Senior Designer (Program Manager Senior II)

Introduction

Maryland Family and Medical Leave Insurance (FAMLI) makes sure all workers in Maryland have paid time off for medical and family reasons.� FAMLI is a social insurance system covering 2.6 million workers and 180,000 employers, delivered as a delivered as a digitally native, public-facing service.� We're in the early stages of building something as big and as far-reaching as unemployment insurance or a new health department.\r\n\r\n\r\nOur Digital Services team brings a modern and cross-disciplinary approach to creating, launching, and continuously improving the digital services powering paid leave in Maryland.� The team is responsible for providing human-centered experience to workers who need to take paid leave, employers who need to provide paid leave, and FAMLI staff who process claims and provide direct support to the public.� This is a rare chance to build a digital services from the ground up for the people of Maryland and a career-defining civic tech opportunity.�\r\n\r\n\r\nAs a Senior Designer on the Digital Services team, you'll utilize human-centered design, care, and curiosity to establish brand new service for Marylanders.� With a balance between foundational strategy and iterative service delivery, you'll be both a leader and an individual contributor as you work on cross-disciplinary teams to design scalable experiences that are usable and trustworthy.��\r\n\r\n\r\nYou should be comfortable working in a startup environment where you think independently and operate with high degree of autonomy.� We're looking for self-starters who are skilled at driving projects forward communicating and collaborating closely on teams.�\r\n\r\n\r\nThis role is remote, but you'll occasionally commute to the FAMLI office in downtown Baltimore and throughout Maryland to collaborate with collaborate with colleagues and conduct in-person user research.�\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

GRADE

24 \r\n

LOCATION OF POSITION

Maryland Department of Labor\r\n100 South Charles Street\r\nBaltimore, Maryland 21202\r\n

Main Purpose of Job

The Senior Designer reports to the Director of Experience Design within the Division of Family and Medical Leave Insurance (FAMLI), which is part of Maryland Department of Labor.� As a critical expert in human-centered design, you'll lead the implementation of Labor.� of FAMLI's digital experiences for employers, medical providers, workers applying for benefits, and FAMLI staff (e.g., Customer Care agents and Claims adjudicators).\r\n\r\n\r\nDay-to-day you'll collaborate with cross-disciplinary product development teams made up of FAMLI staff and vendors and subject matter experts in policy, communications, public engagement, and operations.�\r\n\r\n\r\nThis role utilizes experience in user experience, design systems, content design, user research, service design, and accessibility to ensure FAMLI delivers services effectively.� You'll lead iterative design processes through problem scoping, co-creation workshops, qualitative research and discovery, data analysis, ideation, prototyping, service blueprinting, and user researching the general public and FAMLI staff.�\r\n

POSITION DUTIES

Duties of this position include, but are not limited to:\r\n\r\n\r\n Contributes to the foundational definition and refinement of how FAMLI's services work based on policy, program, and user needs\r\n Applies specialized technical expertise in content design, services design, visual design, and user research to define and implement human-centered design solutions that ensure our experiences a usable by everyone, especially people with disabilities and people who need to navigate our services in languages other than English\r\n Contributes direction and builds strategies that ensure the experience we deliver are consistent, informed by user research industry best practices, scalable, and maintainable.� Provides guidance to vendors to ensure strategies and standards are met\r\n Develops and maintains design and research standards, operations, and processes for FAMLI that enable the delivery of effective human-centered experiences\r\n Reviews and provides actionable feedback on work developed by vendors and other FAMLI staff, including content, service design documentation and reseach plans and findings\r\n Develops and maintains templates and documentation that support and enable the delivery of usable experiences and consistent, reportable processes.� This may include service blueprints, journey maps, a user research repository, content guidelines, content models, human-centered design training, design specifications, artifacts that communicate information architecture, and user research plans,scripts, and synthesis\r\n Helps identify the risks and opportunities for digital experience solutions and contributes recommendations based on program priories, user needs, and level of effort\r\n Plans and executes co-creation workshops with cross-disciplinary teams to determine the most viable solutions to solve problems.�\r\n Builds a user research practice within FMALI form the ground up to ensure FAMLI has processes that are trauma-informed and prioritize care for both research participants and research practitioners\r\n Uses prototyping and other strategies to test solutions and iterate before implementing and scaling\r\n Collaborate with stakeholders to drive design initiatives and build consensus across business units\r\n\r\n\r\n

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

Experience:\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n At least 6 years of experience in human-centered design\r\n At least 1-2 years of experience working on service delivery for government services�\r\n Experience as a leader and individual contributor on a cross-disciplinary service delivery team�\r\n Experience building foundational human-centered design operations to enable service delivery�\r\n Experience conducting user research in public sector settings\r\n\r\n\r\n

