Director of Digital Discovery

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