of user needs into concepts, personas, user journeys, information architecture, user flows, wireframes, and visual design prototypes with other designers, product managers, and engineers
• Develop low-fidelity and high-fidelity service blueprints and journey maps to visualize end-to-end user experiences, identify pain points, and collaborate with product owners, product managers, other designers, and engineers to shape service improvements that align with user and business needs
• Facilitate cross-functional collaboration by bridging communication between product owners, designers, engineers, and client stakeholders, ensuring that service concepts are both desirable for users and feasible for technical implementation
• Design and iterate on service prototyping using Figma and other tools to test, validate, and refine workflows, integrating feedback from usability research, stakeholder input, and real-world testing
• Ensure human-centered design principles and consistency across service touchpoint and digital experiences
• Lead user research and stakeholder engagement to gather insights, conduct co-creation workshops, and translate findings into actionable recommendations that enhance service experience
• Collaborate with product managers, other designers, software developers, and client product owners to ensure that designs are properly implemented, regularly tested with users, and iteratively improved on
• Balance user needs with product manager priorities and technical feasibility to drive measurable results
• Provide plain language content strategy to facilitate an easy-to-understand user experience that simplifies complex processes for users who may not be native English speakers
• Synthesize research and data to communicate insights and make recommendations that will shape mission/program strategy, service and workflow
• Communicate stakeholder and user need and collaborate on a cross functional team within an agile environment
• Understand and embrace the specifications and constraints of a given technology, platform and/or operational environment and understand how research should be integrated into technological considerations

Qualifications

• Ability to obtain a U.S. government Security Clearance
• 10+ years of experience in human centered design, service design, and/or customer experience design, translating user needs into concepts, personas, user journeys, information architecture, user flows, wireframes and visual design prototypes
• 5+ years of experience managing a design team as well as design-related planning, prioritization, and decision making
• Proficiency in design tools: Sketch, Mural, Figma, InVision, and Adobe Creative Suite
• Current portfolio demonstrating ideology, methods, tools, skills, and craft
• Thorough knowledge and demonstrated experience conducting primary and secondary research including stakeholder and user interviews, design-thinking and co-creation workshops and applying those insights to personas, journey maps, process maps, ecosystem maps, roadmaps, stakeholder maps, and service blueprints
• Ability to think strategically and holistically and connect dots across multiple workstreams, stakeholder groups, and ecosystems
• Experience working on a scrum team within the Agile delivery framework and experience integrating research and design into technical sprints including writing stories and story pointing
• Desire to keep pace with ever-changing industry tools and best practices with the ability to make recommendations as needed for the best outcome
• Experience collaborating within a multi-disciplinary delivery team including UX/UI designers, technologists, data scientists, engineers, solution architects, and change managers
• A natural curiosity for solving problems coupled with strong analytical skills
• A collaborative nature with excellent written communication and presentation skills
• Experience working in a project-based environment
• Degree or equivalent experience in HCD, and/or service design

Bonus Points

• Previous work experience in or with the federal government
• Previous work experience as a consultant
• Experience transforming paper-based processes into and optimized digitally native workflow and experience