Senior/Staff/Principal Service Designer (CMS) at Skylighthq

About Skylight Skylight is a digital consultancy using design and technology to help government agencies deliver better public services. We’re at the forefront of a civic movement to reinvent how all levels of government serve families, patients, and many others in today's digital world. If you want to play a part in driving this critical movement forward, we’d love for you to join our growing team of public interest technologists. The work we do matters. About the job At Skylight, service designers tie together human, digital, and physical interactions to create or change how government organizations operate in order to create or improve a service. Service designers are expected to understand the problem and organizational landscape, identify opportunities, and iteratively develop services and solutions. As a Service Designer at Skylight, you won’t just be mapping journeys—you’ll be building the engines that power them. We are partnering with CMS and state Medicaid agencies to implement critical new community engagement requirements, ensuring eligible people stay covered. This is a high-stakes, delivery-focused role where your work lives at the intersection of policy, procedure, and production systems, not slide decks. You will operate at the "policy–tech boundary," translating federal mandates into functional APIs, data integrations, and streamlined internal workflows. Navigating the complexities of state bureaucracies and legacy systems, you'll use human-centered, agile methods to solve thorny eligibility problems and ship working software in rapid, iterative sprints. If you are a designer who loves to get their hands dirty with data, logic, and real-world implementation under tight deadlines, we want to talk. What you’ll do • Lead strategy and planning to define service design engagements • Iteratively conduct the core of activities of service design — research, ideation, prototyping, and implementation — as part of a multidisciplinary, lean-agile team • Understand people and their behavior in relation to a service through research planning (e.g., what research methods to use), data collection (e.g., contextual inquiry), then synthesize research data through visualization and analysis (e.g., service blueprints) • Generate ideas related to addressing the problem space through ideation planning, idea generation (e.g., brainwriting), and idea selection (e.g., decision matrix) • Explore, evaluate, and communicate how people might experience or behave in future service situations through prototyping (commonly requires paper or clickable prototypes but may need other ways to validate user interactions and experiences) • Implement changes to the components of a service — organizational, operational, human, technological, and physical — through activities such as process reengineering, software development, and change management • Maintain organized, well-written documentation throughout the process What we're looking for Minimum qualifications • Bias towards delivery and action • Can take a systems thinking approach to changing how elements of an organization interact and influence one another • Ability to plan, synthesize, and present research • Ability to identify the best opportunities for service improvement through ideation and experimentation activities • Know how to align policies, technology, infrastructures, and systems to drive meaningful outcomes for the business and users • Ability to lead collaborative research and design activities, influence others, and build consensus • Comfort working with technical and data workflows and systems, with enough fluency to collaborate effectively with engineering and data teams • Ability to flex into product design activities (e.g., prototyping, interaction design, and collaborating closely with product and engineering teams to support delivery) • Ability to work successfully within a professional services environment (e.g., can communicate effectively with clients) • Passionate about creating better public outcomes through great government services • A mindset and work approach that aligns with our core values • Ability to travel for work from time to time Nice-to-have qualifications • Experience collaborating with state government partners • Experience with Medicaid, Medicare, or healthcare programs • Prior experience working in the civic tech space • Experience working in a remote-team environment Don’t meet every qualification but think you can do the job? We’d still love to hear from you. If you’re excited about the role, apply. We consider candidates with a range of backgrounds and experiences. Other requirements • All work must be conducted within the U.S., excluding U.S. territories. Some federal contracts require U.S. citizenship to be eligible for employment. • You must be legally authorized to work in the U.S. now and in the future without sponsorship. • As a government contractor, you may be required to obtain a public trust or security clearance. • You may be required to complete a company background check successfully. • Some of our available roles are on federal contracts that require a degree or additional years of experience as a substitute. Position type This is a full-time, exempt position. Location This is a fully remote position. Care package Salary We want to give you the most competitive salary possible. After all, you deserve it! To that end, we use the results of our interview process to determine what salary is most appropriate given your current level of seniority. For a Service Designer at Skylight, the current salary ranges are as follows: • Associate Service Designer: $90,000–$125,000 • Service Designer: I: $120,000–$140,000 • Service Designer II: $135,000–$160,000 • Senior Service Designer: $150,000–$185,000 • Staff Service Designer: $170,000–$203,000 • Principal Service Designer: $180,000–$230,000 Benefits Your well-being is important to us, so we focus on supporting you in a variety of ways: • Medical insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance • Short-term and long-term disability insurance • Life and AD&D insurance • Dependent care FSA, healthcare FSA, health savings account • Dollar-for-dollar 401(k) match up to 10% of your salary with no vesting period • Flexible paid-time-off policy (generally around 25 days per year), plus 11 paid federal holidays • Up to 12 weeks paid-time-off for all eligible new birth, adoption, or foster parents • Performance rewards, including annual salary increase, annual performance bonus, spot bonuses, and stock options • Business development / sales bonuses • Referral bonuses • Annual $2,000 allowance for professional development • Annual $750 allowance for tech-related purchases • Annual swag budget of $100 to display your Skylight pride with some merchandise (hoodies, hats, and more) • Dollar-for-dollar charity donation matching, up to $500 per year • Flexible, remote-friendly work environment • An environment that empowers you to unleash your superpowers for public good Interview tips We want you to have a great interview experience with us! Here are some tips to help you prepare for a successful interview: • Visit our join page to learn more about how our interview process works. • Check out our Career Pathways framework to learn more about the different roles within Skylight and the skills needed to do them. • Please include a portfolio of 1–2 work samples with your application. Your portfolio can be anything from a website to a slide deck — whatever best showcases your work. We suggest choosing work samples that highlight your skills and experience in relation to the qualifications outlined in the job posting. Unless specified in the job requirements, your portfolio doesn’t need to be tied to any particular industry or field — just select samples that best represent your expertise. To ensure we can review your application promptly, please remove any access passwords on your portfolio or provide access details. • If you’d like to request reasonable accommodations during the application or interviewing process, please contact our recruiting team at [Upgrade to PRO to see contact]. We participate in E-Verify and upon hire, will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you’re authorized to work in the U.S. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, veteran status, or any other category protected by applicable law.