Senior Designer

Our 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 experiences 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 a rare chance to build a digital service from the ground up for the people of Maryland and a career-defining civic tech opportunity.

As a Senior Designer on the Digital Services team, you’ll utilize human-centered design, care, and curiosity to establish brand new services 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. You should be comfortable working in a startup environment where you think independently and operate with a high degree of autonomy. We’re looking for self-starters who are skilled at driving projects forward while communicating and collaborating closely on teams.

This role is remote, but you'll often commute to the FAMLI office in downtown Baltimore and throughout Maryland to conduct in-person user research.

100 S. Charles Street

Baltimore, Maryland 21201

Day-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. 

This 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 research with the general public and FAMLI staff.

• Leads the foundational definition and refinement of how FAMLI's services works based on policy, program and user needs. 
• Applies specialized technical expertise in content design, service design, solution that ensure our experiences are usable by everyone, especially people with disabilities and people who need to navigate our services in languages other than English. 
• Sets direction and builds strategies that ensure the experiences we deliver are consistent, informed by user research and industry best practices, scalable, and maintainable.  Provides vendor oversight to ensure strategies and standards are met. 
• Develops and maintains design and research standards, operations, and processes for FAMLI that enable the delivery of effective human-centered experiences. 
• Reviews and provides actionable feedback on work developed by vendors and other FAMLI staff, including content, services design documentation, and research plans and findings. 
• Develops and maintains templates and documentation that support and enable the delivery of usable experiences and consistent, repeatable processes.  This may include service blueprints, journey naps, 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. 
• Analyzes the risks and opportunities for digital experience solutions and develops recommendations based on program priorities, user needs, and level of effort.
• Plans and executes co-creation workshops with cross-disciplinary teams to determine the most viable solutions to solve problems. 
• Builds a user research practice within FAMLI from the ground up to ensure FAMLI has processes that are trauma-informed and prioritize care for both research participants and research practitioners. 
• Utilizes prototyping and other strategies to test solutions and iterate before implementing and scaling. 

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

We prefer all candidates to have: 

• Experience in human-centered design for government benefit programs 
• The ability to “shift left” and implement accessibility tactics throughout the design process 
• Awareness of trauma-informed practices 
• A mindset and drive for continuous learning

• 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 
• Conducting research with people with disabilities 
• Conducting research with native Spanish speakers  

• Designing with and expanding the U.S. Web Design System 
• Managing strategies to establish and grow a design system alongside front-end engineers; direct front-end engineering experience is a plus 
• Creating, curating, and using design tokens in a design system 
• Proficiency in using Figma to manage a large design system

• Developing content in plain language for dynamic digital experiences in English and Spanish 
• Collaborating closely with various subject matter experts to gather input and ensure content accuracy
• Designing strategies and content for knowledge management products 
• Leading iterative information architecture development for phased rollouts of user tasks 
• Establishing digital content guidelines and the governance practices needed to grow and maintain them  

• Shaping Customer Care practices to ensure seamless transitions between digital and call center experiences 
•  Applying standards and establishing consistency for service design artifacts without hindering the fluidity needed for sense making and definition

A resume and written introduction must be included for this position. In the introduction, briefly explain (maximum of 2 pages): 

• Your core skills to a government employee who isn’t familiar with human-centered design 
• Why you believe your experiences and expertise will benefit the launch of paid leave in Maryland 
• A project, accomplishment, or lesson from your government service experience that highlights your skillsets

Please upload one Word or PDF file that includes your combined resume and written introduction using the “Transcript” upload function or via the JobAps “Other” tab.

The examination for this recruitment will be an evaluation and rating of the information provided on your application therefore, it is essential that the application is filled out completely and accurately, listing all relevant education and experience, addressing the specific qualifications shown above and submitting any required documentation (diploma, transcript, certification, license, etc).  Please include clear, detailed and specific information on your application regarding experience qualifications related to the minimum qualification, desired, and/or selective qualifications of the position. 

• Flexible hours and hybrid teleworking 
• Paid holidays 12-13 per year 
• Generous paid leave package (annual, sick, personal and compensatory leave) 
• State Pension ("defined benefit" plan) 
• Tax-deferred supplemental retirement savings plans (401(k) and 457) 
• Comprehensive, subsidized health, dental and prescription plans with little to no deductibles, free generic prescriptions, and free preventative health services 
• Flexible Spending Account plans for Health Care and Daycare 
• State Employees Credit Union

To learn more, please click this link: State of Maryland Benefits of Employment

If 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. 

Maryland Department of Labor 

Office of Administration 

Attn: Tiffany Lott-Mallard 25-005483-0041

100 S. Charles Street Tower 1

Suite 5000

Baltimore, MD 21201

The MD State Application Form can be found online

Please contact Tiffany.Lott-Mallard1@maryland.gov or 410-767-2096 for additional information concerning the recruitment.  Online applications are strongly preferred.  A resume and cover letter are strongly encouraged for this position.  Please upload one Word or PDF file that includes your combined cover letter and resume using the "Transcript" upload function, or via the JobAps "Other" tab".

Maryland Department of Labor, is an equal opportunity employer.  It is the policy of DOL that all persons have equal opportunity and access to employment opportunities,  services, and facilities without regard to race, religion, color, sex, age, national origin or ancestry, marital status, parental status, sexual orientation, disability or veteran status.