Fully Remote
Salary Range: $100,000 - $115,000
Vaultes is a rapidly growing enterprise IT and cybersecurity company headquartered in the Washington DC metro area. Serving customers across the Federal government and commercial sectors, we use our broad experience and deep technical expertise to implement customized solutions to enable mission achievement and secure the world through technology.
Vaultes is founded on three core principles: Collaboration, Innovation, and Engagement. You will be a key collaborator in the fulfillment of our mission by bringing your expertise and experience to the team. Innovation is key to success in our technology organization as it requires staying abreast and ahead of the evolving nature of the industry. We nurture innovation with our culture of independence through empowerment, celebration of successes, and emphasis on continuous learning. Engagement is key for interacting with our clients and with the team. You will be joining self-motivated and results-driven individuals as you take action to elevate Vaultes and our clients.
As a member of our dynamic tech team, you will work collaboratively with team members and key stakeholders to engage in various aspects of high-quality website design for our clients. The main purpose of this role is to help improve the usability and experience of SBA.gov to drive higher adoption and increased engagement covering a range of activities from research, analysis, synthesis, and design. This engagement will happen across multiple contracts involved in the web and communications for SBA.
Additionally, as a member of the core design team, you may work on more than one project at a time, supporting multiple teams with their own clients, project goals, constraints, and timelines. Using your core design skills, you will create and refine digital products to enable useful, usable, and delightful experiences for those who use them.
Requirements
Responsibilities:
- Carry out a wide variety of research, design, and prototyping tasks, including:
- Understand product goals and user needs.
- Conduct concept and usability testing and gather feedback.
- Create personas based on user research and collected data.
- Define an interaction model and evaluate its success.
- Develop wireframes and prototypes around customer needs.
- Prepare and present rough drafts to internal teams and key stakeholders.
- Identify and troubleshoot usability issues.
- Create mockups and prototypes.
- Share progress and interact with team using a version control system.
- Collaborate in an agile environment with multi-disciplinary teams including strategy, research, content, visual, and development.
- Facilitate ideation through sketching and collaborative activities, such as design sprints and other participatory design activities.
- Create storyboards and step-by-step flows of varying resolution to communicate a person’s experience through a system.
- Conduct evaluative user research (for example, user testing of prototypes or existing products, heuristic analyses, and interviews).
- Work integrally with developers to shepherd designs through the development process.
- Promote the importance of human-centered design practice throughout the organization and with clients.
- Implement, maintain, and expand upon project plans with emphasis on high degree of quality in conjunction product managers and development managers.
- Mentor and develop team members in alignment with our brand and overall direction.
- Keep abreast of industry trends and tools and communicate findings out to the team and Vaultes.
- Help build a culture of continuous improvement across all levels of design — strategic, structural, and surface — where designers (including yourself) feel challenged with meaningful work and see a clear path for growth.
- Additional tasks as assigned.
Qualifications:
- 7-10 years of experience in UX, product design, or commensurate work experience.
- Bachelor’s degree.
- Must have a portfolio of experience that demonstrates previous work.
- Must be able to obtain Public Trust clearance.
Skills:
Agile mindset. You can identify and compare the best processes or delivery methods to use, including measuring and evaluating outcomes. You know how to help the team to decide the best approach. You can help teams to manage and visualize outcomes, prioritize work and work to agreed minimum viable product (MVP), print and scope.
Communication. You can listen to the needs of technical and business stakeholders and interpret them clearly for both audiences. You know how to manage stakeholder expectations. You can be flexible, and you are capable of proactive and reactive communication. You know how to facilitate difficult discussions within the team or with diverse senior stakeholders.
Team collaboration. You know how to work collaboratively within a group, actively networking with others and varying feedback for the appropriate time to ensure the discussion sticks. You can use your initiative to identify problems or issues in the team dynamic and rectify them. You can pull out issues through agile health-checks with the team to provoke the right responses.
Evidence- and context-based design. You know how to design systems for use across multiple services and can identify the simplest approach out of a variety of approaches.
Working within constraints. You can identify constraints and can communicate about these and work within them. You know how to challenge the validity of constraints. You can ensure standards are being met.
Leadership and guidance. You can make decisions characterized by medium levels of risk and complexity and recommend decisions as risk and complexity increase. You can build consensus between services or independent stakeholders. You can identify problems or issues in the team dynamic and rectify them. You engage in varying types of feedback choosing the right type at the appropriate time and ensuring the discussion and decision sticks. You can bring people together to form a motivated team and help create the right environment for a team to work in. You know how to facilitate the best team make-up depending on the situation.
Prototyping. You are experienced in using a variety of methods of prototyping. You know how to share best practice and can coach others. You can look at strategic service design end to end. You know how to create and validate a dynamic prototype using code (HTML/CSS) or manipulating the output of nocode tools.
Strategic thinking. You can define strategies and policies, providing guidance to others on working in the strategic context. You know how to evaluate current strategies to ensure business requirements are being met and exceeded where possible. Support strategic planning in an administrative capacity.
Human-centered. You know how to give direction on which tools or methods to use. You are experienced in meeting the needs of users across a variety of channels. You can bring insight and expertise in how user needs have changed over time to ensure these are met by the business. You know how to apply strategic thinking in how to provide the best service for the end user.
Inclusive design mindset. You know how to give direction on which tools or methods to use. You are experienced in meeting the needs of users across a spectrum of abilities. You can build consensus between various stakeholders on balancing the needs and constraints of a wide spectrum of users, the goals and objectives of the project, and the design intent.
Perks and Benefits
- Flexible hours (core 9-3)
- Paid time off
- Paid holidays
- 401k with matching incentive
- Medical/dental/vision benefits
- Company provided life insurance
- Company provided short-term disability
- Professional development opportunities
