Lead UX Researcher / Designer

Job Description:

Agile Six is looking for a Lead UX Designer / Researcher to join a partner team on the SimplerNOFOs initiative with the HHS Office of Grants. This project aims to streamline the process of drafting Notices of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs), simplifying both the content and design of federal grant announcements posted on Grants.gov. The Lead UX Designer / Researcher will provide both strategic and tactical support for teams creating a superior user experience.

This Lead UX Designer / Researcher will have a breadth of UX knowledge with technical expertise in design system management and strategy. The role entails implementing current patterns in design solutions as well as improving the accessibility and visual clarity of existing templates and components. User research including discovery, synthesis, and documentation may be involved as the design system scales. This role involves collaborating with our team to design and build highly complex, cross-disciplinary projects for government agencies and the people they serve, including context switching across a variety of products in our portfolio as required.

Among your responsibilities will be to communicate your design system vision to both team members and key stakeholders. You have an adaptive, empathetic and collaborative mindset, and care deeply about team dynamics. Most importantly, you have a passion for working on important problems that have a lasting impact on millions of users and make a difference in our government!

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve the strategic direction for the organization’s design system, aligning it with accessibility and product goals. Establish frameworks with design best practices to maintain consistency, scalability, and quality.
• Apply the existing design system as recommended to create repeatable and consistent patterns across the portfolio. Collaborate with the team when necessary around iteration and improvement of design system components, with a focus on accessibility.
• Create design deliverables at all levels of fidelity throughout the process, from early sketches to low fidelity wireframes to high fidelity prototypes.
• Communicate potential costs and tradeoffs of different research and design approaches while working with incomplete requirements.
• As needed, lead user research efforts across a variety of research methodologies such as user interviews, heuristic evaluations, generative research, tree testing, card sorting and design thinking workshops. Own the research process, including discovery, synthesis, documentation, and communication.
• Stay up to date on emerging practices and technologies that support UX, and share these with the larger UX community at Agile Six when opportunities arise.
• Clearly articulate your thought processes through verbal and written explanation, whiteboard, sketching, or quick mock-ups to small or large groups.
• Work with the team to identify and integrate AI-powered tools and services into the software design and development lifecycle to improve the efficiency and/or quality of UX deliverables and production code. Example services include, but are not limited to, Vercel V0, Dovetail, Figma AI tools and GitHub Copilot.
• Collaborate with the product manager and engineers to ensure implementation matches intent across all design components.
• Confirm UX work is kept in sync with the product roadmap and flag delays or issues in research and design. Collaboratively create and evolve user stories and acceptance criteria with the product owner and wider Scrum team.
• Communicate and collaborate with stakeholders and team members across a range of disciplines.
• Mentor less experienced UX team members in UX best practices and oversee implementation.
• Support the practice of design and research within the larger company as needed through activities such as:
  • Assisting in outreach, recruitment, and hiring efforts
  • Occasionally participating in or otherwise supporting business development efforts, including code or design challenges, writing or reviewing proposal responses, etc.
  • Participating in communities of practice
• We expect the responsibilities of this position to shift and grow organically over time, in response to considerations such as the unique strengths and interests of the selected candidate and other team members and an evolving understanding of the delivery environment.

Basic qualifications

• 15+ years of experience working as UX researcher / designer or related position in collaboration with digital product teams (enterprise environment a plus)
  • A relevant Bachelor’s degree will count toward 4 years of experience. A relevant Master’s Degree will count toward 6 years of experience. A Doctorate will count toward 8 years of experience.
• A Bachelor’s degree is required for this position
• Ability to be autonomous, take initiative, and effectively communicate status and progress
• Portfolio illustrating your process and samples of native product design work driven by quantitative and qualitative user research
• Expertise in human-centered design, interaction design fundamentals, and UI design and research best practices, including accessibility
• Experience scaling, implementing and improving design systems in enterprise or complex digital environments
• Expert in Figma and modern prototyping tools
• Experience experimenting with and/or utilizing AI tools and services to design and create software, and a strong willingness to leverage AI where appropriate to improve outcomes
• Experience successfully collaborating with cross-functional partners and other designers and researchers, seeking and providing feedback in an Agile environment
• Adaptive, empathetic, collaborative, and holds a positive mindset
• Has lived and worked in the United States for 3 out of the last 5 years

Additional desired qualifications

• Familiarity with US Web Design System
• Familiarity with Section-508 and WCAG 2.1AA Accessibility requirements, standards, and testing tools
• Experience developing knowledge of complex domain and systems
• Experience working with government agencies
• Ability to work across multiple applications, components, languages, and frameworks
• Experience working in a cross-functional team, including research, design, engineering, and product
• You are a U.S. Veteran. As a service-disabled veteran-owned small business, we recognize the transition to civilian life can be tricky, and welcome and encourage Veterans to apply

At Agile Six, we are committed to building teams that represent a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. Even if you don't meet every requirement, we encourage you to apply. We’re eager to meet people who believe in our mission and who can contribute to our team in a variety of ways

Salary and Sixer Benefits

To promote pay equity, we publish a salary for each position.

This role pays: $152,331.

Our benefits are designed to reinforce our core values of Wholeness, Self Management and Inclusion. The following benefits are available to all employees. We respect that only you know what balance means for your life and season. While we offer support from coaches, we expect you to own your wholeness, show up for work whole, and go home to your family the same. You will be seen, heard and valued. We expect you to offer the same for your colleagues, be kind (not controlling), be caring (not directive) and ready to participate in a state of flow. We mean it when we say “We build better by putting people first”.

All Sixers Enjoy:

• Self-managed work/life balance and flexibility
• Competitive and equitable salary (equal pay for equal work)
• Employee Stock Ownership (ESOP) for all employees!
• 401K matching
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Employer paid short and long term disability insurance
• Employer paid life insurance
• Self-managed and generous paid time off
• Paid federal holidays and two floating holidays
• Paid parental leave
• Self-managed professional development spending
• Self-managed wellness days

Hiring practices

Agile Six is an Equal Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any factor protected by applicable federal, state or local laws.

Note: We participate in E-Verify. Upon hire, we will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U States. Unfortunately, we are unable to sponsor visas at this time.

If you need assistance or reasonable accommodation in applying for any of these positions, please reach out to careers@agile6.com. We want to ensure you have the ability to apply for any position at Agile Six.

Please read and respond to the application questions carefully. Interviews are conducted on a rolling basis until the position has been filled.