UI/UX Designer at IvoryCloud in Rockville | Findjobs | Findjobs
UI/UX Designer
IvoryCloud
Location
🇺🇸 Rockville, United States
Type
full_time
Salary
$120k–$145k
Posted
1w ago
Job Description
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: • Secret (Required) Work Location: In person