Service Designer

Code for America believes government can work for the people, by the people, in the new digital age, and that government at all levels can and should work well for all people. For more than a decade, we’ve worked to show that with the mindful use of technology, we can break down barriers, meet community needs, and find real solutions.

Our employees build and transform government and community tools and services, making them so good they inspire change. We merge the best parts of technology, nonprofit, and government to help support the people who need it most.

With a focus on transparency and fairness, and deep empathy for partners in government and community organizations and the people that our partners serve, we’re building a movement of motivated change agents driven by meaningful results and lasting impact.

At Code for America, you contribute to exciting work while learning and developing in a supportive and flexible environment. Our compensation and benefits are holistic and thoughtfully curated to represent our employees and our mission. Help us drive real generational change that lasts.

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.

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.

• Design Process:
  • Independently lead service design execution across multiple large and complex projects or work streams 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…