Senior/Staff Product Designer (U. S. Air Force)

Skylight is a digital consultancy dedicated to improving public services for government agencies. The Senior/Staff Product Designer will be responsible for understanding user needs and developing solutions through a human-centered design approach, particularly for the U.S. Air Force's Special Operations community.

Responsibilities:

• Work alongside product managers, engineers, and other practitioners responsible for making critical decisions about product strategy
• Plan and conduct research to inform strategic product and design direction
• Define end-to-end flows that incorporate well-thought-out information architecture, systems thinking, design principles, and common design patterns
• Create simple and elegant user interfaces and/or evolve existing visual systems with clear rationale
• Apply a design process that incorporates frequent iterations and feedback
• Create mockups and design artifacts as needed to help the team develop a shared understanding of the product vision
• Balance user and business needs within an agile working environment
• Uphold human-centered design principles and evangelize its value to stakeholders, engagement partners, and subject matter experts
• Promote empathy for the general public and government workers as we seek to improve their tools and technology

Requirements:

• Able to plan, synthesize, and share out generative and evaluative user research to inform product and design direction
• Proficiency in Figma and working within agile environments
• Strong experience in human-centered design (HCD)
• Ability to be flexible and navigate ambiguity
• Can define scalable, end-to-end interaction flows that incorporate key design principles, intentional information architectures, common design patterns, and accessibility
• Can create simple, elegant, and thoughtful user interfaces through the implementation of visual design elements, such as branding, illustration, iconography, typography, or microinteractions
• Understand how to use different design processes (e.g., double diamond) and can produce documentation for storytelling that helps your team and stakeholders empathize with users
• Can contribute to product strategy decisions by aligning design processes with lean/agile methodologies, serving as the primary voice for users, prioritizing and balancing user and business decisions, and crafting mental models to help define and refine product opportunities
• Can facilitate and communicate well, including communicating your design rationale to different groups (users, teammates, stakeholders) effectively
• Ability to demonstrate product design leadership through actions such as driving excellence in your team's design execution
• Able to leverage behavioral analytics tools, such as click maps and heat maps, to gain insights into user interactions with forms and interfaces, informing design decisions and usability improvements
• Design and evaluate multivariant experiments using A/B testing platforms to assess the impact of design choices and optimize user experiences based on data-driven insights
• Ability to work successfully within a professional services environment (e.g., can communicate effectively with clients)
• Passionate about creating better public outcomes through great government services
• A mindset and work approach that align with Skylight's core values
• Ability to travel for work from time to time
• Experience working with military users
• Experience with AI/ML
• Experience designing, multi-step forms with thoughtful validation patterns and clear error handling to support seamless user input experiences
• Lead and facilitate collaborative workshops to align stakeholders, gather insights, and drive decision-making
• Experience owning design work by leading projects or serving as the sole designer, balancing strategy, execution, and cross-functional collaboration
• Prior experience working in the civic tech space
• Experience working in a remote-team environment