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About NAVA
Our mission is to partner with government agencies to deliver digital services and infrastructure that makes programs simple, effective, and accessible to all. As a public benefit corporation, our intent is not to win as much work as we can, but to design a portfolio that makes the highest leverage progress against that mission.
Nava has a role in every important program that serves vulnerable populations and can apply industry-level ecosystem pressure to transform service experiences, program outcomes, and agency adaptability.
Nava is at the forefront of reimagining how our government serves its people, and we’re looking for experienced researchers to help drive this mission forward.
You will work on small teams to drive the service design and research efforts of our work with the government, for programs that affect millions of Americans. You care deeply about working on technology that improves people’s lives, but don’t think technology is always the answer. You’ll be involved from concept to implementation, championing user needs with everything from user research to journey mapping.
You’ll bring us closer to the people we ultimately serve, and help set high standards for our teams in terms of simplicity, empathy, and accessibility.
You can work remotely, or work from one of Nava’s offices in DC or San Francisco.
Opportunities and Challenges
Nava provides opportunities to do meaningful, impactful, mission-oriented work. As a public benefit corporation, we have a social mission written into our founding charter. The people who work at Nava have a fiduciary duty to our stated mission: to improve access, effectiveness, and simplicity of government services. We see this as an opportunity, but it is also important to highlight the challenges we face in advance.
You will be working within the government ecosystem, which means working dynamically, with other government contractors and civil servants. Working with people outside of your company means you’ll likely encounter different working styles, cultural norms and be responsible for maintaining order and focus without authority. At the same time, working as part of a larger team allows us to deliver on projects of larger scale and complexity.
The government contracting ecosystem is a compliance-driven multi-stakeholder environment – particularly when compared to the operating environments for companies of our size in the private sector. Successful members of our team understand how to be innovative within this environment when responding to proposals or delivering software and infrastructure. Finding and recommending ways to improve the way government digital services are procured and built is one of the highest-leverage ways we help fulfill our mission.
Position Summary
The role is for a designer/researcher with strong skills in service design, research and strategy, and an understanding of technical processes and tools. Designers are critical to articulating how we create modern, flexible, and scalable infrastructure and services to positively affect outcomes for the public. This person should be comfortable working closely with their project teams, external developers and government partners to shape and improve infrastructure services and the flow of data.
Role and Responsibilities
- Help the team and client understand how human-centered design and best practices can play a role in delivering resilient services and developer-focused tools.
- Lead research (primarily with collaborators, developers and government partners as participants) and identify the most suitable research methods to help the team make decisions.
- Understand and map the flow of data within a modern platform and a complex infrastructure ecosystem.
- Collaborate with multidisciplinary Nava product teams and government staff to drive service-level changes related to physical and logical infrastructure, teams, processes and capabilities.
- Take part in hiring activities (e.g., submitting referrals, conducting interviews, and attending interview debriefs), as needed.
Required Skills
- Experience mapping and driving systemic improvements within complex service environments
- Depth of experience in conducting, synthesizing, and communicating qualitative research
- Relentlessly curious mindset, never satisfied with easy answers
- Equal parts systems thinker and advocate for users
- Highly resourceful, reliable, and detail-oriented
- Ability to think strategically around trade-offs and short term vs. long term benefits
- Ability to build and form strong relationships with the internal team and external partners
- An adaptive, empathetic, collaborative and positive mindset
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, technical and otherwise
Job Type: Full-time
Pay: $96,800.00 – $135,700.00 per year
Benefits:
- 401(k)
- 401(k) matching
- Dental insurance
- Employee assistance program
- Flexible spending account
- Health insurance
- Health savings account
- Life insurance
- Paid time off
- Parental leave
- Professional development assistance
- Referral program
- Vision insurance
Schedule:
Education:
Experience:
- UI: 1 year (Preferred)
- UX: 1 year (Preferred)
- User Experience Designers & Researchers: 1 year (Preferred)
Work Location: Remote
