Senior Design Thinking and Process Improvement Consultant

We are seeking an Human Centered Design and Process Improvement Consultant to drive the optimization of government and commercial services, programs, and operational workflows through human-centered methodologies and structured process improvement techniques. This role focuses on enhancing efficiency, accessibility, usability, and public service outcomes by aligning constituent and staff needs with agency goals, policy requirements, and service delivery priorities.

Key Responsibilities

• Utilize both human-centered design and business process improvement methodologies to identify bottlenecks, pain points, service gaps, inefficiencies, and root causes across public-facing and internal government processes.
• Lead current-state and future-state process mapping efforts for programs, services, and operational workflows, including handoffs, approvals, decision points, dependencies, and failure points.
• Conduct stakeholder interviews, workshops, journey mapping, service blueprinting, and user research to understand how policies, processes, systems, and organizational structures affect the people who use and deliver services.
• Develop practical recommendations that improve accessibility, efficiency, transparency, customer experience, and service outcomes while aligning with agency mission, compliance obligations, and policy requirements.
• Facilitate cross-functional collaboration among program, operations, policy, IT, digital, and leadership teams to move improvements from discovery through implementation.
• Define success metrics and support agencies in measuring, sustaining, and continuously improving redesigned services and operational processes.
• Lead or support organizational change initiatives associated with service redesign, process improvement, and transformation efforts, including stakeholder engagement, communications, training support, and adoption planning.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in public administration, public policy, business, organizational development, industrial engineering, operations management, design, human factors, or a related field.
• Five or more years of professional experience in human-centered design, process improvement, service design, operational excellence, organizational transformation, or consulting, preferably in government, public sector, or other highly regulated environments.
• Demonstrated experience applying human-centered design methods such as user interviews, journey mapping, service blueprinting, co-design, synthesis, prototyping, and iterative testing to improve services and operations.
• Demonstrated experience with business process mapping, workflow analysis, process redesign, and optimization using structured improvement methods such as Lean, Six Sigma, BPM, or related frameworks.
• Certification in human-centered design, design thinking, service design, or a comparable discipline from a recognized program.
• Certification or formal training in business process mapping, Lean, Six Sigma, BPMN, business process management, or related continuous improvement methodologies.
• Experience leading organizational change initiatives tied to process redesign, service modernization, digital transformation, operating model change, or enterprise improvement efforts.
• Experience developing and executing change management strategies that support stakeholder alignment, communications, training, adoption, resistance management, and sustainment.
• Strong facilitation, communication, and stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to work effectively across executive leadership, program teams, frontline staff, policy owners, and technical teams.
• Ability to translate complex workflows, research findings, and operational issues into clear recommendations, visual artifacts, and implementation plans.
• Knowledge of accessibility, equity, and inclusive service delivery principles relevant to public sector environments.
• Ability to operate effectively in environments with multiple approval layers, competing priorities, policy constraints, and legacy systems common in government settings.
• Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree in public administration, public policy, business administration, organizational leadership, systems design, or a related field.
• Experience supporting federal, state, county, municipal, or quasi-government agencies on service delivery, customer experience, business transformation, or operational improvement initiatives.
• Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Black Belt, or equivalent advanced certification in operational excellence, quality, or process improvement.
• Prosci Certified Change Practitioner, CCMP, APMG Change Management Foundation/Practitioner, or similar organizational change management certification.
• Additional public-sector or federal change management training or certification is preferred, particularly for candidates supporting agency-wide transformation initiatives.
• Experience improving constituent-facing services such as benefits, licensing, permitting, case management, workforce, digital services, health and human services, or other public programs.
• Familiarity with government customer experience, service modernization, and digital transformation initiatives, including discovery, iterative testing, and service improvement practices.
• Experience aligning recommendations with policy, compliance, privacy, records, procurement, risk, accessibility, and security requirements.
• Proficiency with tools such as Mural, Miro, Lucidchart, Visio, Figma, Microsoft 365, or similar platforms used for facilitation, process documentation, research synthesis, and collaboration.
• Experience developing implementation roadmaps, performance measures, dashboards, and change adoption plans to support sustained outcomes.