UX Design & Research Lead - Boston, MA (Locals)

Experience Design and Research Lead

Boston, MA, 02115

Description

Hybrid 2 days week in Boston

The Operational Services Division (OSD) is hiring an Experience Design and Research Lead to help lead our eProcurement Transformation Initiative (EPIC) to reimagine how the state finds vendors, manages contracts, makes purchases, and ensures public money is spent fairly and responsibly.

This role will help drive a more people-centered, transparent, data-driven, and continuously evolving procurement platform that serves state agencies, vendors, local governments, and the public.

This is not a conventional software replacement effort.

The Commonwealth is not simply looking to buy a static, one-size-fits-all product and adapt its work to fit the system.

EPIC is focused on building a fit-for-purpose procurement ecosystem - one that may combine configurable platforms, custom capabilities, integrations, data services, and modern engineering practices - to create a solution designed around how our people actually work.

The future platform is expected to streamline procurement workflows, improve internal and external constituent experiences and outcomes, improve integration and reporting, support Commonwealth procurement requirements, strengthen transparency and trust, and provide a flexible foundation for long-term modernization.

Why This Role Is Different This is a rare opportunity to help shape a next-generation public procurement experience and platform, not simply oversee implementation of an off-the-shelf product.

EPIC seeks to use modern technology not only within the platform itself, but also in the way the platform is designed, developed, migrated, maintained, and improved over time.

The Commonwealth places particular emphasis on iterative people centered design and development and AI-enabled and automation-supported development practices that can accelerate delivery, improve quality, reduce long-term cost, and help move from legacy systems to a more adaptive digital enabled services and technology environment.

The Experience Design and Research Lead will help further define a bold business, constituent experience, and technology vision and translate that practical experience designs, solution architectures, experience and outcome-based roadmaps, and implementation.

The successful candidate will work at the intersection of constituent/user experience, business transformation, data strategy, AI-enabled development, integration architecture, vendor management, and public-sector service delivery.

This role is ideal for someone excited about showing how government can innovate effectively and responsibly and deliver technology solutions differently: more iteratively, more people-centered, more intelligently, more transparently, and with a stronger focus on constituent/user experience and long-term value.

Position Overview We are seeking a highly motivated, organized, and strategic Experience Design and Research Lead to lead the application of people-centered design and research strategies and best practices to support the eProcurement System Replacement Project Team - EPIC. The ideal candidate is energized by large-scale people centered digitally enabled transformation and excited by the opportunity to help build and delivery something that does not yet fully exist.

They are comfortable moving between strategic vision and implementation detail and are relentlessly focused on delivering better service experiences and outcomes.

In this role, you’ll: help refine and distill an actionable understanding of diverse constituent/user needs, journeys, and end-to-end service experiences; collaborate on the definition of a future state experience vision, experience architecture, and product roadmap; and guide the iterative design, evaluation, and refinement of user experience concepts and solutions for the e-procurement platform.

You’ll also help us define, measure, and monitor constituent experience quality and impact metrics to assess progress and outcomes and inform product decisions and guide continuous improvement.

Assignment Type and Location

This is a full-time contract role supporting the Agency''s eProcurement System Replacement Project - EPIC.

This is not a Commonwealth employee appointment. The work schedule for this position is Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Eastern Time, in a flexible hybrid remote.

The primary work location is the McCormack Building, 1 Ashburton Place, Boston, MA 02108.

Candidates must be able to work onsite when requested by the EPIC project team, including attending executive meetings, mandatory project meetings, required training, and other project activities that require in-person participation.

Role Responsibilities

• Lead experience strategy, experience research, experience architecture/design, and service design work for the e-procurement platform, aligning diverse constituent needs, business process goals, service workflows policy requirements, accessibility expectations, and technical feasibility.
• Lead and help develop and maintain useful best practice constituent experience artifacts and models to inform the design and optimization of the e-procurement platform and the end-to-end service experience (e.g., constituent journey maps, experience models, service blueprints, information architecture models, scenario/task flows, wireframes, prototypes, and experience requirements).
• Lead and help conduct and gain actionable insights from iterative constituent experience and service research to evaluate designs, prototypes, and functional solutions and inform design and implementation decisions
• Partner closely with senior initiative team members, including the product manager/product owner, technical solution architect, business leaders, and vendors to plan discovery activities, inform the product roadmap, facilitate design workshops, frame service and experience design decisions, and ensure constituent experiences are aligned to support prioritized initiative outcomes.
• Translate complex procurement service workflows, policy needs, stakeholder feedback, and experience research findings into clear design recommendations and actionable experience guidance.
• Establish constituent experience quality standards, accessibility expectations, content and interaction patterns, and experience quality criteria and outcome/success metrics
• Review project team and vendor design deliverables for alignment with constituent needs, Commonwealth requirements, accessibility standards, technical feasibility, and operational readiness.
• Surface constituent experience risks, open questions, experience assessment/usability findings, design tradeoffs, and decisions needed to project leadership; document constituent experience decisions and ensure follow-through across project workstreams. Minimum Qualifications
• Eight or more years of experience in planning, leading and doing experience in design and research work to support the delivery of large scale, complex digital products, platforms, and solutions.
• Expertise in all key facets of people-centered design including experience architecture, interaction/product design, experience research, and service design, rapid prototyping, content design, and accessible/inclusive design.
• Three or more years leading experience design, experience strategy, service design, and experience research and measurement work for complex enterprise systems, workflow-heavy platforms, or public-facing digital services.
• Experience translating experience/user research, stakeholder input, and business requirements into personas, journey maps, service blueprints, information architecture, task flows, wireframes, prototypes, and usability criteria.
• Experience working closely with senior project team members, business SMEs, technical teams, vendors, and stakeholder groups to resolve design decisions and align user experience with delivery plan.
• Experience in working in AI enablement solution design and development environments and initiatives and thoughtfully leveraging AI capabilities to enhance user experiences and outcomes.
• Strong written, verbal, facilitation, analytical, and stakeholder-management skills.
• Ability to work across business and technical teams, communicate tradeoffs clearly, and build alignment in a complex project environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with public-sector, procurement, ERP, financial, grants, licensing, permitting, benefits, or other workflow-heavy enterprise platforms.
• Experience helping organizations modernize from legacy systems to cloud-based or modular platforms.
• Experience supporting people-centered modernization in governance-driven environments, including translating stakeholder priorities and executive decisions into experience recommendations and design artifacts.
• Familiarity with Commonwealth procurement requirements, accessibility standards, inclusive design, plain language, privacy, security, records retention, reporting, and public-sector governance.
• Experience using varied experience research methods and analytics to assess and evaluate the quality, adoption/usage, effectiveness and impact of digitally enabled solutions to measure progress and inform continuous improvement.
• Experience evaluating AI-enabled capabilities, automation, analytics, reporting, search, or decision-support features in a governed enterprise environment.
• Experience designing or guiding systems that must serve multiple user communities, including internal operators, external business users, oversight users, and the public.
• Ability to challenge conventional approaches constructively and identify opportunities to build a more flexible, intuitive, and sustainable solution.