Research & Design Lead (CDC) Save

About Skylight

Skylight is a digital consultancy using design and technology to help government agencies deliver better public services.

We’re at the forefront of a civic movement to reinvent how all levels of government serve families, patients, and many others in today's digital world.

If you want to play a part in driving this critical movement forward, we’d love for you to join our growing team of public interest technologists.

The work we do matters.

About the job

As the Research & Design Lead, you’ll lead multiple cross-functional teams of service designers, user researchers, product designers, and content designers, playing a pivotal role in driving user-centered solutions. This work will focus on addressing some of the most entrenched data-related challenges hindering real-time, targeted public health interventions in the U.S. You’ll collaborate closely with leading public health experts and technologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and their partners throughout the public health ecosystem, to advance open and interoperable public health data systems.

By developing and implementing modern, open-source, and modular tools, you’ll help transform key parts of the data journey — from patients to public health officials and back. This is a unique opportunity to lead efforts that will deliver impactful, real-time public health solutions, ensuring that critical data flows seamlessly and supports more effective interventions.

What you’ll do

• Lead and mentor cross-functional teams, including service designers, researchers, product designers, and content designers, fostering collaboration and high performance
• Develop and implement a cohesive research and design strategy centered on enhancing data interoperability and real-time public health responses
• Partner with CDC public health experts, technologists, and key stakeholders to create open-source tools that improve data flow and integration across public health systems
• Guide research efforts to deliver actionable insights, driving critical public health interventions and decision-making
• Apply service design methodologies to tackle systemic public health challenges, with a focus on optimizing data management and accessibility
• Spearhead DesignOps and ResearchOps initiatives to streamline operations, enhance team efficiency, and support scalable design and research processes
• Drive cross-team alignment, ensuring design and research efforts are fully integrated with product and engineering, while remaining aligned with the CDC's mission and goals
• Foster a culture of innovation and continuous improvement across all teams and projects
• Provide hands-on support as needed, helping teams navigate obstacles and stay on track to meet project goals

What we're looking for

Minimum qualifications

• Expertise in human-centered design and systems thinking
• Proven experience leading large research and design teams
• Skilled in DesignOps and ResearchOps, optimizing both design and research processes to enhance team efficiency
• Ability to manage multi-disciplinary teams tackling complex data challenges
• Strong stakeholder management and communication abilities
• Experience in cross-functional teams using modern practices like product management, lean-agile engineering, and data science

Nice-to-have qualifications

• Expertise in service design within complex ecosystems
• Understanding of public health systems and the challenges surrounding real-time data interoperability
• Active federal public trust (tier 2)
• Experience working with the CDC
• Prior experience working in the civic tech space
• Experience working in a remote-team environment

Don’t meet 100% of the criteria but think you can do the job? We’d love to chat anyway! We’re on a mission to build diverse teams, and studies have shown that women and marginalized folks are less likely to apply to jobs if they don’t check every box.

Other requirements

• Ability to obtain and hold a federal public trust (tier 2).
• All work must be conducted within the U.S., excluding U.S. territories. Some federal contracts require U.S. citizenship to be eligible for employment.
• You must be legally authorized to work in the U.S. now and in the future without sponsorship.
• You may be required to complete a company background check successfully.
• Some of our available roles are on federal contracts that require a degree or additional years of experience as a substitute

Position type

This is a full-time, exempt position.

Location

This is a fully remote position.

Care package

Salary

We want to give you the most competitive salary possible. After all, you deserve it! To that end, we use the results of our interview process to determine what salary is most appropriate given your current level of seniority. For a Research & Design Lead at Skylight, the current salary ranges are as follows:

• Senior Research & Design Lead: $150,000–$185,000
• Staff Research & Design Lead: $170,000–$203,000
• Principal Research & Design Lead: $180,000–$230,000

Benefits

Your well-being is important to us, so we focus on supporting you in a variety of ways:

• Medical insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance
• Short-term and long-term disability insurance
• Life and AD&D insurance
• Dependent care FSA, healthcare FSA, health savings account
• Dollar-for-dollar 401(k) match up to 10% of your salary with no vesting period
• Paid time off, including 20 vacation days, 11 federal holidays, and flexible sick leave
• Up to 12 weeks paid time off for all eligible new birth, adoption, or foster parents
• Performance rewards, including annual salary increase, annual performance bonus, spot bonuses, and stock options
• Business development / sales bonuses
• Referral bonuses
• Annual $2,000 allowance for professional development
• Annual $750 allowance for tech-related purchases
• Annual swag budget of $100 to display your Skylight pride with some merchandise (hoodies, hats, and more)
• Dollar-for-dollar charity donation matching, up to $500 per year
• Access up to $1,000 before payday to cover emergency expenses
• Flexible, remote-friendly work environment
• An environment that empowers you to unleash your superpowers for public good

Interview tips

We want you to have a great interview experience with us! Here are some tips to help you prepare for a successful interview:

• Visit our join page to learn more about how our interview process works.
• Check out our Career Pathways framework to learn more about the different roles within Skylight and the skills needed to do them.
• Please include a portfolio of 1–2 showcase projects with your application. Your portfolio can be anything from a website to a slide deck (whatever works for you). So that we can prioritize your application for consideration, please ensure that you either remove your access password to your portfolio or provide access details.
• If you’d like to request reasonable accommodations during the application or interviewing process, please contact our recruiting team at [email protected].

We participate in E-Verify and upon hire, will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you’re authorized to work in the U.S.

We're an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, age, pregnancy, disability, work-related injury, covered veteran status, political ideology, marital status, or any other factor that the law protects from employment discrimination.