Innovation Design Strategist

Job Description Summary
Maximus is excited to welcome an innovative and dynamic leader to steer our newly launched Innovation Center. As a pivotal member of our Total Experience Solutions and Services organization, the Innovation Experience Designer will play a crucial role in advancing our mission to address complex government challenges. Building on the foundations of our established Innovation Center, the Lead will guide the ongoing development of immersive showcases, simulations, design sessions, and hands-on activities to highlight Maximus's transformative work at the intersection of mission and technology.
Responsibilities:
Strategic Leadership:
•Develop and communicate a compelling vision for the Innovation Center, aligning it with Maximus's commitment to delivering 21st Century solutions for government missions.
•Provide strategic leadership to the Innovation Center team, fostering a culture of creativity, collaboration, and continuous improvement, with a strong focus on Human-Centered Design principles and practices.
Client Engagement and Collaborative Solutions:
•Work closely with government clients to understand their unique challenges and co-create solutions with our clients that solve challenges and help amplify our customers people, processes, and technology.
•Champion the voice of end-users, ensuring that proposed innovations address real-world needs effectively, rooted in Human-Centered Design.
Technology Integration and Showcases:
•Collaborate with technology teams to explore and integrate 21st Century solutions that align with the goals of our clients.
•Oversee the development of showcases in areas such as artificial intelligence, digital twins, and edge computing to provide hands-on experiences for visitors.
Facilitation Excellence:
•Demonstrate strong facilitation skills in orchestrating collaborative workshops, ideation sessions, and immersive experiences, ensuring active participation and diverse perspectives.
•Excel in facilitating workshops across various formats, including remote, hybrid, and in-person settings, to accommodate the evolving needs of our diverse stakeholders.
Human-Centered Design Integration:
•Ensure that all Innovation Center initiatives are deeply rooted in Human-Centered Design principles and best practices, fostering a deep understanding of user needs and creating solutions that resonate with diverse audiences.
Innovation Workstreams:
•Lead workstreams of innovation strategy and delivery projects, encompassing end-user problem definition, research and discovery, process/product mapping, future state redesign, product prototyping and development, pilot and validation, technology integration, and design and solutioning workshops.
End-to-End Digital Transformations:
•Drive end-to-end digital transformations across business, technology, process, and people, creating value by helping our clients navigate their ideas to solutions.
Project Management:
•Support several projects simultaneously from Request for Information (RFI) to Proof of Concept (PoC).
•Design experiments to test critical assumptions, carefully analyzing results to inform strategic decision-making.
Business Case Development:
•Work with business lines to establish a business case for innovation, developing scorecards and requirements for solutions.
Agile Project Leadership
•Transfer insights to lead multi-disciplinary agile projects in the delivery of new digital services or improvement of existing ones. Required Qualifications:
•Client-Centric Approach: Experience in client-facing roles, with the ability to build strong relationships with government clients and a commitment to addressing their unique challenges.
•Innovation Leadership: Minimum of 10 years of experience in a leadership role, with a proven track record of guiding and elevating established innovation centers or similar initiatives.
•Technological Acumen: Familiarity with emerging technologies and a demonstrated ability to integrate them into innovative solutions for service delivery and government missions.
•Collaborative Leadership: Proven experience leading diverse, cross-functional teams and fostering a collaborative and inclusive culture.
•Communication Skills: Exceptional oral and written communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex ideas and strategies to both technical and non-technical audiences.
•Human-Centered Design Commitment: A strong commitment to grounding the Innovation Center's initiatives in Human-Centered Design principles and best practices, ensuring a deep understanding of user needs.
Facilitation Skills:
Strong Facilitation Skills: Proven ability to facilitate collaborative workshops, ideation sessions, and immersive experiences, ensuring active participation and diverse perspectives across remote, hybrid, and in-person formats.
Preferred Qualifications:
•Advanced Degree: Graduate degree in a relevant field, such as Innovation Management, Business Administration, or a related discipline.
•Government Sector Insight: Experience working in or with government agencies, understanding the intricacies of government processes, and anticipating future challenges.
•Inspired Showcases: Proven experience in designing and implementing showcases, simulations, and hands-on activations that effectively communicate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences.
•Strategic Collaborations: Experience in building strategic collaborations with technology partners, startups, and academic institutions to enhance the capabilities of clients through these partnerships and collaborations.
•Must reside in the Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia (DMV) area. While the position is remote, it will require onsite meetings at corporate headquarters in Tysons Corner, VA, and participation in client meetings in the DMV area.
Application Process:
To apply for the position of Innovation Experience Designer, please submit your resume and a cover letter outlining your relevant experience, emphasizing your strong facilitation skills across diverse workshop formats, and articulating your vision for leading innovation in government services.
Maximus is an equal opportunity employer, and we encourage candidates of all backgrounds and experiences to apply. Job Summary
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
- Contribute to the development of service design solutions and services that solve for today's government service problems in innovative, feasible and desirable ways to bring transformative change to the citizens we serve and enable them to thrive and live better lives.
- Guide service design user engagements and research including observations, interviews, surveys, diaries, and other research methods.
- Champion a strategic, human-centered service design approach to create disruptive innovation and competitive differentiation.
- Support the business in moving ideas from high-level product vision and strategy through road mapping, planning, and execution
- Lead the design and facilitation of co-creation sessions, including immersion workshops, journey mapping and service blueprinting.
- Leverage a human-centered service design approach to rapidly gain deep understanding of citizen and organizational attitudes, behaviors, needs, pain points, opportunities, and aspirations to create innovative human service experiences.
- Frame design challenges, facilitate ideation, envision new concepts (challenge old ones), and rapidly prototype and evaluate designs.
- Use divergent design thinking techniques for the conceptual development of new experiences, products, services, processes and/or ecosystems, and converge innovative ideas to a set of digital and tangible solutions in partnership with team members, project stakeholders and business partners.
- Communicate insights, benefits, value propositions and design rationales to internal and external audiences in an intentional effort to move towards becoming a design-driven, people-centered organization.
- Create powerful narratives that communicate value propositions for the citizen and government using service models, customer journeys, storyboards, system maps, wireframes, interactive prototypes, and final design concepts.
Minimum Requirements:
- Bachelor's degree in related field required.
- 7-10 years of relevant professional experience required.
- Human-Centered Design Certification, such as Service Design, Design Thinking, UX, etc.
- Experience leading and facilitating workshops, sometimes multiple engagements simultaneously. Education and Experience Requirements
#LI-CR1 MAXIMUS Introduction
Since 1975, Maximus has operated under its founding mission of Helping Government Serve the People, enabling citizens around the globe to successfully engage with their governments at all levels and across a variety of health and human services programs. Maximus delivers innovative business process management and technology solutions that contribute to improved outcomes for citizens and higher levels of productivity, accuracy, accountability and efficiency of government-sponsored programs. With more than 30,000 employees worldwide, Maximus is a proud partner to government agencies in the United States, Australia, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit EEO Statement
EEO Statement: Active military service members, their spouses, and veteran candidates often embody the core competencies Maximus deems essential, and bring a resiliency and dependability that greatly enhances our workforce. We recognize your unique skills and experiences, and want to provide you with a career path that allows you to continue making a difference for our country. We're proud of our connections to organizations dedicated to serving veterans and their families. If you are transitioning from military to civilian life, have prior service, are a retired veteran or a member of the National Guard or Reserves, or a spouse of an active military service member, we have challenging and rewarding career opportunities available for you. A committed and diverse workforce is our most important resource. Maximus is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. Maximus provides equal employment opportunities to all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status or disabled status. Pay Transparency
Maximus compensation is based on various factors including but not limited to job location, a candidate's education, training, experience, expected quality and quantity of work, required travel (if any), external market and internal value analysis including seniority and merit systems, as well as internal pay alignment. Annual salary is just one component of Maximus's total compensation package. Other rewards may include short- and long-term incentives as well as program-specific awards. Additionally, Maximus provides a variety of benefits to employees, including health insurance coverage, life and disability insurance, a retirement savings plan, paid holidays and paid time off. Compensation ranges may differ based on contract value but will be commensurate with job duties and relevant work experience. An applicant's salary history will not be used in determining compensation. Maximus will comply with regulatory minimum wage rates and exempt salary thresholds in all instances. Posted Max
USD $180,000.00/Yr. Posted Min
USD $77,600.00/Yr.