Senior Service Designer II

About the role

eSimplicity is seeking an experienced Senior Service Designer II to support a state water-resources regulatory agency's discovery and analysis effort to modernize its legacy water rights administration system. The current system is nearly 30 years old, paper-based, entirely manual, and command-line driven, with an acknowledged lack of human-centered design; staff re-enter the same data across steps, current status is hard to see, and the system lags real-world activity.

Responsibilities

• Plan and conduct user research with staff across multiple district offices, hydrology, field operations, legal/hearings, and administrative functions, and with public users, using structured role-based interviews (on-site and remote), workflow observation and shadowing, contextual inquiry during site visits, and stakeholder workshops.
• Map how work, information, records, and decisions move across roles and systems today, identifying where paper enters the process, where data is re-entered, where handoffs create ambiguity, and where system state falls behind real-world activity, including adjacent tools, spreadsheets, and informal workarounds that function as operational sources of truth.
• Produce validated current-state artifacts: end-to-end user journey maps, detailed workflow maps for priority processes (e.g., permit intake and status tracking, meter data submission, ownership changes), swimlane diagrams of responsibilities across teams, system interaction maps, personas, and service blueprints.
• Partner with technical SMEs to review forms, reports, and documents so workflows are understood alongside how data is structured and processed, and contribute the human decision-making side of the decision and rules inventory, distinguishing manual decisions from system-driven logic.
• Facilitate working sessions with cross-role stakeholders using real cases to validate findings, resolve conflicting interpretations, and establish a shared understanding of workflows and decision points; run scenario walkthroughs to confirm workflows are complete and consistent across roles.
• Define design priorities for distinct user groups (analysts, field staff, administrative users, public users) and resolve tradeoffs against the agency's program goals of permit throughput, data timeliness and trust, and defensible decision-making.
• Translate validated workflows into future-state UI and workflow concepts (e.g., permit intake, status tracking, meter submission); iteratively refine them with staff across roles using real scenarios; package results as annotated prototypes, workflow definitions, and design rationale that give downstream build teams build-ready direction.
• Build and maintain prototype concepts in Figma, sharing view-only links or versioned work-in-progress with the client for continuous review.
• Embed accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA and Section 508) into workflow definitions, interface concepts, and prototype reviews from the start, including screen-reader compatibility, color contrast, keyboard navigation, non-visual cues, and plain-language public-facing forms, tailored to each user group.
• Maintain research and design artifacts in shared, version-controlled repositories, working within the client's existing systems of record and collaboration tools (e.g., SharePoint, Confluence, Jira, Miro or Lucid), so they can be reviewed continuously and carried into modernization planning and future procurement.
• Use AI-assisted tools to accelerate synthesis of interview transcripts, documents, and workflow inputs into candidate models and relationships, treating outputs as working drafts validated with agency staff.
• Contribute user-centered findings and problem statements to the phased modernization roadmap, and prepare artifacts a follow-on vendor can use without rediscovering context.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, Business, Human-Computer Interaction, Design, Human Factors, or a related field. An equivalent combination of education, training, certifications, and directly related experience will also be considered.
• In lieu of a bachelor's degree, two (2) additional years of directly related professional experience may be substituted.
• Minimum of 8 years of related experience in user research, interaction design, or service design.
• Demonstrated experience planning and conducting qualitative research with operational staff: role-based interviews (on-site and remote), workflow observation and shadowing, contextual inquiry, and stakeholder workshops.
• Experience producing and validating end-to-end journey maps, service blueprints, swim lane and workflow maps, system interaction maps, and personas.
• Experience facilitating cross-role working sessions that use real cases to validate findings and resolve conflicting interpretations.
• Experience translating research into annotated prototypes with documented design rationale and iterating them with users; proficiency in Figma or a comparable tool.
• Working knowledge of WCAG 2.1 AA and Section 508, with experience applying accessibility criteria in workflow definitions and prototype reviews.
• Experience maintaining research and design artifacts in shared, version-controlled collaboration environments (e.g., Miro or Lucid, Confluence, SharePoint, Jira).
• Ability to travel to client sites as needed.
• Strong attention to detail with a commitment to delivering high-quality and accurate work; excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Qualifications

• Domain familiarity with water rights, water resources, permitting, or other regulated natural-resource or records-intensive programs.
• Familiarity with GIS and map-based workflows (e.g., ESRI) from the user's perspective.
• Experience designing paper-to-digital intake and status-tracking workflows.
• Experience using AI-assisted tools to accelerate research synthesis.
• Experience producing build-ready artifacts for hand-off to a separate implementation vendor or for use in a future procurement.
• Experience planning usability tests and defining information architecture, and synthesizing results into recommendations for system change.

Benefits

eSimplicity offers a comprehensive benefits package, including medical, dental, and vision coverage, 401(k) retirement benefits, paid time off, paid holidays, life and disability insurance, and additional wellness and employee support programs. Eligibility may vary based on employment status and applicable plan terms.

Pay

$131,500.00 - $140,000.00