Service Designer

About Focus

Focus is a fully remote digital services company. We partner with state and federal agencies to build enduring services. We are a collection of engineers, designers and product managers, large enough to have worked on systems serving millions of people but lean enough to move with intention and flexibility.

We’d love for you to join us and grow alongside us.

Our UX Team

We’re a team of designers and researchers who stay curious, show up for each other, and most importantly, are thoughtful about how we work. As we continue to grow, we’re shaping the design practice at Focus. There are many opportunities to grow beyond project-specific work, so it’s an exciting time to join the team.

What we’re looking for from you: We want to see the messy process behind your work, not just where you landed. Share with us about your wins as well as your misses. Show us your approach, share what energizes you, and let us know what is important to you.

The Project

On this project, you will be working with the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to build a platform for grant recipients to submit and manage forms and for ACF staff to review form submissions. The grants fund services that address the causes and conditions of poverty across the country.

We’re just getting to the end of our first year on the project. That means we have learned a lot and built an initial version of the platform for Tribes. We are continuing to learn more about states and how they use the current systems in order to scale the platform to more forms. You will play a pivotal role in reaching out to grant recipients, conducting user research, and gathering insights to inform what we build now and where we scale next within ACF.

What you’ll do

• Research work

  • Support the design lead with research planning and execution

  • Own outreach and recruitment of grant recipients for interviews, usability testing, etc.

  • Use AI to support research processes, helping determine best practices and standards

• Service blueprinting

  • Work closely with the design lead to map current grant reporting workflows, identifying pain points and opportunities for reducing burden

• Translating research into decisions

  • Package research findings to share with product and engineering to inform team priorities and key decisions

  • Run discovery and validation in parallel with delivery, staying flexible as priorities shift (see our approach)

• Client management

  • Build strong working relationships with our current clients, and build new relationships with other program offices across ACF

  • Comfortable facilitating client discussions and guiding different perspectives toward shared direction

• Documentation

  • Ensure documentation of process and outcomes for client-facing communications

  • Maintain internal documentation, including design artifacts and the research repository, to ensure transparency and build alignment across the team and clients

• Seek growth in

  • Contributing to wireframing and prototyping, as needed

  • Doing some content design work, as needed

  • Facilitating client discussions toward shared direction

  • Using AI to build research workflows and repository

Additional details

A few things to be aware of, especially if you’re new to government work:

• Every project is unique, and you can expect opportunities to apply your skills in both new and familiar ways

• Project momentum fluctuates based on scope, capacity, evolving deadlines, and overall maturity

• Because of government-wide policies, access to tools and software can vary between projects

• Privacy, policy, and security constraints often introduce slowdowns or complexity

• Documenting your work is essential for transparency and shared understanding

• Most projects involve collaborating with cross-functional teams across multiple contracting companies

Requirements

• 2–5 years of practical experience in service design and/or UX research

• Strong client management and communication skills

• Experience working within cross-functional teams

• Ability to obtain and hold a federal public trust clearance

• Lived in the U.S. for 3 out of the last 5 years

• Nice to have: experience designing digital forms and the workflows around them

Our Interview Process

Duration: Around 2-3 weeks

1. Phone screen (30 mins)

2. Technical interview: Case study and artifacts review (1.5 hrs)

3. Final round: Behavioral and team fit check (1 hr)