Senior UX Researcher / Service Designer

DecisionPoint | Cortek • ,

7d • Remote

About The Position

DecisionPoint 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.

Requirements

• Candidate must possess a Tier 2 Moderate Risk Public Trust (from any federal agency) or an active Secret clearance or higher.
• Bachelor’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Human Factors, Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, UX Design, or a related field.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with human-centered design within federal digital service environments.
• Familiarity with Agile, DevSecOps, or design operations.
• Human-centered design certifications
• UX research or UX strategy certifications
• Service design accreditation

Responsibilities

• 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.

Benefits

• Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer
• Will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior