UX Research & Design Lead

Grant Street Group builds cloud-based software for public sector clients, and they are seeking a UX Research & Design Lead to lead and grow their UX team. This role involves significant ownership over day-to-day UX operations and strategic leadership, focusing on improving digital experiences for users while fostering collaboration across teams.

Responsibilities:

• Lead and grow the UX team
• Serve as the operations lead, who the UX Researcher & Design team members report to, with a focus on performance assessment, feedback, coaching, and career growth
• Own building and shaping the team, including staffing planning, hiring and onboarding new UX team members, refining team structure and roles over time, and ensuring our teams have the mix of skills and experience they need
• Design and refine practical, lightweight UX processes that fit GSG’s culture and product lifecycles (e.g., intake, triage/prioritization across products, research planning, design reviews, documentation)
• Clarify how UX partners with Product team members throughout the life of development projects; from problem framing and research through design, development, testing, and iteration
• Set and uphold a practical bar for UX quality, including usability, accessibility, consistency, and clear design rationale—especially as we modernize legacy experiences and extend newer ones
• Partner with the team to evolve our design systems and shared UI components, and move toward a more centralized approach where changes can be rolled out reliably across products
• Work with Product and Tech leaders to embed accessibility expectations into our everyday work—so compliance is a shared responsibility that is built into our software development practices
• Encourage the team to experiment thoughtfully with AI-assisted tools (e.g., for research synthesis, content exploration, design exploration) while keeping work grounded in user needs and sound judgment
• Identify a few concrete, low-risk ways to pilot AI in our UX practice, measure outcomes, and share what we learn across the organization

Requirements:

• 5+ years of experience in UX Research & Design for complex software products, ideally including B2B/B2G or enterprise SaaS applications
• 2+ years in a leadership capacity, which may include: Direct people leadership of UX professionals, Leading UX practices or process changes across teams, Partnering with other leads and managers to evolve how UX fits into product development
• Strong practitioner background across both research and design, including: Planning and running user research and usability testing, Translating insights into flows, wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity designs, Collaborating closely with product and engineering during implementation
• Comfortable with modern UX tools such as Figma and common research platforms (e.g., Lyssna, similar tools)
• Working knowledge of WCAG accessibility standards and how to incorporate them into everyday design and review practices
• Proven ability to: Prioritize UX work across multiple products and stakeholders, Influence without relying on formal authority, Communicate clearly with a wide range of audiences (from engineers to executives)
• Enjoys coaching and mentoring others and takes satisfaction in seeing the team level up
• Values incremental, sustainable change—willing to start small, learn, and expand rather than imposing rigid processes overnight
• Curious about AI and other emerging tools, and eager to explore where they can extend the value of our UX team
• Aligned with our culture of ownership, collaboration, and continuous learning
• Experience in government technology, payments, tax systems, or similarly regulated, high-complexity domains
• Experience formalizing or maintaining a design system or shared component library
• Prior experimentation with AI-assisted design or research workflows