Senior Fellow - Design

Summary

Join the New Practice Lab as a Senior Fellow - Design and become a senior member of the Design Team. You will embed design expertise into various projects, collaborating with partners to improve public benefit design and delivery. Key responsibilities include leading user research, developing design deliverables, coordinating designers, and writing for diverse audiences. The ideal candidate possesses extensive experience in user-centered design, research, and project scoping within the public sector. The position offers a competitive salary, comprehensive benefits, and remote work flexibility. Apply by February 21st with a resume, cover letter (optional), and a design case study.

Requirements

• Provide multi-disciplinary teams with design expertise and supporting the scoping of projects to include design approaches and activities, with a preference for having done so in the public sector benefits context (as a civil servant or contractor)
• Work on user-centered software products and familiarity with modern product development workflows
• Create research plans that help answer priority questions for a product or service development team
• Conduct both generative and evaluative research to understand user needs, behaviors, and pain points; analyze findings for insights that generate actionable recommendations
• Conduct usability testing and iterate on content strategy as well as a variety of types of products/materials based on increased understanding of user needs
• Produce and manage the creation of high-quality design artifacts for projects, including: Developing the content strategy and architecture, with a particular orientation to how collaborators can sustain and own after the team’s hand-off
• Write towards an audience of people with varied technical fluency, as well as a diverse set of users, while balancing policy and legal requirements
• Coordinate multiple contributors to author written materials of moderate complexity
• Edit for details and quality, managing voice and tone
• Ensure that all content and touchpoints are inclusive and compliant with relevant accessibility standards (e.g., WCAG/508)

Responsibilities

• Serve as a key member of sprint teams during delivery and policy sprints, including identifying ways the design discipline should be incorporated in the scoping phase of engagements
• Act as the design expert on these multidisciplinary sprint teams, often facilitating and executing the entire design process, from exploratory research to ideation, with limited supervision
• Structure and conduct user research with families and service providers through inclusive and trauma-informed design research practices, ideally in both English and Spanish
• Lead the development of content-heavy design deliverables that improve access to public benefit programs at local, state, and federal levels
• Coordinate the work of contracted designers and other time-bound support expertise
• Write for both technical and public audiences to share lessons learned from the work of the New Practice Lab from both user research and the application of design methods in the policy process
• Represent the New Practice Lab in a variety of forums such as conferences and briefings
• Develop relationships and collaborations with other organizations and experts working on similar issues, and identifying potential projects for the New Practice Lab
• Identify and pursue opportunities to disseminate and scale findings from sprints, collaborating with other members of the Lab’s senior leadership team to translate insights into broader recommendations for action by policymakers and public sector agencies

Benefits

• Health care, dental, and vision coverage
• A generous retirement plan
• Paid time off
• Observes all federal holidays
• An office-wide closure between Christmas and New Year’s Day
• Remote work