User Experience Designer - Exempt

This role combines user-centered design, research, and cross-functional leadership to help upgrade and improve enterprise applications, with a strong focus on dashboard efficiency, usability, and platform consistency. Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with product, engineering, and leadership teams to shape design strategies, challenge assumptions, align on priorities, and support platform branding and user adoption.

The Product Design Lead is a senior UX design professional responsible for leading hands-on design execution and strategic design direction across complex platform initiatives. This role combines user-centered design, research, and cross-functional leadership to help upgrade and improve enterprise applications, with a strong focus on dashboard efficiency, usability, and platform consistency. The Lead will work closely with product, engineering, and business stakeholders to define design needs, develop concepts, and deliver high-quality user experiences that align with enterprise standards and branding.

Key Responsibilities:

• UX Strategy & Design Leadership: Lead the creation of concepts, information architecture, wireframes, prototypes, user interface designs, and detailed specifications to support project goals and timelines
• Design Standards & Visual Guidance: Independently create, update, and apply user interface and visual design guidelines and standards while ensuring consistency with enterprise design principles
• User Research & Experience Evaluation: Provide UX expertise throughout product definition and evaluation by leveraging user research, testing, interviews, market insights, and other inputs to improve usability and effectiveness
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with product, engineering, and leadership teams to shape design strategies, challenge assumptions, align on priorities, and support platform branding and user adoption
• Team Process & Mentorship: Help organize design team processes, mentor junior designers, review usability activities and deliverables, and advocate for user experience best practices across the organization

Qualifications:

• 10+ years of experience as a design professional with deep knowledge of UX and at least one area of specialization
• 1+ years of experience using AI tools in the design process
• Strong experience with Figma
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence stakeholders and explain design rationale clearly
• Ability to work independently while managing ambiguity and multiple concurrent engagements
• Experience leading complex user experience activities, including user research, usability testing, interaction design, and visual design
• Bachelor s degree in psychology, user experience, design, human-computer interaction, or a related discipline, or equivalent work experience
• Portfolio demonstrating recent, complex design work across enterprise, B2B, internal, or consumer-facing systems

Preferred Experience:

• Strong user research background with the ability to translate findings into actionable design improvements
• Experience mentoring junior designers and helping shape team practices
• Advanced degree

Additional Information:

• Duration: 12 month contract opportunity
• Hybrid Work Model: 4 days onsite required weekly
• Location(s): New York, NY or Pittsburgh, PA
• Rate Range: $90-100/hr. W2 (based on experience)