Enterprise Practice Lead (Service Design) (Remote From Anywhere In Colorado)

Salary: $115,000.00 - $145,000.00 Annually Location : Statewide, CO Job Type: Full Time Job Number: EGBPOD Department: Governor's Office of Information Technology Opening Date: 05/27/2026 Closing Date: 6/10/2026 11:59 PM Mountain FLSA: Determined by Position Primary Physical Work Address: (Remote From Anywhere In CO) FLSA Status: Exempt; position is not eligible for overtime compensation. Department Contact Information: Type of Announcement: This announcement is not governed by the selection processes of the classified personnel system. Applications will be considered from residents and non-residents of Colorado. How To Apply: Please submit an online application for this position at https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/colorado. Reach out to the Department Contact to apply using a paper application, including any supplemental questions. Failure to submit a complete and timely application may result in the rejection of your application. Applicants are responsible for ensuring that application materials are received by the appropriate Human Resources office before the closing date and time listed. Description of Job IMPORTANT NOTE: Please review your application to ensure completion. For the most equitable applicant experience, OIT's hiring team considers only the contents of your application to review your qualifications. Please do not include any attachments (such as resume or cover letter) with your application as these items are not used by OIT's hiring team. Colorado Governor's Office of Information Technology is in the middle of a transformation worth joining. We're building cross-functional pod teams that partner directly with agencies to design, deliver, and continuously improve services that work for Coloradans. Good government depends on technology that works, and OIT exists to make that true for every Coloradan. The State of Colorado is seeking an Enterprise Practice Lead, Service Design, to help build the next generation of public services. We're looking for people who want to do the best work of their careers in the service of the public. Enterprise Practice Lead, Service Design, owns how human-centered design and user research are practiced across OIT, enabling Service Designers embedded in pods to conduct research with real constituents, map current and future state services, and produce the artifacts that ground the PM's backlog. The Enterprise Practice Lead owns the standards, methods, and professional community that make every service designer more capable. Guilds at OIT enable consistency, quality, and community across a federated team structure. IT Directors (ITDs) are responsible for the people management of their pod of practitioners; Enterprise Practice Leads guide and support the practitioners to deliver good work. GDS Digital and Data Capability Framework describes the head of service design as an expert practitioner who "can define and assure best practice while influencing, leading and mentoring others." That is precisely what this role is at OIT, operating across a distributed pod structure rather than a centralized design team. The central challenge is sustaining research rigor in conditions that constantly push toward skipping discovery: constrained timelines, agencies that think they already know the answer, and practitioners who are often the most variable-capacity member of their pod. What you'll do:

• Define research method standards: which methods are appropriate in which contexts, what rigorous synthesis looks like, and what constitutes a research artifact, such as a journey map, service blueprint, or problem statement, that the PM and Delivery Engineer can actually use.
• Establish journey mapping and service blueprinting standards: what level of fidelity is appropriate for a discovery phase versus a live service, and how to calibrate depth to the decision being made rather than producing documentation for its own sake.
• Build and maintain design system literacy standards: what every service designer needs to understand about OIT's design system and accessibility requirements, drawing on GDS's skills of "designing for everyone" and "designing strategically" as reference competencies.
• Identify and address systemic gaps in research and design quality across the portfolio: discovery being skipped, accessibility treated as an afterthought, and synthesis that never reaches the people who need to act on it.
• Run a service design guild: critique sessions, shared research repositories, peer learning, and a culture where practitioners feel professionally connected despite being distributed across agencies.
• Develop a career pathway for service designers that distinguishes research-depth from design-depth profiles, recognizes the GDS-aligned skills of "evidence-based design," "iterative design," and "leading design," and creates growth that doesn't require moving into management.
• Build and deliver training that builds statewide capability in the hardest parts of the job: holding space for research when stakeholders think they already know the answer, facilitating workshops with resistant participants, and translating findings into language that motivates action from program leadership.
• Create and maintain shared resources that practitioners across pods can adapt without starting from scratch, such as research guides, synthesis templates, and example artifacts at different fidelity levels.
• Advise ITDs and product directors on what good service design work looks like and how to give feedback to a practitioner in a discipline many technology leaders have limited direct experience with.
• Distinguish between a practitioner skill gap, a pod structural problem (not enough access to users or research time), and an agency partnership problem, and advise accordingly.
• Surface patterns of weak research practice across pods that point to a training or standards gap rather than individual performance.

