Department of Human Services, Med-QUEST Division
This is for the State of Hawaii, Department of Human Services, Med-QUEST Division. The location of the position(s) will be based on where the selectee resides within the State. There are two position vacancies available for immediate filling.
Salary range for these positions start at $11,500 per month and will be commensurate with education and experience.
If you have any questions regarding this non-civil service (exempt) position, please reach out to Meredith Nichols, Med-QUEST Division Administrator at mnichols@dhs.hawaii.gov.
The State Recruiting Office will refer all inquiries regarding this exempt position to the Department of Human Services, Human Resources Office, Recruitment and Examination Staff via bleong2@dhs.hawaii.gov.
Duties Summary
Med-QUEST, Hawaii's Medicaid program, provides healthcare coverage to just under 400,000 people in Hawaii's diverse community, including working families, children, older adults, and people with disabilities. New federal mandates introduced in 2025 through H.R. 1, including work requirements for expansion populations and a shift from annual to semi-annual eligibility redeterminations, create urgency and opportunity for Med-QUEST to modernize its technology, redesign service delivery, and stand-up new capabilities.
As the senior design expert in Med-QUEST's Customer Experience Office, the Senior Service Designer delivers user research and service design across a complex, enterprise-scale Medicaid program, and sets standards for how the division understands and improves the experiences of the people it serves. This position serves as the definitive expert in user research, service design, and human-centered design for Med-QUEST's customer experience transformation goals and advises senior leaders on how design and research shape better outcomes. Reporting to the CX Transformation Officer and working alongside product and engineering colleagues, the Senior Service Designer makes sure the division's programs and services are grounded in the lived experiences of the people who depend on them, delivering clear, accessible, and intuitive interactions across digital, written, and in-person touchpoints. The role holds the full picture of how services are experienced, understands where they fail or create burden, and determines how they should be improved.
Day to day, the Senior Service Designer plans and conducts user research with Medicaid beneficiaries and frontline eligibility staff, using field research, interviews, usability testing, and workflow analysis to understand how services are experienced. They translate learnings into service blueprints, journey maps, prototypes, and other design artifacts that make complex enrollment and renewal processes visible and point to concrete improvements. The work moves between hands-on research and design and higher-level judgment: identifying where services fail or create burden, determining how they should be redesigned, and turning findings into prioritized recommendations.
Priorities include:
- Leading user research and service design for H.R. 1 work requirement implementation
- Redesigning online renewal experiences to reduce burden on both beneficiaries and eligibility staff
- Sustaining Hawaii's nation-leading ex parte renewal rates
- Converting ongoing user research into prioritized design recommendations and implementation
The Senior Service Designer delivers work both directly and collaboratively with vendor teams and contractors, setting standards, evaluating deliverables, and holding that work accountable for quality and user-centered outcomes, while building internal user-centered practices through mentoring staff and partners.
This is senior digital service delivery work navigating complex technical, policy, and operational systems, meeting time-sensitive federal requirements, and ensuring services are usable, accessible, and effective for the people Med-QUEST serves.
This position's official title is "Customer Experience Transformation Fellow (Designer)." This announcement refers to the role as Senior Service Designer. The two refer to the same position.
Minimum Qualification Requirements
EXPERIENCE: Minimum five (5) years of professional experience in human-centered design, user research, or service design, with at least two (2) years leading research and design strategy in complex, regulated, or government environments. This experience should include:
- Navigating multiple stakeholders and substantial constraints, similar in scope to policy and federal requirements
- Translating user needs and business requirements into actionable service improvements, design recommendations, and delivery priorities
- A proven track record conducting qualitative and quantitative research to inform program decisions and measure impact
**DESIRED EXPERIENCE: **
- Government, healthcare, or nonprofit environments working on similar programs
- Federal/state policy, compliance, and procurement constraints
- Background in agile service delivery, discovery-to-delivery cycles, or modernization projects
- Building human-centered design capacity within organizations
- Proven ability to develop and evaluate vendors based on outcome measurements
- Familiarity with government program delivery and balancing policy and technical realities
**KNOWLEDGE: **
- Design and research planning, development, monitoring, and evaluation within complex, regulated environments
- Human-centered design principles and methods, including user research, usability testing, service design, information architecture, and interaction design
- Qualitative and quantitative research methodologies
- Designing for equity, accessibility, and diverse populations including people with varying abilities, languages, literacy levels, and access to technology
- Government service delivery contexts or large-scale public-facing systems
- Federal and state regulatory environments governing benefits administration and eligibility systems
**DESIRED KNOWLEDGE: **Medicaid, SNAP, TANF, or other government benefits programs. Federal/state procurement regulations and advance planning document processes.
**SKILLS/ABILITIES: **
- Deliver outcomes in environments with complex processes, multiple stakeholders, or regulatory constraints
- Expertise in qualitative research, usability testing, and service design methods
- Translate research findings and user needs into actionable design recommendations and service improvements
- Strong ability to develop service blueprints, journey maps, prototypes, and other design artifacts that make complex processes visible and actionable
- Demonstrated ability to work in cross-functional teams and bridge gaps between organizational silos and technology
- Ability to synthesize complex research into consumable formats for diverse audiences
- Strong communication skills across all levels, from frontline and technical staff to executive leadership
- Considerable resourcefulness and creativity in developing new service approaches
- Adaptability: thrives in ambiguous environments and can quickly adjust approach based on new information