Job Title Director of Digital Discovery
Location Hybrid, based in Harrisburg, PA candidates will go onsite 1-3 days per week
RESPONSIBILITIES
Lead the design, stand-up, and execution of a structured digital discovery framework for a complex public-sector transformation initiative.
This role requires a senior digital-services leader who can enter an environment where discovery artifacts already exist, quickly assess what is usable, and establish the methods, governance, research practices, cadence, tools, evidence standards, and decision-making framework needed to conduct disciplined discovery.
The Director will lead a multidisciplinary team through user and stakeholder research, service design, process and journey analysis, data and system discovery, synthesis, prioritization, and roadmap development.
This is not simply a research-lead role. The successful candidate must have demonstrated experience building and operationalizing a digital discovery capability or framework from the ground up.
Key Responsibilities
- Establish the overall digital discovery operating framework, including methods, standards, governance, roles, cadences, artifacts, decision points, and quality controls.
- Define how discovery moves from: Questions → Research → Evidence → Findings → Opportunities → Prioritization → Recommendations → Roadmap
- Establish a structured discovery backlog for hypotheses, research questions, evidence gaps, risks, dependencies, and emerging areas of inquiry.
- Define evidence standards so findings clearly distinguish between validated evidence, assumptions, conflicting information, unresolved questions, and recommendations.
- Establish repeatable templates and practices for:
- Research plans
- Interview and workshop protocols
- Journey maps
- Service blueprints
- Process maps
- User stories
- Findings
- Evidence logs
- Opportunity assessments
- Decision records
- Prioritization
- Establish discovery ceremonies such as research planning, synthesis sessions, learning reviews, backlog refinement, stakeholder readouts, and decision reviews.
- Create an adaptive-discovery process that allows the team to pivot based on evidence while maintaining scope and governance controls.
Lead Digital Service Discovery
- Direct research across external users, internal stakeholders, business processes, policies, data, systems, and organizational boundaries.
- Evaluate existing discovery artifacts before initiating new research to avoid unnecessary duplication.
- Lead participant segmentation and research planning across different supplier populations.
- Guide development of user journeys and service blueprints that connect the front-stage digital experience to back-stage processes, systems, data, roles, and policies.
- Identify friction caused by duplicate data entry, unclear ownership, system handoffs, identity/access, data quality, communications, support, and fragmented processes.
- Lead analysis of authoritative data sources, systems of record, integration dependencies, and cross-system information flows.
- Facilitate discovery with executive stakeholders, product/program owners, technical teams, SMEs, external users, and agency partners.
- Convert discovery findings into decision-ready recommendations and a prioritized digital-services roadmap.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
- 5 + years in digital services, service design, human-centered design, digital transformation, product discovery, design research, or an equivalent discipline.
- 5+ years leading enterprise-level digital discovery or service-design engagements.
- Demonstrated experience standing up a digital discovery framework, practice, or operating model, not merely working within an established one.
- Demonstrated experience defining discovery:
- Methodologies
- Governance
- Research standards
- Artifacts
- Cadences
- Backlogs
- Evidence standards
- Prioritization approaches
- Experience leading multidisciplinary teams consisting of researchers, service designers, business/process analysts, product professionals, data/technical SMEs, and client stakeholders.
- Deep understanding of human-centered design and digital-service delivery.
- Hands-on knowledge of:
- Service design
- User research
- Journey mapping
- Service blueprinting
- Process mapping
- User stories
- Research synthesis
- Opportunity framing
- Prioritization
- Roadmap development
- Experience conducting discovery across people + process + policy + data + technology rather than limiting discovery to UI/UX.
- Experience translating complex discovery evidence into recommendations for executive decision-makers.
- Experience operating in Agile or iterative digital-service environments.
Desired Qualifications:
- Government digital-services experience
- Public-sector transformation
- Procurement or supplier experience
- Enterprise service design
- SAP/ERP ecosystem experience
- Master data or data-governance discovery
- Cross-agency or cross-department transformation
- Accessibility and plain-language practices
- Formal human-centered design or design-thinking practice leadership
