Overview
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.
Requirements
· 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.
Job Description
· 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.
Preferred Qualifications
· 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.
Benefits
· 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
Benefits:
- 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?
Experience:
- enterprise scale UI/UX work: 7 years (Required)
- supporting federal customers : 4 years (Required)
Security clearance:
Work Location: In person
