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

Skylight is a digital consultancy using design and technology to help government agencies deliver better public services. The Senior/Staff Product Designer will lead end-to-end UI/UX design, user research, product strategy, and human-centered design efforts for U.S. Air Force modernization and transformation initiatives. The role collaborates with product managers, engineers, researchers, and government partners in an agile environment.

Responsibilities:

• 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 in Figma, and evolve existing visual systems with clear rationale
• Work alongside product managers, engineers, researchers, and government partners to shape product strategy for net-new capabilities
• Find creative ways to reach users where access is limited, and bring what you learn back to the team and client
• Plan and conduct generative and evaluative research to inform strategic product and design direction
• Uphold human-centered design principles and help the client organization become more customer-centric as it goes through agile transformation

Requirements:

• 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
• Able to plan, synthesize, and share out generative and evaluative user research to inform product and design direction
• 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
• Experience working on cross-functional teams (product, design, engineering, ops) in iterative delivery
• Ability to coach and enable government partners on human-centered design principles
• A mindset and work approach that aligns with our core values
• Some of our available roles are on federal contracts that require a degree or additional years of experience as a substitute
• All work must be conducted within the U.S., excluding U.S. territories
• This contract requires U.S. citizenship to be eligible for employment
• You must complete a company background check successfully
• Experience with legacy modernization and/or enterprise digital transformation efforts
• Hands-on experience designing in Figma
• Military or Department of Defense experience
• Experience delivering technology in government, regulated industries, or other public-benefit settings
• A track record of staying aligned and accountable on remote teams
• Please include a portfolio of 1–2 work samples with your application. Your portfolio can be anything from a website to a slide deck — whatever best showcases your work. We suggest choosing work samples that highlight your skills and experience in relation to the qualifications outlined in the job posting. Unless specified in the job requirements, your portfolio doesn't need to be tied to any particular industry or field — just select samples that best represent your expertise. To ensure we can review your application promptly, please remove any access passwords on your portfolio or provide access details