UI/UX Designer

IvoryCloud is seeking a UI/UX Designer to lead human-centered design on a mission-critical federal enterprise system supporting defense security cooperation/Foreign Military Sales operations for U.S. and international stakeholders worldwide. This is a Key Personnel position responsible for reducing user friction, improving data-entry accuracy, and engineering role-tailored interfaces that drive adoption across diverse user communities. The ideal candidate brings deep federal UI/UX experience at enterprise scale, demonstrated Section 508 / WCAG 2.1 AA engineering discipline, and the design judgment required to evolve a complex enterprise interface incrementally without disrupting the workflows that mission users depend on every day., · Serve as the single point of accountability for the user experience on the program, owning the design system, role-tailored interface portfolio, and the human-centered design lifecycle from discovery through release.

· Lead structured user research with diverse mission user communities - including persona mapping, workflow analysis, friction-point identification, and heuristic audits of current system screens.

· Engineer role-tailored dashboards differentiated by user community, each optimized for the specific workflows, decision points, and authorities of its intended audience.

· Drive the Discover-Design-Deliver methodology across every sprint, ensuring user research outputs feed directly into backlog prioritization rather than being captured and shelved.

· Redesign data-entry workflows to incentivize accuracy and completeness rather than “check-the-box” compliance behavior - directly contributing to data-quality and audit-readiness objectives.

· Author and maintain a program-specific design system - including component library, interaction patterns, accessibility annotations, and visual style guidelines - version-controlled in the shared design repository.

· Engineer Section 508 / WCAG 2.1 AA compliance into every wireframe, prototype, and production design artifact from initial concept forward - never as a retroactive audit.

· Partner with the Frontend Developer to ensure design intent is preserved through implementation, conducting design reviews on every user-facing pull request before merge.

· Facilitate iterative usability testing - moderated and unmoderated - embedded in every sprint cycle, with documented findings feeding the next sprint’s design and backlog refinement.

· Conduct user acceptance testing (UAT) facilitation alongside the Government Product Owner before every production release, ensuring user-facing changes meet accessibility, usability, and workflow-fit thresholds.

· Collaborate with the Product Manager and Business Analyst to translate stakeholder requests into validated design problems, counterweighting “loud user” bias with structured research findings.

· Maintain a continuous feedback loop with mission users - through interviews, usability sessions, analytics review, and helpdesk ticket pattern analysis - tied directly to backlog prioritization input.

· Engineer change management and training artifacts for every user-facing release in partnership with the Training Specialist, to reduce adoption friction and downstream support load.

· Produce rapid wireframes and clickable prototypes for stakeholder validation in advance of development commitment, reducing rework risk on every feature.

· Conduct heuristic evaluations and competitive analyses on adjacent enterprise systems to inform design decisions and identify cross-system pattern alignment opportunities.

· Contribute to program reporting and status artifacts by producing visual materials that communicate user impact, adoption metrics, and accessibility posture to government leadership.

· Maintain a continuously refreshed UX risk register tracking usability debt, accessibility findings, and stakeholder satisfaction trends with documented mitigation owners and current status visible via shared project management dashboards.

· Ensure adherence to established quality and process standards for requirements management and verification - particularly as applied to user-facing acceptance criteria.

· Represent UI/UX capability in technical interchange meetings, design review sessions, and working groups; provide design feasibility input to program leadership.

· Mentor and develop supporting Frontend Developers, Business Analysts, and visiting design contributors; support recruiting, onboarding, and professional development of the broader design team.

· Research and evaluate emerging UI/UX practices, accessibility tooling, and design system evolutions - recommending pragmatic adoption only where direct user value or accessibility improvement is demonstrable.

Do you have experience in WCAG?, Do you have a Bachelor’s degree?, · U.S. Citizenship: Required, Non-negotiable. (This differs from eligibility to work in the U.S.)

· Clearance: Active Secret clearance required.

· Minimum Years Experience: 7 years of UI/UX design experience on enterprise-scale software systems, including a minimum of 4 years supporting U.S. federal customers and 2 years leading design on programs with 10,000+ end users.

· Location: National Capital Region (NCR); hybrid schedule with regular on-site presence at client Northern Virginia site and company headquarters in Rockville, Maryland. Must reside within commuting distance of the NCR and be available to report on-site within three hours of request.

· Demonstrated experience leading the Discover-Design-Deliver lifecycle on federal Agile programs, including structured user research, persona mapping, wireframing, rapid prototyping, and iterative usability testing.

· Expert proficiency with Figma, Adobe XD, or comparable design tools; working proficiency with HTML, CSS, and modern JavaScript frameworks (React or Angular) to communicate design intent to developers.

· Exceptional oral and written communication skills, including the ability to facilitate user research sessions with senior government and military stakeholders and translate findings into prioritized backlog input.

· Direct experience engineering Section 508 / WCAG 2.1 AA compliance into design artifacts from the wireframe stage forward - not as a retroactive audit.

· Demonstrated experience designing role-tailored dashboards for distinct stakeholder communities with materially different workflows, mental models, and authorities.

Education

· Bachelor’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Industrial Design, Graphic Design, Computer Science, Cognitive Science, or a related discipline. Master’s degree in HCI, Design Research, or equivalent preferred.

· Equivalent professional experience may be considered in lieu of formal degree on a case-by-case basis.

Certifications

· Desired certifications include:

o Nielsen Norman Group UX Certification

o Interaction Design Foundation Certification

o Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC)

o Trusted Tester (DHS Section 508) Certification

o Certified Scrum Practitioner (CSP) or equivalent (within six months of hire)

· Formal usability and human-centered design training (Nielsen Norman Group UX Certification, IDEO, Carnegie Mellon HCII, or equivalent) strongly preferred., · Demonstrated experience designing for mission-critical federal systems serving large-scale, geographically distributed user communities with differentiated workflows and authorities.

· Direct experience with defense security cooperation, Foreign Military Sales (FMS), or comparable DOW/DOS mission domains and their enterprise systems.

· Experience designing for classified environments (NIPR/SIPR) with classification-aware UI patterns, role-based access controls, and multi-level security workflow constraints.

· Experience designing within a CMMI Level 3 or higher appraised Agile delivery organization.

· Track record of UI/UX work cited in user satisfaction improvement, adoption metrics, or data-quality outcomes on federal program performance reviews., * enterprise scale UI/UX work: 7 years (Required)

• supporting federal customers : 4 years (Required)

Pulled from the full job description

• Referral program
• 401(k)
• Health insurance
• Retirement plan
• 401(k) matching
• Paid time off
• Vision insurance, · Salaried position and eligible for participation in company and Business Development bonus programs

· Full-time benefits include:

• 401(k)
• 401(k) matching
• Dental insurance
• Health insurance
• Life insurance
• Paid time off
• Referral program
• Retirement plan
• Vision insurance

About IvoryCloud

IvoryCloud is a growing 8(a) certified small business. Our work with Federal and commercial clients includes Mission Systems development, modernization, and support, Software services, AI/ML engineering, Enterprise Cybersecurity, and Mission Optimization services. We are a growing, privately held small business located in Rockville, MD. IvoryCloud is an Equal Opportunity Employer (EEO).

Pay: $120,000.00 - $145,000.00 per year, * 401(k)

• 401(k) matching
• Dental insurance
• Flexible schedule
• Health insurance
• Life insurance
• Paid time off
• Referral program
• Retirement plan
• Vision insurance

Application Question(s):

• This role requires U.S. citizenship. Please type ‘citizen’ if you meet this requirement.
• Do you meet the hybrid requirements of on-site work in Arlington, VA and Rockville, MD?