Staff Product Experience Designer

Staff Product Experience Designer

Speridian Technologies is recruiting for a Staff Product Experience Designer for our State of California client, the Department of Healthcare Services, Behavioral Health. This person will be part of a long-term, fully budgeted, state-of-the-art, extremely vast technical modernization project working with a variety of cross-functional teams and stakeholders. This is a remote role; however, there may be meetings in the Sacramento area during the year. Candidates are expected to work business hours, Monday-Friday, Pacific Time Zone.

Join DHCS's Behavioral Health Transformation: Where Purpose Meets Innovation

Location: Remote Department: Department of Healthcare Services (DHCS), Behavioral Health Transformation (BHT) Commitment: Full-Time Consultant (W2 employee of Speridian or 1099/IC for Speridian) At DHCS we are leading a transformative journey in behavioral health, reshaping systems and services to ensure better outcomes for communities across California. Our behavioral health transformation initiative is more than a project- it's a movement to make California a leader in accessible, high-quality health services. We're setting the stage for a new era of government services built on agile methodologies, cutting-edge technologies, continuous improvement, AI, and relentless commitment to serving the public good At DHCS we're looking for innovators who are passionate about purposeful work and excited by the opportunity to drive lasting change through innovative solutions

The Staff Product Experience Designer is a senior individual contributor responsible for shaping and delivering end-to-end user experiences within a lean agile pod. This hybrid role blends user research, systems thinking, experience strategy, and UI design execution to support the modernization of public-sector licensing and certification services. Working closely with Product Managers, Product Owners, Engineering, Business Architecture, and cross-functional partners, this role drives clarity from discovery through implementation. The Staff Product Experience Designer operates with a research-first mindset, translates insights into actionable design direction, and produces high-quality, production-ready designs using the enterprise design system. This role ensures experiences are accessible, compliant, scalable, and aligned to policy and program goals, while navigating the complexity of multi-system workflows, multi-role collaboration, and public-sector service delivery.

Responsibilities:

• Understand Policy, Operations & User Context
• Develop a strong understanding of the policy, program goals, and regulatory requirements shaping the product.
• Analyze how policy translates into real operational workflows across counties, providers, and DHCS staff.
• Map end-to-end service journeys and multi-actor workflows with Product and stakeholders.
• Identify pain points, inefficiencies, and opportunities across current workflows and systems.

• Conduct User Research & Discovery
• Lead discovery research using interviews, workflow analysis, journey mapping, and usability testing.
• Understand how users perform their work today, including legacy processes and compliance-driven constraints.
• Synthesize research into insights, opportunity areas, and actionable design direction.
• Validate assumptions early with users, Product, and policy stakeholders.

• Design User Interfaces, Interaction Models & Complex Systems
• Translate insights and requirements into user flows, wireframes, interaction patterns, and production-ready UI designs.
• Own UI design execution in Figma using the enterprise design system.
• Ensure designs are clear, accessible, and usable for complex administrative workflows.
• Design for multi-step workflows, multi-role users, and interconnected systems within the broader service journey.
• Balance usability improvements with policy, compliance, and operational constraints

• Collaborate, Validate & Deliver
• Partner with Product Managers to ensure solutions support both user needs and program goals.
• Collaborate with Engineering to ensure designs are feasible and implemented with high quality.
• Conduct usability testing on prototypes and implemented features, iterating based on feedback, priorities, and technical constraints.
• Apply and evolve enterprise design system patterns to ensure consistency, accessibility, and usability across interfaces.

Qualifications:

• 5+ years of experience in UX Research, Product Design, or a combined UX role
• Proven experience as a full-stack UX practitioner (research + strategy + design)
• Strong portfolio demonstrating end-to-end ownership from research through design execution
• Demonstrated ability to design multi-step workflows, multi-role experiences, and interconnected systems
• Experience designing for public-sector, compliance-driven, or policy-constrained environments
• Experience operating in a fast-paced environment with a lean HCD and agile mindset
• Experience working in agile, cross-functional product development environments
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in HCI, Design, Computer Science, or related field
• Excellent communication, presentation, storytelling, and stakeholder collaboration skills
• Strong analytical thinking and problem-solving abilities

Key Skills:

• Strong expertise in user research methods (interviews, workflow analysis, usability testing, qualitative and quantitative synthesis)
• Mastery of Figma and proficiency with complementary design tools
• Expertise in visual design, interaction design, prototyping, and design systems
• Deep understanding of accessibility standards (WCAG), usability heuristics, and responsive design

• Challenge/take home exercise to be completed and passed

Speridian Technology is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Reasonable accommodations are available for qualified individuals with disabilities during the application process.