Senior Design Thinking and Process Improvement Consultant

Key Responsibilities

• Utilize both human-centered design and business process improvement methodologies to identify bottlenecks, pain points, service gaps, inefficiencies, and root causes across public-facing and internal government processes.
• Lead current-state and future-state process mapping efforts for programs, services, and operational workflows, including handoffs, approvals, decision points, dependencies, and failure points.
• Conduct stakeholder interviews, workshops, journey mapping, service blueprinting, and user research to understand how policies, processes, systems, and organizational structures affect the people who use and deliver services.
• Develop practical recommendations that improve accessibility, efficiency, transparency, customer experience, and service outcomes while aligning with agency mission, compliance obligations, and policy requirements.
• Facilitate cross-functional collaboration among program, operations, policy, IT, digital, and leadership teams to move improvements from discovery through implementation.
• Define success metrics and support agencies in measuring, sustaining, and continuously improving redesigned services and operational processes.
• Lead or support organizational change initiatives associated with service redesign, process improvement, and transformation efforts, including stakeholder engagement, communications, training support, and adoption planning.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in public administration, public policy, business, organizational development, industrial engineering, operations management, design, human factors, or a related field.
• Five or more years of professional experience in human-centered design, process improvement, service design, operational excellence, organizational transformation, or consulting, preferably in government, public sector, or other highly regulated environments.
• Demonstrated experience applying human-centered design methods such as user interviews, journey mapping, service blueprinting, co-design, synthesis, prototyping, and iterative testing to improve services and operations.
• Demonstrated experience with business process mapping, workflow analysis, process redesign, and optimization using structured improvement methods such as Lean, Six Sigma, BPM, or related frameworks.
• Certification in human-centered design, design thinking, service design, or a comparable discipline from a recognized program.
• Certification or formal training in business process mapping, Lean, Six Sigma, BPMN, business process management, or related continuous improvement methodologies.
• Experience leading organizational change initiatives tied to process redesign, service modernization, digital transformation, operating model change, or enterprise improvement efforts.
• Experience developing and executing change management strategies that support stakeholder alignment, communications, training, adoption, resistance management, and sustainment.
• Strong facilitation, communication, and stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to work effectively across executive leadership, program teams, frontline staff, policy owners, and technical teams.
• Ability to translate complex workflows, research findings, and operational issues into clear recommendations, visual artifacts, and implementation plans.
• Knowledge of accessibility, equity, and inclusive service delivery principles relevant to public sector environments.
• Ability to operate effectively in environments with multiple approval layers, competing priorities, policy constraints, and legacy systems common in government settings.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree in public administration, public policy, business administration, organizational leadership, systems design, or a related field.
• Experience supporting federal, state, county, municipal, or quasi-government agencies on service delivery, customer experience, business transformation, or operational improvement initiatives.
• Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Black Belt, or equivalent advanced certification in operational excellence, quality, or process improvement.
• Prosci Certified Change Practitioner, CCMP, APMG Change Management Foundation/Practitioner, or similar organizational change management certification.
• Additional public-sector or federal change management training or certification is preferred, particularly for candidates supporting agency-wide transformation initiatives.
• Experience improving constituent-facing services such as benefits, licensing, permitting, case management, workforce, digital services, health and human services, or other public programs.
• Familiarity with government customer experience, service modernization, and digital transformation initiatives, including discovery, iterative testing, and service improvement practices.
• Experience aligning recommendations with policy, compliance, privacy, records, procurement, risk, accessibility, and security requirements.
• Proficiency with tools such as Mural, Miro, Lucidchart, Visio, Figma, Microsoft 365, or similar platforms used for facilitation, process documentation, research synthesis, and collaboration.
• Experience developing implementation roadmaps, performance measures, dashboards, and change adoption plans to support sustained outcomes.

Key Competencies

• Systems thinking and process analysis.
• Human-centered and empathetic problem solving.
• Process mapping and service design.
• Facilitation and stakeholder engagement.
• Organizational change leadership.
• Analytical thinking and decision-making.
• Communication and influence.
• Accessibility, equity, and public service orientation.
• Continuous improvement mindset.