Hybrid/Local HIX UI/UX Designer/Strategist

About

The Maryland Health Benefit Exchange (MHBE), an independent unit of state government, provides accessible, affordable health coverage to Marylanders. MHBE administers Maryland Health Connection (MHC), the state s health insurance marketplace. Through MHC, Maryland residents explore health insurance plans, compare rates, and determine their eligibility for advanced premium tax credits (APTC), cost-sharing reductions (CSR), and public assistance programs such as Medicaid and the Maryland Children s Health Insurance Program (MCHP).

MHBE is establishing a Medicaid outcome-focused, human-centered design (HCD) pilot team to drive measurable improvements in eligibility, enrollment, and renewal outcomes for Medicaid beneficiaries, improving renewal and retention rates, reducing coverage disruptions, and embedding modern user-centered practices across the agency. MHBE seeks one (1) Subject Matter Expert resource to serve as the Senior Human-Centered Design (HCD) Strategist on this Medicaid outcome team. The Senior HCD Strategist will work directly with policymakers, eligibility staff, IT professionals, program administrators, and beneficiaries to ensure that technology decisions, system improvements, and policy implementations align with user needs and operational realities. The role is both domain expert and cross-functional collaborator, leading user research, translating findings into service blueprints and prototypes, building organizational HCD capacity, and ensuring that Medicaid systems and processes become simpler, faster, and more reliable for the people who depend on them and the staff who serve them.

Duties / Responsibilities

• Serve as the Senior Human-Centered Design (HCD) Strategist on MHBE s Medicaid outcome-focused pilot team, contributing senior domain expertise while collaborating across policy, operations, eligibility, and information technology functions.
• Lead human-centered design practice across the Medicaid eligibility, enrollment, and renewal lifecycle, analyzing current-state journeys, designing improvements, and supporting implementation alongside program and IT teams.
• Conduct qualitative user research with Medicaid beneficiaries and frontline eligibility staff to surface pain points, friction points, and unmet needs across the consumer and worker experiences.
• Translate research findings into service blueprints, journey maps, prototypes, and design recommendations that inform service design and technical improvements to MHBE platforms supporting Medicaid eligibility and enrollment.
• Ensure all design work prioritizes usability, accessibility (Section 508 and WCAG), inclusion, and equity for diverse populations, including non-English-speaking beneficiaries, beneficiaries with disabilities, and underserved communities.
• Apply, iterate on, and contribute to MHBE s design system standards to drive consistency and quality across the user experience.
• Facilitate stakeholder engagement across program staff, IT teams, executive leadership, and beneficiary communities, building effective working relationships that bridge organizational boundaries between policy, operations, and technology.
• Present research findings, design recommendations, and outcome metrics to senior leadership and to the broader Medicaid outcome team in clear, decision-ready formats.
• Ensure that proposed service and system changes meet federal and state policy and compliance requirements while delivering tangible, real-world improvements for beneficiaries and staff.
• Lead organizational human-centered design capacity-building by supporting state team adoption of cross-functional, iterative ways of working; contributing to knowledge-sharing and documentation for long-term sustainability; building state team capacity to apply HCD methods as part of ongoing operations rather than one-time engagements; and championing and demonstrating the value of HCD practice through guidance, mentorship, and visible delivery.
• Collaborate with engineers, product managers, business analysts, and contractor teams to ensure HCD insights translate into technical requirements, user stories, and acceptance criteria that engineering and PMO teams can execute against.
• Adhere to all security, change control, and MHBE Project Management Office (PMO) policies, processes, and methodologies.

Note: The candidate must be flexible to work overtime as needed, including weekends, holidays, and off-hours.