Senior UX/UI Designer

Role: Senior UX/UI Designer

Mode: Contract - Long Term

Location: Remote/Reston, VA

About You

• As a UX/UI product designer, you are independent in your support of a cross-functional team
• Advanced understanding of design systems, hierarchy, typography, visual design, responsiveness, accessibility, branding, illustration, data visualization, iconography and interaction design
• You are detailed oriented and passionate about visual design, UX, and research
• A portfolio of your work included in your application
• A Bachelor’s degree in a related field (computer science, interaction design, HCI, industrial design, information science, social sciences, graphic design, etc.) and/or equivalent years of work experience
• 5 years of professional experience of relevant Design experience
• Documented experience in designing for large content rich websites, and applications, proven solutions that met users’ needs
• Extensive experience in information design and user scenarios
• Broad knowledge of digital interaction design patterns, Web site architecture, user interfaces, and navigation on various platforms (Web, mobile, tablet)
• Familiarity with user-centered research, such as usability testing, contextual inquiry, and field interviews
• Understanding the physical, cognitive, cultural, and social factors that affect design decisions
• Familiarity with front-end coding technologies and data modeling is a big plus
• Strong communicator with an ability to demonstrate both leadership and understanding with respect to project partners; Self-managing, but also used to working within a team
• Highly adaptable to new information, situations, or challenges and can work independently
• Like facing new challenges and thrive on opportunities to think creatively and come up with fresh approaches to tough business and operational problems
• Possess a ‘Product Design’ mindset, who owns the end-to-end design delivery: from strategy to comps

About the Team

• The Design team is a close-knit group of about 40 members with a passion for empowering students. The College Board is looking for a talented Senior UX/UI Designer to work across two teams, partnering with the team to support a rebrand and the design of student focused features.r You will work closely with cross functional teams that include Product, Content, Engineering, Marketing, and Customer Engagement teams. In this role you will be integral in supporting our mission of building products that support students in planning for their future.

About the Opportunity

• As our Senior UX/UI Designer, you'll work closely with our design team, product leads, and engineering partners to develop creative solutions that meet business goals and user needs. You'll have the opportunity to learn our global design system and contribute to its growth. Additionally, you'll play a vital role in maintaining a consistent BigFuture brand across various channels, helping us reach our audience effectively.
• You are highly skilled, motivated, and passionate about visual design, UX, and research. You embrace collaboration while maintaining an entrepreneurial spirit, and you respect and value your project partners. Through research and discovery, you stay informed about your end users and leverage data to enhance usability, accessibility, and overall product quality.

In this role, you will:

Design & Implementation (70%)

• Contribute to the UX/UI of our foundational BigFuture design system, standards, patterns, and UI elements
• Partner with the team and build out assets to support the BigFuture rebrand
• Support Design Research (generative and evaluative) initiatives for your team/products
• Analyze business and technical requirements
• Lead synthesis sessions with your team, following agile and lean methodologies
• Create user journeys and flows to capture current and future states of user pathways
• Develop wireframes, interactive prototypes, comps, specifications, and other design documents to communicate design ideas to project teams
• Partner with the Accessibility team to ensure designs are compliant
• Create and present concepts/deliverables to your working team and our stakeholders
• Conduct handoffs to developers through tools like Figma and Zeplin
• Work collaboratively with our Core Design team to ensure brand and pattern alignment

Strategy & Communication (20%)

• Contribute to the overall UX/UI design strategy, including feeding into and refining a design system to facilitate a unified experience across all our products
• Document and present design updates to stakeholders and users
• Collaborate and take direction from multiple stakeholders and disciplines to achieve an impactful experience
• Participate and be vocal in agile ceremonies to ensure design needs are met
• Nurture a culture of user empathy and deep curiosity that enables us to build simple, intuitive products for our customers
• Advocate for consistent design processes, methods, core systems, and patterns

Project Management (10%)

• Self-manage workload and obtain necessary requirements and acceptance criteria needed to complete work
• Coordinate with UX Lead, product leads, design team, and engineers to ensure timely delivery of design artifacts
• Help foster an environment for collaboration by partnering with business and other creative units to align our visual design approach with project goals, and the College Board brand