Principal Service Designer--Orange County – Center Applied Research and Innovation

Principal Service Designer-11-145-Orange County – Center for Applied Research and Innovation

Job Category: Other Professionals & Managers

Requisition Number: PRINC
024312

• Posted :
  May 14, 2026
• Full-Time

Position Summary

The Principal Service Designer leads strategic service and systems design efforts that improve how programs work and how people experience them. This role applies systems thinking and human-centered research to translate insight into real, implemented change that strengthens outcomes for people served and supports frontline teams.

The Principal Service Designer partners with leadership, staff, people with lived expertise, service providers, and city agencies to frame complex challenges, align cross-functional teams, and turn insight into actionable service strategies. As a senior contributor on CARI’s interdisciplinary design team, this role helps identify, test, and scale innovative solutions addressing at least one of the Social Work Grand Challenges, with a special early emphasis on homelessness.

Sitting at the intersection of design, applied research, and implementation, the Principal Service Designer works closely with the Director of Design Strategy & Research and the design team to deliver high-impact redesign efforts and strengthen CARI’s innovation infrastructure, including the emerging CARI 3:20 Innovation Lab, a faith-based, applied innovation and learning lab supporting experimentation, co-design, and capacity building across programs and partners.

This role is ideal for a creative, entrepreneurial designer who wants their work to matter, someone who enjoys complexity, builds alongside practitioners, and believes design can be a force for social good.

Essential Functions

Service Design & Systems Redesign (Primary Responsibility)

• Lead end to end service and systems redesign across Salvation Army programs addressing homelessness and housing stability including Anaheim Emergency Shelter, Pathways, Center of Hope, and the Life Transformation Program
• Design and deliver macro level service redesign efforts that improve outcomes across Orange County service touchpoints
• Map current program journeys, workflows, and system interactions to identify friction points, equity gaps, and opportunities for redesign
• Co-design future program services with frontline staff, people with lived experience, and community partners using trauma informed and dignity centered practices
• Create implementation-ready artifacts including service blueprints, workflow diagrams, pilot plans, SOP updates, training tools, and measurement frameworks
• Support program teams through pilots and implementation using feedback loops, rapid iteration, and learning cycles
• Partner closely with the Director of Design Strategy and Research to ensure ethics, research insight, and evaluation are embedded in design work
• Build playbooks, templates, and decision frameworks that support replication and scale

Applied Research & Ethics

• Conduct qualitative research including interviews, focus groups, observation, participatory methods, and ethnographic fieldwork
• Support survey design and quantitative data collection in partnership with the Director and data collaborators
• Analyze and synthesize mixed-methods data to surface patterns, barriers, and system-level insights in collaboration with the design team
• Apply ethical research practices, including informed consent, confidentiality, participant dignity, and trauma-informed engagement
• Follow research protocols, data privacy standards, and ethical data-handling practices appropriate for work with human subjects

CARI 3:20 Innovation Lab & Learning (Secondary Responsibility)

• Partner with the Director of Design Strategy & Research to help stand up and operationalize the 3:20 Innovation Lab
• Support the co-design of curriculum, workshops, and applied learning experiences grounded in real service challenges
• Co-facilitate design sprints, innovation workshops, and community-based labs aligned to CARI’s strategic priorities
• Contribute to playbooks, templates, and decision frameworks that support replication and scale.
• Work closely in an interdisciplinary design team alongside leadership, people with lived…