Internal Development for Steampunk, Inc.

I joined Steampunk, a startup government contracting firm, within the first year of business. The company focused on winning large-scale contracts and growing its staff rapidly in order to deliver to government clients, but was not giving as much consideration to how to support the employees who would eventually be delivering on the contracts they were winning. I took advantage of the company’s startup environment - testing and iterating on processes and frameworks, and then codifying them in company playbooks. My effort was primarily motivated by improving employee experience, but also played into my strengths as a strategic planner.

Capability Building
Design & Strategy is a key part of Steampunk’s value proposition, and was.

Employee Experience
As the lead designer, I led the team (made up of technical architects, scrum masters, and developers), through decomposing the problem issued to us, identifying personas, carving out user journeys, and illustrating how all actors and systems would interact. This iterative process involved close collaboration and communication with technologists, helping bring a user-centered lens to their development decisions and helped us rapidly build a pragmatic end-to-end solution.

Building for Scale
In support of Steampunk’s Growth and Business Development activities, I acted as design lead in short-term tech challenges. These challenges (lasting between seven and ten days each) act as a case study for prospective clients to understand how our team collaborates and approaches problems.