Sr. Service Designer/UX Researcher

Bixal•Fairfax, VA

18h•$125,000 - $130,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Bixal is hiring a Senior Service Designer / UX Researcher to join our Developer Experience team on a newly awarded platform engineering contract with the Department of Education's Federal Student Aid (FSA). FSA manages nearly $1.7 trillion in federal student loans and serves more than 45 million borrowers. This contract is building the platform engineering foundation that enables FSA's engineering teams to deliver faster, more securely, and with less friction. You will be the embedded HCD practitioner on a four-person Developer Experience team, working alongside a Technical Product Manager, a Content/Documentation Specialist, and a Software Engineer. Your job is to make the platform something developers actually want to use. You'll map the end-to-end developer journey, identify friction, run sprint-cadence usability testing, and translate research directly into the backlog. The people you're designing for are software engineers and developers, not end users of a public-facing website, and that distinction matters. This is a full-time position. The contract consists of one 12-month base year and four 12-month option years. Applicants must include a link to a portfolio of relevant work.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in a relevant field plus at least eight (8) years of experience in service design, UX research, or human-centered design.
Proven ability to design intuitive, accessible, and production-ready experiences for complex, multi-step workflows serving large user populations.
Demonstrated experience reducing task friction, error rates, and avoidable support contacts through measurable design improvements.
Strong capability designing responsive digital experiences and system-driven UI behavior in collaboration with engineering teams.
Experience incorporating regulatory, accessibility, and secure interaction requirements into design artifacts without degrading usability.
Demonstrated expertise in applied research methods including contextual inquiry, usability testing, journey mapping, service blueprinting, and synthesis of qualitative and quantitative findings.
Experience conducting research with technical users, developers, or platform/tool users, and the ability to adapt methods appropriately for that audience.
Proven ability to translate research findings directly into prioritized backlog items, high-fidelity prototypes, specifications, and design documentation that reduce ambiguity and accelerate delivery.
Proficiency in Figma, Miro or FigJam, or equivalent collaborative design and whiteboarding tools.
Familiarity with developer tools and environments (e.g., CI/CD pipelines, portals, documentation systems) sufficient to understand the context developers work in.
Strong communication skills with the ability to present findings clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
U.S. citizenship required.
Must be able to obtain and maintain a Tier 4 High Risk Public Trust security clearance.
Located in Washington DC metro area with the ability to travel to the client location in downtown DC occasionally.

Nice To Haves

Experience working on developer experience, internal tooling, or platform-as-product initiatives.
Familiarity with the U.S. Web Design System (USWDS), the 21st Century IDEA, USDS Playbook, and other federal design standards.
Experience working within FedRAMP, FISMA, or other federal compliance environments.
Familiarity with DORA metrics, DevSecOps concepts, or agile platform engineering practices.
Prior experience with the Department of Education or Federal Student Aid.

Responsibilities

Map the end-to-end developer journey from access request through first production deploy, identifying high-friction points at each stage.
Plan and execute sprint-cadence user research with FSA engineering teams using methods such as contextual inquiry, usability testing, interviews, and behavioral analytics.
Synthesize qualitative and quantitative findings into actionable insights and translate them directly into prioritized backlog items.
Track adoption metrics and developer satisfaction (Developer NPS) to measure the impact of improvements over time.
Design service blueprints, interaction patterns, user flows, and high-fidelity prototypes for developer-facing products including the self-service portal, onboarding toolkit, and golden-path templates.
Deliver design specifications and documentation that reduce implementation ambiguity and improve fidelity between design intent and what gets built.
Collaborate with the team’s software engineer to keep the iteration loop tight within a single sprint cadence, ensuring research-backed interaction patterns are reflected in working software.
Design responsive, accessible interfaces that account for regulatory and secure interaction requirements without degrading usability.
Apply accessibility standards (Section 508, WCAG 2.1) to all developer-facing interfaces and documentation experiences.
Contribute to a developer experience metrics dashboard, defining what gets measured and why.
Work closely with the team’s Technical Product Manager to align research priorities with the product roadmap and QASP performance measures.
Engage FSA engineering stakeholders to understand their workflows, constraints, and needs, building trust and buy-in for platform adoption.
Participate in agile ceremonies including sprint planning, backlog refinement, demos, and retrospectives.
Coordinate with adjacent vendor teams and FSA stakeholders to ensure the developer experience serves the broader engineering ecosystem.