UI/UX Designer Principal

About the role

We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced senior-level Human-Centered Design (HCD) and user interface expert to join our dynamic team.

Responsibilities

• Provide subject matter expertise in UX design, offering strategic guidance grounded in Human-Centered Design and design thinking methodologies, including user research, personas, journey mapping, prototyping, mockups, and usability evaluation.
• Provide subject matter expertise in Information Architecture, defining scalable structures, navigation models, taxonomies, labeling systems, content hierarchies, and information relationships that enable users to efficiently find, understand, and complete tasks.
• Create and deliver a User Experience (UX) Research Plan and Outcomes for each use case, which shall include a research write-up documenting goals, anticipated outcomes, research questions, hypotheses, methodology, recruiting needs, synthesis, and next steps.
• Facilitate discovery activities, to include generative research with users and business stakeholders, an assessment of current related features, a content review, an information architecture review, an accessibility review, a business process review; and collection of any available data and analytics and provide in a User Experience Research Checklist.
• Partner with other Product Teams to ensure that the new tool or service fits into the existing structure.
• Collaborate across Product Teams to establish consistent navigation, terminology, categorization, and information structures across features, applications, and services.
• Lead the design and development of user interfaces for various applications, ensuring they are visually appealing, user-friendly, and efficient.
• Provide clear and actionable interface design specifications to development teams.
• Design dynamic forms and other complex UI components, including rich cards and drag & drop features.
• Define and maintain UX frameworks and templates for developers to use during the coding process.
• Define and maintain Information Architecture standards, patterns, and documentation to promote consistency, scalability, and usability across the product ecosystem.
• Apply insights from user experience research studies to describe product functionality, including epics and user stories, as well as operational, business, functional, technical, data, and integration requirements.
• Support design synthesis activities and generate insights and opportunities for improvement.
• Communicate research findings through a variety of formats (such as insight reports, stories, videos, storyboards, etc.) to maximize relevance and impact.
• Perform requirements analysis based on User Experience Research, obtaining stakeholder input from internal users and external users.
• Develop User Personas to represent user types that have wants and needs of our applications and products, and who might use our applications and products in a similar way.
• Create Customer and User Journey Maps and capture related data.
• Map user journeys, workflows, content, and system functionality to an overall Information Architecture to ensure individual features support a coherent end-to-end user experience.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including product owners, developers, and other designers.
• Conduct usability testing sessions to gather feedback on designs and apply results to refine designs.
• Write and edit plain language content for Development Teams.
• Establish clear, consistent, and user-centered terminology and labeling conventions in collaboration with UX, content, business, and technical stakeholders.
• Design, test, and deliver low- and high-fidelity wireframes, prototypes, and interactive web forms, updating them as needed to support stakeholder collaboration, usability testing, facilitated demos, and iterative design improvements.
• Lead user testing sessions and conduct thorough analysis to inform design improvements.
• Establish and uphold design standards across project components.
• Establish and uphold Information Architecture standards across project components, ensuring consistency in navigation, hierarchy, terminology, categorization, and content organization.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure seamless integration of UI/UX designs.
• Work with ReactJS, JavaScript, CSS, HTML and Tailwind to develop and refine user interfaces.
• Design within a micro-service architecture to create scalable and maintainable solutions.

Qualifications

• MA/MS plus 10+ years of general experience in information systems with 8+ years of specialized experience.
• HS (16+ years), AA/AS (14+ years), BA/BS (12+ years), Doctorate Degree/Ph.D. (9+ years)
• Familiarity with front-end development and specifically in ReactJS and JavaScript development.
• Familiarity with UX, information architecture, content strategy, and best practices in user centered design.
• Extensive experience developing Information Architecture for complex enterprise applications, including navigation structures, taxonomies, hierarchies, labeling systems, and information models.
• Experience conducting IA research and validation methods such as card sorting, tree testing, content inventories, taxonomy evaluation, and navigation testing.
• Experience creating and maintaining IA deliverables such as site maps, application maps, navigation models, taxonomy documentation, content hierarchies, and information architecture diagrams.
• Experience with designing software to align to strategic business needs and goals.
• Experience in conducting research for advanced technologies to determine how IT can support business needs leveraging software, hardware, or infrastructure.
• Experience in Figma or other related design tool.
• Experience in usability testing tools.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to think critically.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to articulate design concepts and decisions to stakeholders.
• Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced environment.
• Proven track record of delivering scalable and reliable software solutions.
• A portfolio demonstrating expertise in UI/UX design and relevant projects, including experience with Information Architecture deliverables and the organization of complex enterprise applications or digital products.
• Experience in designing dynamic forms with a strong emphasis on intuitive user experience and efficient design.
• Extensive experience in creating CSS cards and drag & drop functionality.
• Experience on UX strategy, user researcher, user interviews, surveys, and usability study.
• Builds personas, user journey map, empathy maps.
• Experience on UX analysis to conduct competitive analysis, market assessments and heuristic evaluations.
• Experienced in using user feedback to inform UX improvements and guide design decisions.
• Extensive experience in developing and testing wireframes and prototypes.
• Detailed knowledge of Section 508 requirements, and experience designing interfaces to be 508 compliant.
• Understanding of accessibility considerations related to Information Architecture, including accessible navigation, heading hierarchy, meaningful labels, consistent terminology, and predictable information structures.
• Demonstrated ability to generate innovative solutions to complex design problems.
• Solid background in defining and maintaining design standards.
• Solid background in defining and maintaining Information Architecture standards and governance across large or complex applications.
• Experience working with tools like Jira, Confluence extensively for work item tracking and documentation.
• Experience working in an agile environment with a knowledge of SAFe.
• Understanding of Agile methodologies.
• Communication and Organizational Excellent presentation and communication (oral and written) skills.
• Consultant mindset with the ability to work with high level customer stakeholders and build excellent customer relationship.
• Experience identifying and applying industry tools, solutions, methods best practices, and emerging technologies.
• Strong analytical skills and problem-solving skills with the ability to formulate and communicate recommendations for improvement.
• Experienced with process design and documentation methodologies, and design and production of quality deliverables, process and use case modeling, business case development.
• Ability to facilitate Information Architecture workshops and alignment sessions with users, stakeholders, product teams, and technical teams to establish shared understanding of terminology, navigation, hierarchy, and application structure.
• Ability to clearly communicate and document Information Architecture decisions, rationale, dependencies, and recommendations for both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively, independently, and as part of a team.
• Strong project management, leadership & meeting facilitation skill with knowledge of Project Life Cycle