Senior Service Designer (Remote From Anywhere In Colorado) 7/2026

About the role

The Colorado Governor's Office of Information Technology (OIT) is seeking a Senior Service Designer to help build the next generation of public services. This role is scoped to service design, not UI/UX or visual design.

Responsibilities

• Plan and conduct qualitative interviews, contextual inquiry, and usability testing with constituents and agency staff.
• Organize and analyze research findings into coherent, decision-enabling insights rather than raw data dumps.
• Create journey maps, service blueprints, and current/future state diagrams to a professional standard.
• Map current and future state services spanning both digital and non-digital channels.
• Create design artifacts that are clear to non-designers and can be used immediately by Product Managers and Delivery Engineers.
• Define problem spaces from user evidence before any solution is proposed.
• Translate research findings into persona definitions, user stories, and backlog inputs for the agile development pod.
• Run workshops with agency staff that surface real process pain points and service gaps.
• Collaborate with the Product Manager to align research findings with mission priorities.
• Create low-fidelity prototypes of a service (such as new scripts, task flows, or physical environment mockups) to test with users before full-scale implementation.
• Run iterative tests on proposed solutions—not just research on the problem space—to validate that a design actually solves the identified issues.
• Identify how the success of a service will be measured at scale (e.g., reduced call volume, increased completion rates, or cost savings).
• Leverage web analytics, CRM data, or survey statistics to provide a broader context for qualitative findings.
• Assist the pod team and agency leadership with the planning and timing of service improvements to ensure they are operationally feasible.
• Consider how AI, automation, and emerging technology may affect the services being designed, identifying opportunities and risks from a constituent experience perspective and surfacing findings to the pod and agency leadership.

Requirements

A minimum of five (5) years of experience conducting user research, which includes working in or leading cross-functional teams using iterative, user-centered methods.

A track record of working across disciplines — design, engineering, policy, or operations — to ship things that work for real people.

Qualifications

• Knowledge of user research methods, including qualitative interviews, contextual inquiry, usability testing, survey design, and analysis of findings for a non-research audience.
• Knowledge of service design methods, including service blueprinting, journey mapping, current/future state process mapping, and stakeholder ecosystem mapping.
• Knowledge of, or the ability to quickly understand, how state agencies deliver services to constituents across digital and non-digital channels, the constraints they operate under, and where service failures commonly occur.
• Knowledge of Agile and product development sufficient to translate research findings into user stories, personas, and backlog inputs.
• Understanding of how varied populations interact with government services, with specific consideration for individuals requiring language assistance, those with disabilities, and people facing digital limitations.
• Ability to define a problem space from user evidence before any solution is proposed.
• Ability to build trust with constituents and frontline workers quickly enough to get honest, usable research.
• Ability to resist pressure to skip discovery and jump to solutions.
• Ability to scope research appropriately by producing just enough artifact to enable the next decision, not exhaustive documentation for its own sake.
• Ability to operate in a variable capacity role, recognizing that work is most intensive in discovery phases.

Skills

Knowledge of user research methods, including qualitative interviews, contextual inquiry, usability testing, survey design, and analysis of findings for a non-research audience.

Knowledge of service design methods, including service blueprinting, journey mapping, current/future state process mapping, and stakeholder ecosystem mapping.

Knowledge of, or the ability to quickly understand, how state agencies deliver services to constituents across digital and non-digital channels, the constraints they operate under, and where service failures commonly occur.

Knowledge of Agile and product development sufficient to translate research findings into user stories, personas, and backlog inputs.

Understanding of how varied populations interact with government services, with specific consideration for individuals requiring language assistance, those with disabilities, and people facing digital limitations.

Ability to define a problem space from user evidence before any solution is proposed.

Ability to build trust with constituents and frontline workers quickly enough to get honest, usable research.

Ability to resist pressure to skip discovery and jump to solutions.

Ability to scope research appropriately by producing just enough artifact to enable the next decision, not exhaustive documentation for its own sake.

Ability to operate in a variable capacity role, recognizing that work is most intensive in discovery phases.

Benefits

The State of Colorado strives to create a Colorado for All by building and maintaining workplaces that value and respect all Coloradans through a commitment to equal opportunity and hiring based on merit and fitness.

Pay

A wide salary range is posted for this position and any job offer is based upon a salary analysis to comply with the Colorado Equal Pay for Equal Work Act.

Schedule

The position requires periodic reporting to the primary state work location designated for the position.