User Experience Designer

Location: Remote/WFH (onsite first week; preferred locations: NYC metro, Charlotte, San Antonio, DC, Irvine)
Duration: 5+ month contract

Responsibilities

• Audit existing designs to understand the current user experience, identify pain points, and align with product goals and technical constraints.
• Advocate for the user throughout the design process, ensuring solutions address real user needs and deliver seamless, intuitive experiences.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams—product managers, developers, compliance, and accessibility experts—to align designs with business and regulatory requirements.
• Create and refine wireframes, prototypes, and visual assets to explore and communicate design ideas clearly to stakeholders.
• Support and apply user research to inform design decisions, validate concepts, and iterate based on feedback.
• Ensure consistency and usability by leveraging existing design systems, researching design patterns, and considering accessibility implications.
• Share and iterate on designs by gathering feedback from stakeholders, peer groups, and users to improve design quality and usability.
• Prepare designs for development handoff, including documentation, annotations, and accessibility considerations.
• Support the development process by answering questions, updating designs as needed, and participating in design reviews and walk-throughs.
• Track and evaluate design performance post-launch using data and feedback to inform future improvements.
• Independently lead design efforts on moderately complex projects, balancing user needs with business and technical constraints with minimal supervision.
• Contribute to UX Department efforts and improvements to refine and enhance practices and offerings.
• Drive cross-functional collaboration and influence product/portfolio direction, guiding teams toward user-centered solutions while balancing business impact.
• Elevate design quality and serve as a leading contributor to UX Department initiatives.
• Adopt AI-assisted design tools to enhance design efficiency and innovation.
• Lead cross-platform design efforts (mobile, web, voice) to ensure consistency and usability across channels.
• Influence product strategy by aligning design decisions with measurable business outcomes.
• Craft effective, usable design concepts, interactions, and visual artifacts with high attention to detail and accessibility standards.
• Ensure delivered designs are consistent with design systems and contribute to their continued enhancement, growth, and adoption.
• Lead and facilitate design sprints and iterations in collaboration with Product Management, UX, and development partners.
• Provide constructive design feedback and guidance to other designers and model best practices for design critique.
• Proactively collaborate with designers inside and outside the product team on design patterns and approaches across experiences.
• Lead and facilitate design strategy, concepting, and definition activities (design thinking, service design blueprinting, journey mapping, user flow mapping) and deliver related artifacts.
• Collaborate closely with Product Managers and Product Owners as a leading voice for the user to influence product direction and roadmaps.
• Communicate and collaborate with the Design Core team on design system updates and implementation within products.
• Lead and facilitate the implementation of UX Chapter-defined processes and best practices within the product team; educate and advocate for UX value.
• Influence, support, and collaborate with a variety of UX disciplines across divisions to deliver high-quality user experiences and achieve strategic business and UX goals.

Requirements

• 7+ years of professional design experience.
• Expertise in a wide variety of UX Design methods and tools: user journey mapping, service design, design thinking, information architecture, low-fidelity and high-fidelity design, design systems, accessibility in design, and prototyping.
• Experience delivering responsive design solutions for a variety of devices and form factors.
• Competencies in front-end development and collaborating closely with development partners.
• Ability to integrate vendor/third-party applications and proprietary in-house products into a holistic user experience.
• Strong communication skills to engage multiple audiences at all levels, including leaders, team members, and external vendors.
• Ability to establish and maintain effective relationships across departments, business areas, and vendors.
• Excellent leadership, collaboration, and motivational skills.
• Expert organizational skills and ability to manage self.
• Takes ownership for self-development and stays current with UX skills, techniques, tools, and best practices.
• Presents ideas, thoughts, arguments, and information persuasively and credibly.