Civic Design Lead

Closing date: the application is temporarily closed as we interview. We’ll be re-opening this posting soon as more positions become available. You can get ready by preparing your application and letting us know you’re interested.

Civic Design Lead position description (PDF)

The Role:

We’re looking for a capable service design facilitator to lead our cross-government civic design practice. You will be a senior member of our innovation team in the Office of the County Executive. You will lead and deliver end-to-end service design projects from sourcing through evaluation. You will adapt design tools to public sector values and ethics with empathy and thoughtful care. You will champion service design and human centered approaches across County government and in the broader community. You will grow a civic service design practice that is rigorous, sustainable, and impactful. You’ll share our dedication to making government service delivery just, human, and liberating.

Facilitate and deliver end-to-end service design projects (60%):

You will lead projects to design better services with those who need them most. You will conduct research that builds empathy with the client, identify key insights to spark innovation, co-create solutions, launch prototypes, and help teams take services live. You will work alongside front-line staff and those they serve in the co-design and co-delivery of new processes, establishing shared ownership for sustainable success. Through iterative co-creation, you will develop feasible, person-centered, and comprehensive service strategies that improve resident interactions with government and staff work experiences. 

Champion and Grow Capacity for Human Centered Design (30%):

You are charged with strengthening our service design practice and growing design capacity through the organization and our partner network. You will facilitate processes to both create better services and build our organization’s and internal clients’ capacity to continuously improve the resident experience. As the service design lead, you will educate the organization, coach emerging practitioners, and creatively build the service design studio. You will communicate in plain language, visually, and with stories to welcome and include all. Together, we will build the enabling structures to allow service design to flourish. 

Explore (10%):

We believe in exploration! Whether it is answering calls at 311, helping those experiencing homelessness to schedule dental visits, riding along with the fire and rescue team, visiting neighboring teams (Smithsonian? Baltimore’s design team? Road trip to Philadelphia’s Service Design studio?), or checking in to a Marriott hotel (headquartered in Montgomery County …how might we learn from how they design services?), we follow a data-informed approach to purposefully nurture exploration.

Who We are Looking For:

  • You love making services better with people and have successfully brought better services to life.
  • You are organized. You have a track record of managing all the details of execution across multiple projects without dropping the ball. You jump easily from the vision to the details and back again. You work transparently so everyone knows what’s happening and when. You get things done. 
  • You act with high emotional intelligence, low ego and deep empathy to build a broad base of co-creators.
  • You are a skilled facilitator and coach. You hold space for others to grow without jumping in to ‘fix’ them. You believe in people.
  • You act agilely and iterate constantly, embracing a growth mindset as you seek better ways to deliver more value with less waste.
  • You communicate clearly across mediums.

The Team:

We’re building a more human government. Learn more about us (and see a more robust role description) at https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/innovation. This team is in early start-up mode with massive momentum and robust organizational support. We are scaling rapidly. You will share some operational responsibilities and strive to make our team’s own systems as delightful as those we design for others.  (This is our version of the notorious job ad line “other duties as assigned”). We are public servants – we work with the urgency, agility, and hustle of government building trust with people. We embrace complexity and have fun.

Application must include cover letter, resume, and three work samples.

Salary range

  • Performance Management Data Analyst III, Grade 28: $75,897 to $126,584
  • Performance Management Data Analyst II, Grade 25: $66,164 to $109,761
  • Performance Management Data Analyst I, Grade 21: $54,947 to $90,848

See the minimum qualifications, employment information, details, and apply (Search for IRC46853).

OHR reviews the minimum qualifications of all applicants, irrespective of whether the candidate has previously been found to have met the minimum requirements for the job or been temporarily promoted to the same position. This evaluation is based solely on the information contained in the application/resume submitted for this specific position/IRC.

Montgomery County Government is an equal opportunity employer, committed to workforce diversity. Accordingly, as it relates to employment opportunities, the County will provide reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, in accordance with the law. Applicants requiring a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application and hiring process should contact the Office of Human Resources via email to special.accommodations@montgomerycountymd.gov. Individual determinations on requests for reasonable accommodation will be made in accordance with all applicable laws.

Montgomery County Government also provides hiring preference to certain categories of veterans and veterans/persons with a disability. For more information and to claim employment preference, please refer to the Careers webpage on Hiring Preference .

FAQs:

How do I apply?

When submitting your application in iRecruitment, you'll be asked to:

  • Respond to four questions.
    1. Why do you want this job?
    2. Why are you the right person for this job?
    3. Share a story of how you've made something better that will help us understand how you might make something better here.
    4. You have been tasked with improving this hiring process. What would you do?
  • Upload a resume.
  • Upload a service design portfolio or other work samples.
  • A cover letter is optional and will only be reviewed after reviewing the answers to your four application questions.
  • Enter your past employment/experience history.

Please note: Due to limitations of our application system, you will be asked to merge your files into one PDF to upload. Our application system can only accept files up to 500kb. If the PDF file you’d like to share with use is larger than 500kb, please email it to Eunice at Eunice.Peck-Goh@montgomerycountymd.gov as soon as you submit your application. She will link the additional files you submit to your application.

How do the minimum qualifications work?

The position title in iRecruitment shows currently Program Manager II. The job class determines the mandatory (aka we could not change) ‘minimum qualifications’ listed for this role. We suggest focusing on the ‘who we are looking for’ to see if you are who we’ve been looking for.

For experience, we're always looking to hire those who can add and contribute meaningfully to our team. You can see the current members of the Civic Design team.

What about the benefits?

You mean besides the benefits of working alongside inspiring colleagues and neighbors on projects that make a direct and tangible impact? Montgomery County government offers very generous benefits you can learn about online. These include:

We know tech companies offer cool perks like streaming music accounts, curated snacks, and artisanal roasted coffee. While we do face some limits in government, we add a special bonus to every Innovation team member salary as part of our exclusive BYOSM (Buy Your Own Streaming Music) perk – and we share a lot of snacks and locally roasted coffee.

Do you sponsor visas?

At this time, the County does not allow us to sponsor visas. For any questions related to HR issues, please reach out to Eunice at Eunice.Peck-Goh@montgomerycountymd.gov.

How does the application process work?

  1. Learn about the role
  2. Submit your application via iRecruitment portal
  3. HR reviews applications for minimum qualifications to create an eligible list
  4. Innovation team reviews eligible list applications using a de-biased hiring process that starts with a de-identified review of your answers to the four questions in the application. Team selects candidates to interview.
  5. Screening Interview - 30 minute rapid structured panel interview
  6. Facilitation Interview - 60 minute structured panel interview with 20 minutes to facilitate our experience of a service design tool we might use again in the future
  7. Executive Sponsor Panel Interview – 60 minute structured panel interview with ‘c-suite’ executive sponsors
  8. Reference Conversations
  9. Offers! Innovation Team selects candidates for conditional offers!

What support will I have?

You have the full support of executive leadership, starting with the County Executive. Your colleagues throughout government are ready for you. Outside of our organization, we’ll connect you to the Chief Innovator’s network, Bloomberg Philanthropy i-teams, and government design studios around the world. If you’ve never worked in local government before, you’ll quickly find governments, philanthropy, and private sector design teams are ready to share, collaborate, and help you succeed.