User Engagement Lead

Black Canyon Consulting•Bethesda, MD

7d•Remote

About The Position

Black Canyon Consulting (BCC) is seeking a User Engagement Lead to support the National Library of Medicine (NLM) in engaging external Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) users. The role will help NLM understand how UMLS and related Health IT standards are used across the broader Health IT ecosystem. Engagement activities will identify user use cases, needs, dependencies, and perspectives on UMLS data structures, formats, functionality, and complexity. Findings will help NLM understand current usage patterns and identify opportunities for improvement and modernization. The position is remote-eligible. The User Engagement Lead will plan and conduct user engagements, recruit and coordinate participants, facilitate interviews and listening sessions, document and synthesize findings, maintain participant relationships, and prepare reports and other materials for NLM stakeholders. The role will also coordinate with NLM staff and technical or terminology subject matter experts and help develop repeatable engagement methods and processes.

Requirements

Experience planning and conducting user research, stakeholder engagement, customer discovery, interviews, listening sessions, or comparable qualitative research activities.
Ability to engage technical and non-technical users, ask effective follow-up questions, and translate discussions into clear use cases, findings, and actionable themes.
Experience recruiting and coordinating external participants and managing multiple engagements, schedules, follow-up activities, and deliverables.
Strong qualitative analysis, synthesis, documentation, facilitation, and written and oral communication skills.
Ability to understand technical data products and workflows sufficiently to investigate user dependencies, data structures, formats, functionality, and complexity.
BS-level or higher education in health informatics, biomedical informatics, information science, library and information science, public health, social science, user research, communications, healthcare, or a related field, or equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with UMLS, biomedical terminology, controlled vocabularies, or related Health IT data products and standards.
Experience engaging technical user communities such as terminology users, informaticians, developers, data engineers, researchers, or health information professionals.
Familiarity with interoperability, terminology mappings, APIs, FHIR, or other Health IT data-exchange concepts.
Experience supporting modernization, product discovery, service improvement, or user-centered design initiatives involving complex data products.

Responsibilities

Plan and lead a sustained external UMLS user-engagement program, including outreach strategies, engagement priorities, participant recruitment, interview and listening-session plans, and supporting materials.
Identify and engage a representative range of UMLS users and stakeholders, including users of UMLS data, terminology resources, APIs, mappings, and related Health IT standards and services.
Conduct and facilitate interviews, listening sessions, and other structured engagements to understand user workflows, use cases, needs, pain points, dependencies, and perspectives on UMLS data structures, formats, functionality, and complexity.
Document user use cases and feedback consistently and traceably, distinguishing observed needs, dependencies, challenges, and requested capabilities.
Synthesize qualitative findings across engagements to identify recurring themes, patterns, differences among user communities, and potential areas for UMLS improvement or modernization.
Coordinate with NLM staff and technical or terminology subject matter experts to prepare for specialized engagements and accurately interpret technically complex feedback.
Maintain ongoing relationships and communications with participating UMLS users, including follow-up questions, validation of findings, and additional engagement as needed.
Prepare engagement summaries, findings reports, briefing materials, use-case inventories, and other deliverables that communicate user perspectives clearly to NLM stakeholders.
Track engagement activities, participants, findings, open questions, and follow-up actions while protecting participant information and maintaining appropriate documentation.
Support development and refinement of repeatable methods, templates, and processes for continued UMLS user engagement.