Job Description
**This position is detailed the Mayor's Office for Economic Opportunity**
Our Work
The Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity (“NYC Opportunity”) helps the City apply evidence and innovation to reduce poverty and increase equity. Using the tools of data, design, and research, we partner with agencies to improve government systems and make the City’s social service programs more effective, efficient, and responsive. NYC Opportunity supports policy development and budget decisions and works to center equity as a core governing principle across government. We also produce research and analysis of poverty and social conditions, including through our influential annual NYCgov Poverty Measure, which we developed to provide a more accurate picture of poverty in New York City than the federal rate.
The Service Design Studio
The Service Design Studio (“the Studio”) helps spread valuable service design and community-centered design methodologies often underused in government. The Studio builds the City's design capacity with consultation, technical assistance, and skills-building opportunities. We collaborate with City agency partners to enhance existing services or design new ones that are effective, accessible, and dignified. Our approach begins with understanding the needs of people who use, deliver, and administer public services. We seek feedback from different perspectives and test prototypes of service enhancements before implementing them at scale.
The Senior Design Lead will use their expertise and experience to work collaboratively with team members, partners, and New Yorkers. They desire to strengthen the ways in which the City of New York designs public services and programs focused on decreasing poverty and increasing opportunity for New Yorkers. They bring knowledge and skills to drive systems change, equitable resource allocation, and participatory decision-making in government.
They will also work closely with team members across NYC Opportunity’s programs and products (teams such as design, program and evaluation, data, product and technology), and will contribute to elevating, strengthening, and executing the wider office’s strategies.
Responsibilities
The Senior Design Lead comes with solid experience managing multi-stakeholder projects, developing and executing human-centered design research, capturing and synthesizing information from various stakeholders, and analyzing and developing key insights that can lead to actionable solutions and measurable outcomes.
Responsibilities include:
Design Projects
- Lead service design projects from scoping to implementation, using human-centered design methods to enhance existing or new public services that are effective, accessible, and dignified.
- Facilitate and adapt design processes for diverse networks of stakeholders inside and outside government.
- Use mixed-method approaches for design research and participatory activities that foster meaningful collaboration and a trauma-informed practice throughout the process.
- Turn user research insights into practical solutions and deliverables that enhance how public services are delivered and experienced.
- Contribute to the identification and shaping of new projects that align with the office’s priorities and mission.
Visual Design
- Develop wireframes, mockups, final design documentation, and style guides.
- Prepare decks, agendas, and other facilitation materials to run successful stakeholder meetings and workshops.
Technical Assistance Offerings
- Build the City's knowledge and capacity to carry out human-centered design processes and build evidence of the impact on service outcomes.
- Contribute to the development and facilitation of existing and new technical assistance offerings, including office hours programming, design skill workshops, and forum events.
- Provide facilitation and thought leadership support for office-wide or cross-agency efforts.
- Contribute to city-wide design standards and infrastructure.
Supervision and Team Support
- Managing, caring for, and advising junior design staff and fellows, supporting their professional development, and fostering space for shared dialogue and leadership growth.
- Provide design feedback across team projects and incorporate team feedback into projects.
- Review and maintain design-related deliverables from development teams, vendors, and external partners.
Operations Support
- Contribute to the identification of operational enhancements to monitor, manage, and grow the team's capacity to do the work.
- Contribute time and skill in promoting and storytelling the work of the Studio and the larger office.
- Provide thought leadership and facilitation for internal and office-wide strategic planning to foster alignment, knowledge exchange, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Skills We’re Seeking
We understand that candidates may not have all of the skills we are seeking below. We encourage those interested to apply even if they do not meet all of them. We are looking for talented individuals to join our team.
- Demonstrated multi-year project management experience and ability to lead multiple projects and manage multiple deadlines for design deliverables.
- Demonstrated ability to apply the Studios service design principles to the design research process
- Experience conducting design user research with a wide range of stakeholders, including but not limited to government leaders, frontline staff, non-profit staff, and community advocates.
- Meeting and workshop development and facilitation (preparing facilitation guides for prototyping and user testing, collaborative synthesis, generative discussions, co-design sessions, etc).
- Strong understanding and confidence in employing participatory research and collaborative engagement methods that share decision-making power and center lived experience as expertise.
- Demonstrated experience in systems thinking and analysis, with the ability to understand, navigate, and synthesize complex interdependencies within public sector systems.
- Deep commitment to advancing equity through evidence-informed approaches, with a nuanced understanding of how structural inequities and governance systems shape access to and experiences within human services.
- Experience working inclusively with communities who are engaged with public services and programs, and/or has lived experience engaging with public services and programs themselves.
- Proven ability to work in a manner that respects differences in race, ethnicity, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, religion, ability, and socio-economic circumstance.
- Exceptional communication and presentation skills, both verbal and written.
- Strong interpersonal and empathy skills: Self-reflective, takes time to observe, develop, and foster relationships with team members and partners.
- All hands on deck attitude: Comfortable working in a fast-paced bureaucratic environment, can pivot their work and respond to rapid requests willingly.
- Experience with agile, iterative development processes.
- Experience with tools such as Adobe Creative Suite, Figma, or similar prototyping and visualization platforms is preferred but not required.
PREFERRED SKILLS
A master's degree from an accredited college in design, social sciences, public policy, public administration, urban studies, or a related field, and 3-4 years of satisfactory full-time professional experience in government, non-profit, or social impact sector OR a Baccalaureate degree from an accredited college in design, social sciences, public policy, public administration, urban studies, or a related field, and 5-6 years of professional experience in government, or non-profit or social impact sector.
Qualifications
1. Do you have a baccalaureate degree from an accredited college or university?
2. Do you have an associate degree from an accredited college or university along with two (2) years of experience with administrative, analytic, coordinative, supervisory or liaison responsibilities?
3. Do you have a four-year high school diploma, or its educational equivalent approved by a state's Department of Education or a recognized accrediting organization along with four (4) years of experience as described in question "2" above?
4. Do you have a satisfactory combination of education and/or experience equivalent to that described in questions "1," "2," and/or "3" above?
Additional Information
The City of New York is an inclusive equal opportunity employer committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce and providing a work environment that is free from discrimination and harassment based upon any legally protected status or protected characteristic, including but not limited to an individual's sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, religion, disability, sexual orientation, veteran status, gender identity, or pregnancy.