DESIRED OR PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

We're hiring a team of multiple Senior Designers.� Together the team will utilize skillsets in user research, interaction/visual design, content design, and service design, but individual candidates aren't expected to be experts in all areas of human-centered design.\r\n\r\n\r\nWe prefer all candidate to have:\r\n\r\n\r\n Experience in human-centered design for government benefits programs�\r\n The ability to 'shift left' and implement accessibility tactics throughout the design process\r\n Awareness of trauma-informed practices�\r\n A mindset and drive for continuous learning\r\n\r\nWe'd also like candidates to have in some of these areas'\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nUser research�\r\n\r\n\r\n Building research practices from the ground up for government services, including establishing strategies for compensation, consent, care plans for researchers, and tracking findings in a repository\r\n Conducting research with people with disabilities�\r\n Conducting multilingual user research with native speakers\r\n\r\nInteraction/visual design\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Designing with and expanding the U.S. Web Design System (USWDS) and maintaining consistency across team\r\n Managing strategies to establish and grow a design system alongside front-end engineers\r\n Creating, curating, and using design tokens in a design system�\r\n Proficiency in using Wigwam to manage a large design system\r\n\r\nContent design and information architecture\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Developing content in plain language for dynamic digital experiences in English and Spanish\r\n Collaborating closely with various subject matter experts to gather input and ensure content accuracy\r\n Designing strategies and content for knowledge management products\r\n Leading iterative information architecture development for phased rollouts of user tasks�\r\n Establishing digital content guidelines and the governance practices needed to grow and maintain them\r\n\r\nService Design\r\n\r\n\r\n Shaping Customer Care practices to ensure seamless transitions between digital and call center experiences�\r\n Applying standards and establishing consistency for service design artifacts to enable process definition and documentation�\r\n Mapping complex systems and identifying opportunity areas for cross-business unit collaboration and efficiency\r\n Education and coaching cross-functional partners on service design principles and their applicability to service delivery\r\n Facilitating discussion and decision making for complex and constrained service delivery challenges that cut across process, policy, people and technology\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS

All candidates are subject to a background check against files maintained by the Division of Unemployment Insurance (Labor/DUI) to determine whether any monies are owed to Labor/DUI as result of unemployment insurance overpayment/fraud.� Any unpaid debt may have an impact on whether or not a candidate is offered employment.\r\n

SELECTION PROCESS

All information concerning the qualifications, including any required documentation (diploma, transcript, certificate, etc.) must be submitted and received by the closing date.� Information submitted after this date will not be considered.� Successful candidates will be ranked as Best Qualified, Better Qualified, or Qualified and place on the eligible (employment list) for at least one year.� Applications that meet minimum and/or selective qualifications will be referred to the hiring unit for interview selection.� Units will select those candidates most closely demonstrating the qualifications for the interview.\r\n\r\n\r\nA resume may be attached as supplemental information, however, only the information provided in the application will be reviewed and considered in the evaluation process.� Please upload one Word or PDF file that includes your combined cover letter and resume in the college transcript upload function under the 'Other' tab.�\r\n

EXAMINATION PROCESS

The assessment may consist of a rating of your education, training, and experience related to the requirements of the position.� It is important that you provide complete and accurate information on your application.\r\n

BENEFITS

This is a full-time, permanent position and eligible for full State benefits, which include:\r\n\r\n\r\n Flexible hours and hybrid teleworking\r\n Paid holidays 12-13 per year\r\n Generous paid leave package (annual, sick, personnel and compensatory leave)�\r\n State Pension ('defined benefits' plan)\r\n Tax-deferred supplemental retirement savings plan (401(k) and 457)\r\n Free parking\r\n Comprehensive, subsidized health, dental and prescription plans with little to no deductibles, free generic prescriptions, and free preventative health services\r\n Flexible Spending Account plans for Health and Daycare\r\n State Employees Credit Union\r\n\r\nTo learn more, please click this link:��State of Maryland Benefits of Employment\r\n\r\n

FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS

Please contact Tiffany.Lott-Mallard1@maryland.gov for additional information concerning this recruitment.� Online applications are strongly preferred.� A resume may be attached as supplemental information, however, only the information provided in the application will be review and considered in the evaluation process; please upload one Word or PDF file that includes your combined cover letter and resume to the JobAps 'Other' tab.\r\n\r\n\r\nU.S. Military Veterans may qualify for additional bonus points towards certification.� Any job offer will be contingent on the candidate providing a U.S. Military form DD214 verifying honorable discharge form service prior to starting employment (and may be requested prior to interview.)� Permanent State employees do not need to submit proof of Veterans' status.�\r\n\r\n\r\nIf you are unable to apply online, or encounter difficulty attaching required or optional documentation you may submit via mail or deliver in person.� Please be sure to include your name, identification number (Easy ID#) and job announcement�number on any documentation to ensure timely processing.�\r\n\r\n\r\nPLEASE DO NOT FAX EMAIL UNSOLICITED DOCUMENTATION.�\r\n\r\n\r\nCompleted applications required documentation, and any required addendums may be mailed to:\r\n\r\n\r\nMaryland Department of Labor\r\nATTN: Tiffany Lott-Mallard #26-005483-0014\r\n100 S. Charles Street, Tower 1, 5th Floor\r\nBaltimore, Maryland 21201\r\n\r\n\r\nFor additional information, please contact Tiffany Lott-Mallard at 410-767-2096 or email Tiffany.Lott-Mallard1@maryland.gov.\r\n\r\n\r\nThe MD State Application Form can be found online.�\r\n\r\n\r\nTTY Users: Call via Maryland Relay\r\n\r\n\r\nAs an equal opportunity employer.� Maryland is committed to recruiting, retaining and promoting employees who are reflective of the State's diversity.� People with disabilities and bilingual candidates are encouraged to apply.� We thank our Veterans for the service to our country.�\r\n