What you bring:

• Knowledge of service design methods at a deep practitioner level: journey mapping, service blueprinting, current/future state process mapping, co-design facilitation, and how to choose the right method for the problem and phase at hand.
• Knowledge of user research methods including qualitative interviews, contextual inquiry, usability testing, and survey design, and how to select, scope, and conduct research that produces decision-enabling insights rather than data the team doesn't know what to do with.
• Knowledge of problem framing: how to define a problem space from user evidence before any solution is proposed, and how to help teams hold that space when stakeholders are pushing for answers.
• Knowledge of accessibility and equity in service design: WCAG 2.1/2.2 and Section 508 standards, and how to design government services that work for users with disabilities, limited English proficiency, limited digital access, and other access needs that disproportionately affect the populations Colorado agencies serve.
• Knowledge of EA accessibility and UX standards applicable to OIT-delivered services, and how to translate those standards into practical design guidance.
• Knowledge of the relationship between service design and adjacent disciplines: how research artifacts become PM backlog inputs, how service blueprints inform engineering and delivery management, and how to build feedback loops that keep design grounded in delivery reality.
• Knowledge of the landscape of government design practice: GDS's design principles and capability framework, 18F's research and content design approaches, and USDR's user experience and language access work as reference points for what rigorous human-centered practice in government looks like.
• Ability to protect discovery from delivery pressure. Service designers in pods face constant pressure to skip research and jump to solutions. The Enterprise Lead builds a professional community resilient enough to hold the line and gives practitioners the language and backing to do so.
• Ability to make research standards practical. Guidance that's too abstract doesn't get used. Translate rigor into usable tools that work in constrained government delivery environments with real constituents who are hard to recruit.
• Ability to build literacy for the discipline across non-designers. ITDs, product directors, and program leadership need enough understanding of service design to make space for it and to recognize what good looks like. Part of the Enterprise Lead's job is building that understanding.
• Ability to hold accessibility as a baseline, not an enhancement. Equity, plain language, and inclusive design are embedded in guild standards and are not optional for services that reach all Coloradans.
• Ability to create a community in a distributed structure. Service designers often work in isolation within their pods. The Enterprise Lead builds the connective tissue that makes them feel part of a discipline rather than just a team.

Minimum Qualifications, Substitutions, Conditions of Employment & Appeal Rights A wide salary range is posted for this position and any job offer is based upon a salary analysis to comply with the Colorado Equal Pay for Equal Work Act. The salary analysis considers relevant experience, education, certifications, and state seniority as compared to others doing substantially similar work. While all offers are compliant with the Colorado Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, there is no guarantee an offer will be at the top of the posted range based on the salary analysis. This is a skills-based job announcement. The required minimum qualifications and/or education (if substituting for the proven experience, knowledge, and skills), are as follows: Minimum Qualifications:

• A minimum of five (5) years of experience in human-centered design & user research, which includes working in or leading cross-functional teams using iterative, user-centered methods.
• A track record of working across disciplines - design, engineering, policy, or operations - to ship things that work for real people.

Substitutions:

• Additional appropriate education will substitute for the required experience on a year-for-year basis, but cannot completely substitute for these qualifications.
• Training or Certification related to the work assigned to the position will be assigned credit towards substitution for experience and/or education, but cannot completely substitute for these qualifications.
• If the minimum qualifications include a degree requirement, additional appropriate paid or unpaid experience will substitute for the required education on a year-for-year basis.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience designing services within government or highly regulated environments, with a demonstrated ability to navigate complex policy constraints and legal requirements.
• Experience mentoring junior designers and developing organizational service design standards, such as playbooks, templates, and best practices, to increase design maturity.
• Advanced knowledge of inclusive design principles and accessibility standards (such as ADAAA), with experience designing for diverse populations, including those with disabilities or limited digital literacy.
• Direct experience designing service workflows that integrate AI and automation while ensuring user control, transparency, and ethical considerations.

Conditions of Employment: OIT employees must comply with any screening procedures in place at state entity locations where they might be required to perform work. A pre-employment background check will be conducted as part of the selection process. Positions supporting some agencies such as the Department of Corrections and the Department of Public Safety will also require a pre-employment drug test. This position may require travel within the specified geographic area, and to locations across the state as needed. Supplemental Information If this posting indicates "remote from anywhere in CO" in the title, periodic reporting to the primary state work location designated for the position is required. All remote work must be performed in Colorado. While candidates from out of state will be considered for this role, the candidate selected for the position must relocate and reside in Colorado on the first day of their new position. A reasonable timeframe for relocation will be established on an individual basis, while considering business needs, and determining a start date. We know it's important to support each other, and that means having a healthy balance of work and personal time. Visit our benefits to learn more about some of our great offerings that allow us all to have fulfilling lives. Visit our How to Apply webpage to learn more about our application process and what to expect after you apply. Apply tot his job Apply To this Job