Designer/Researcher, Senior

Position Overview

• Location Type:
• Job Type: Full-time (Contingent, pending contract award)
• Salary: $119,000 - $151,050

Nava is a consultancy and public benefit corporation dedicated to making government services simple and effective. Since 2013, Nava has been trusted by federal, state, and local agencies to tackle complex technology modernization challenges. As a client services company, Nava guides agencies with legacy systems towards modern, secure, and reliable cloud infrastructure, focusing on sharp user experiences. Nava bills for its time, offering expertise and problem-solving to help government partners enhance their digital products and services. People are central to Nava's work, impacting both the public relying on benefit programs and government agency staff. Through human-centered design and modern engineering, Nava helps government partners understand user needs and deliver on their missions more effectively, enabling meaningful, impactful work connected to the public good.

Nava is seeking a Senior Designer/Researcher to help reimagine government services and drive its mission forward. In this role, you will lead design and research efforts for programs affecting millions of Americans. You will guide cross-functional teams from concept to implementation, championing user needs through user research, prototyping, and system design. Your work will bring Nava closer to the people it serves, delivering high-quality, simple, empathetic, and accessible digital experiences. You will operate within the government ecosystem, collaborating with other government contractors and civil servants, navigating diverse working styles and cultural norms, and maintaining focus within complex stakeholder environments.

Responsibilities

• Prioritize, plan, and deliver roadmap-level design and research initiatives on projects.
• Apply a human-centered design mindset by focusing on user needs to solve challenges.
• Drive user understanding by conducting quantitative and qualitative user research and sharing findings with collaborators.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver design work, including discovery artifacts, diagrams, user flows, high-fidelity prototypes, and design systems.
• Partner with multidisciplinary Nava product teams and government staff to transform complex requirements into simple and accessible digital experiences.

Requirements

• At least five years of experience working as a designer within product teams in a professional environment.
• Experience mapping and driving systemic improvements within complex service environments.
• Experience in designing, testing, and implementing digital services.
• Experience designing with web and responsive user interface best practices.
• A relentlessly curious mindset that seeks deeper understanding and quickly acquires new knowledge.
• Ability to be both a systems thinker and an advocate for users.
• Highly resourceful, reliable, organized, and detail-oriented.
• Ability to think strategically about trade-offs and short-term vs. long-term benefits in complex ecosystems.
• Ability to build and foster strong collaborative relationships with internal teams and external partners.
• An adaptive, empathetic, and positive mindset.
• Excellent communication skills.
• Portfolio Requirement: A portfolio must be included with the application. Applications without an online portfolio will not be considered.
• Legal Authorization: Must be legally authorized to work in the United States.
• Government Contract Requirements: Must meet any other requirements for government contracts for which candidates are hired.

About Nava

Nava is a consultancy and public benefit corporation working to make government services simple and effective. Since 2013, federal, state, and local agencies have trusted Nava to help solve highly scrutinized technology modernization challenges. As a client services company, Nava guides agencies constrained by legacy systems to a future with sharp user experiences built on secure, reliable, fault-tolerant cloud infrastructure. Nava bills for its time, offering its expertise and problem-solving approach to help its government partners enhance their digital products and services. People are at the heart of Nava's work, from members of the public who rely on benefit programs to government agency staff. Through human-centered design and modern engineering best practices, Nava helps its government partners better understand user needs and deliver on their missions more effectively. This focus gives everyone at Nava the opportunity to do work that is meaningful, impactful, and deeply connected to public good.