Sr. Service Designer/UX Researcher

About This Opportunity

Our talent team at Get A Job.ai is representing a consulting organization focused on government technology modernization. We're seeking a Senior Service Designer/UX Researcher to join a developer experience initiative supporting a large-scale federal platform engineering program. This is a fully remote position serving a major federal agency's technology transformation.

You'll be the embedded human-centered design practitioner on a four-person Developer Experience team, working alongside a Technical Product Manager, a Content/Documentation Specialist, and a Software Engineer. Your mission is to make platform tools something developers actually want to use. The people you're designing for are software engineers and developers—not end users of a public-facing website—and that distinction matters deeply to this role.

Applicants must include a link to a portfolio of relevant work.

Responsibilities

Research and Discovery:

• Map the end-to-end developer journey from access request through first production deploy, identifying high-friction points at each stage
• Plan and execute sprint-cadence user research with engineering teams using contextual inquiry, usability testing, interviews, and behavioral analytics
• Synthesize qualitative and quantitative findings into actionable insights and translate them directly into prioritized backlog items
• Track adoption metrics and developer satisfaction to measure the impact of improvements over time

Service Design:

• Design service blueprints, interaction patterns, user flows, and high-fidelity prototypes for developer-facing products including self-service portals, onboarding toolkits, and template libraries
• Deliver design specifications and documentation that reduce implementation ambiguity and improve fidelity between design intent and what gets built
• Collaborate with the team's software engineer to keep the iteration loop tight within a single sprint cadence
• Design responsive, accessible interfaces that account for regulatory and secure interaction requirements without degrading usability
• Apply accessibility standards (Section 508, WCAG 2.1) to all developer-facing interfaces
• Contribute to a developer experience metrics dashboard

Collaboration and Stakeholder Engagement:

• Work closely with the Technical Product Manager to align research priorities with the product roadmap and performance measures
• Engage federal engineering stakeholders to understand their workflows, constraints, and needs
• Participate in agile ceremonies including sprint planning, backlog refinement, demos, and retrospectives
• Coordinate with adjacent vendor teams and stakeholders to ensure the developer experience serves the broader engineering ecosystem

What We're Looking For

Required:

• Bachelor's degree in a relevant field plus at least eight (8) years of experience in service design, UX research, or human-centered design
• Proven ability to design intuitive, accessible, and production-ready experiences for complex, multi-step workflows serving large user populations
• Demonstrated experience reducing task friction, error rates, and support contacts through measurable design improvements
• Strong capability designing responsive digital experiences and system-driven UI behavior in collaboration with engineering teams
• Experience incorporating regulatory, accessibility, and secure interaction requirements into design without degrading usability
• Demonstrated expertise in applied research methods including contextual inquiry, usability testing, journey mapping, service blueprinting, and synthesis
• Experience conducting research with technical users, developers, or platform/tool users
• Proven ability to translate research findings directly into prioritized backlog items, prototypes, specifications, and design documentation
• Proficiency in Figma, Miro, FigJam, or equivalent collaborative design and whiteboarding tools
• Familiarity with developer tools and environments (CI/CD pipelines, portals, documentation systems) sufficient to understand developer context
• Strong communication skills with the ability to present findings clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Must be a U.S. citizen and able to obtain and maintain a favorable Tier 4 / High Risk Public Trust determination
• Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the US without sponsorship

Nice to Have:

• Experience working on developer experience, internal tooling, or platform-as-product initiatives
• Familiarity with the U.S. Web Design System (USWDS), 21st Century IDEA, USDS Playbook, and other federal design standards
• Experience working within FedRAMP, FISMA, or other federal compliance environments
• Familiarity with DORA metrics, DevSecOps concepts, or agile platform engineering practices
• Prior experience with Department of Education or Federal Student Aid

How We Work With You

When you apply through Get A Job.ai, a member of our recruiting team will review your qualifications and portfolio. Qualified candidates will be contacted for an initial screening conversation. If there's a strong match, we'll submit your profile to our client for consideration. Please note that you should not contact the client directly—we'll manage all communication and coordination throughout the interview process.

This is a fully remote position that can be worked anywhere in the U.S. There is potential for occasional travel to Washington, D.C. for on-site meetings and working sessions at the discretion of the client.

Pay

Pay information for this position will be discussed during the screening process with our recruiting team.

Equal Opportunity: Get A Job.ai is committed to providing equal employment opportunities for all individuals. We make employment decisions based on merit, qualifications, and business needs, and comply with all applicable federal, state, and local anti-discrimination laws.