OverviewDecisionPoint seeks a Senior UX Researcher / Service Designer to lead user experience research, service design, journey mapping, and human-centered analysis for a large federal and DoD-aligned mission environment. This role conducts deep qualitative and quantitative UX research, identifies user needs and pain points, develops personas, maps end-to-end journeys, and designs holistic service experiences across digital and non-digital touchpoints.
The Senior UX Researcher / Service Designer partners with PMO leadership, application teams, content strategists, product owners, and behavioral scientists to deliver human-centered insights that drive improved usability, accessibility, adoption, and mission outcomes.
This position is fully remote.
Duties & Responsibilities
The Senior UX Researcher / Service Designer will:
- Lead end-to-end UX research efforts including interviews, contextual inquiry, usability testing, and ethnographic studies.
- Develop user personas, archetypes, and segmentation models based on behavioral insights and research findings.
- Map current and future-state user journeys, service blueprints, workflows, and ecosystem diagrams.
- Identify pain points, friction areas, user needs, motivations, and information gaps across user journeys.
- Facilitate co-design sessions, workshops, and ideation activities with stakeholders and mission users.
- Synthesize research insights into actionable design recommendations, stories, and evidence-based experience strategies.
- Support UX requirements gathering and collaborate with product, design, and development teams.
- Ensure solutions adhere to Section 508 and accessibility best practices.
- Deliver high-quality research reports, insights decks, wireframes, and service design artifacts.
- Benchmark user experience trends, design standards, and federal digital service best practices.
- Provide subject matter expertise in human-centered design, service design methodology, and UX research operations.
Qualifications
Clearance Requirement
Candidate must possess a Tier 2 Moderate Risk Public Trust (from any federal agency) or an active Secret clearance or higher.
Education (Required)
Bachelor’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Human Factors, Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, UX Design, or a related field.
Experience (Required)
- Minimum 10 years of experience conducting UX research, service design, usability testing, or human-centered design.
- Experience delivering personas, journey maps, service blueprints, and UX research deliverables for federal or enterprise programs.
- Demonstrated ability to synthesize user research into actionable, strategic recommendations.
- Experience collaborating with multidisciplinary teams including product, development, content, and PMO leadership.
Technical Knowledge (Required)
- Proficiency with UX research tools such as Optimal Workshop, UserTesting, Dovetail, or similar.
- Familiarity with design tools such as Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, or Miro.
- Strong understanding of service design frameworks, journey mapping, and experience modeling.
- Knowledge of accessibility principles and Section 508 requirements.
Technical Knowledge (Preferred)
- Experience with human-centered design within federal digital service environments.
- Familiarity with Agile, DevSecOps, or design operations.
Certifications
Preferred:
- Human-centered design certifications
- UX research or UX strategy certifications
- Service design accreditation
Skills
- Exceptional qualitative research and synthesis skills.
- Strong facilitation abilities for workshops and co-design sessions.
- Ability to translate complex findings into compelling visual artifacts and narratives.
- Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
- Strong empathy, curiosity, and attention to detail.
- Ability to drive human-centered decision-making across diverse teams.
