Senior Designer (Service Design Focus)

MO helps government leaders achieve their mission by designing intuitive and sustainable customer experiences that build trust and improve satisfaction. We use human-centered design (HCD) to modernize and transform service experiences. We’re a small team of interdisciplinary creatives with mission, impact, and service to others deeply rooted in our DNA. We’re naive enough to believe we can change the world and bold enough to take the chance to do it.

We combine design thinking with continuous discovery and delivery methods to drive visionary, human-centered products to market. Our custom solutions range in size from completely revamping an entire application to refreshing small pieces of a larger product. Everyone at MO directly impacts the direction and success of the company, and we own our roles. We value integrity, curiosity, and courage, and we operate collaboratively and with accountability while consistently challenging each other in the pursuit of excellence. At MO, we delight in creating one-of-a-kind products and experiences. Your imagination is the only limit on what you can do here!

Overview

Are you looking to make an impact? We are looking for a Senior (Sr.) Service Designer to support our client in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). In your work and through your design expertise you will improve health outcomes for Veterans, Caregivers, Survivors and Family Members by reducing barriers to accessing care and benefits within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Additionally, we are looking for this person to be a leader and cultural steward within the design team at MO, responsible for defining best practices and approaches that support a 21st century government and supporting our people as we grow.

In this position, you will collaborate with a cross-functional team of product managers, researchers, designers and engineers to deliver positive, accessible, and impactful service experiences. Your commitment to knowledge management solutions that are easily adopted and integrated by a wide variety of internal stakeholders will play a crucial role in shaping the way people interact with our civic tech solutions. If you enjoy simplifying complexity into intuitive experiences and have experience leveraging HCD to design impactful, scalable digital services, we’d love to hear from you.

How will you spend your time? About 90% of your time will be spent on billable work, and 10% 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 collaborations at scale. The willingness to dive in and build new systems and processes, sometimes from scratch, is essential. 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.

• Team Leadership: Lead and oversee complex engagements, ensuring the seamless integration of service design practices into overall project management. Inform 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 service design decisions. Collaborate closely with clients to deeply understand their needs, provide strategic insights, and ensure alignment between problem definition and their goals.
• Customer-Centric Discovery: Implement mixed-method discovery approaches that uncover deep insights about the interactions between systems, business processes, and people. 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 service design artifacts to validate assumptions, uncover service design opportunities, and deliver solutions that resonate with VA staff.
• Design System Implementation: Collaborate with product management, design and development teams to ensure the successful implementation of knowledge into searchable knowledge bases.
• Impact Analysis: Utilize data-driven insights to analyze the effectiveness and impact of service design solutions, driving continuous improvement and innovation.
• Mentorship and Design Leadership: Work with MO leadership to build and mature an HCD Community of Practice that people are proud to belong to, with industry presence. Provide guidance and mentorship to more junior designers, fostering their growth and development. Influence clients and stakeholders to embrace people-centered design principles and practices.

• People-centered change leadership: Adept at navigating and instigating change in a way that addresses the needs of all those impacted, including VA product leaders and staff that deliver services to Veterans, Caregivers, Survivors and Family Members.
• Exceptional Service Design Leadership: An exceptional history as a service design leader, evident through your contributions to experience strategies, 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 services, products and features.
• 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.

• A fun, dynamic working environment with an energetic and diverse team
• A REMOTE first work environment
• An inclusive culture where everyone is welcome
• Competitive compensation commensurate with experience

Closing

All MO staff is expected to lead with humility, embody our core values in their leadership, and to hold their team accountable to the same. MO staff is expected to ensure we are always growing by tackling hard problems, being strategic, and learning from others.

This role is a contractor role, budgeted for 40 hrs/week until Jul 25, 2025, with a possibility for extension.