[Hiring] Enterprise Practice Lead (Service Design) @State of Colorado

Role Description

The State of Colorado is seeking an Enterprise Practice Lead, Service Design , to help build the next generation of public services. This role owns how human-centered design and user research are practiced across OIT, enabling Service Designers embedded in pods to conduct research with real constituents, map current and future state services, and produce the artifacts that ground the PM’s backlog.

• Define research method standards: appropriate methods for contexts, rigorous synthesis, and research artifacts.
• Establish journey mapping and service blueprinting standards: fidelity levels for discovery phases versus live services.
• Build and maintain design system literacy standards: understanding OIT’s design system and accessibility requirements.
• Identify and address systemic gaps in research and design quality across the portfolio.
• Run a service design guild: critique sessions, shared research repositories, and peer learning.
• Develop a career pathway for service designers that distinguishes research-depth from design-depth profiles.
• Build and deliver training that enhances statewide capability in challenging aspects of the job.
• Create and maintain shared resources for practitioners across pods.
• Advise ITDs and product directors on good service design work and feedback mechanisms.
• Distinguish between practitioner skill gaps, pod structural problems, and agency partnership issues.
• Surface patterns of weak research practice across pods.

Qualifications

• Knowledge of service design methods: journey mapping, service blueprinting, co-design facilitation.
• Knowledge of user research methods: qualitative interviews, usability testing, and survey design.
• Knowledge of problem framing: defining problem spaces from user evidence.
• Knowledge of accessibility and equity in service design: WCAG standards and designing for diverse populations.
• Knowledge of EA accessibility and UX standards applicable to OIT-delivered services.
• Knowledge of the relationship between service design and adjacent disciplines.
• Knowledge of the landscape of government design practice.
• Ability to protect discovery from delivery pressure.
• Ability to make research standards practical.
• Ability to build literacy for the discipline across non-designers.
• Ability to hold accessibility as a baseline.
• Ability to create a community in a distributed structure.

Requirements

• A minimum of five (5) years of experience in human-centered design & user research.
• A track record of working across disciplines — design, engineering, policy, or operations.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing services within government or highly regulated environments.
• Experience mentoring junior designers and developing organizational service design standards.
• Advanced knowledge of inclusive design principles and accessibility standards.
• Direct experience designing service workflows that integrate AI and automation.

Conditions of Employment

• Compliance with screening procedures at state entity locations.
• A pre-employment background check will be conducted.
• Positions may require a pre-employment drug test.
• This position may require travel within the specified geographic area.

Supplemental Information

If this posting indicates “remote from anywhere in CO” in the title, periodic reporting to the primary state work location is required. All remote work must be performed in Colorado. Candidates from out of state will be considered, but must relocate and reside in Colorado on the first day of their new position.