UX/UI Design Lead

Design Lead This is a Hybrid position. Ad Hoc is a technology company that empowers organizations to deliver scalable, impactful digital services. Using modern, agile methods, our team creates products that meet people’s needs and transform their experience of government. Work on things that matter Our collaborations have shaped some of the defining moments in public-sector service delivery. We’ve helped build products that connect Veterans to tailored services, help millions access affordable health care, and support important programs like Head Start. As we work with agencies to deliver critical services, we’re also changing how the government approaches technology. Built for a remote life Our culture, communications, and tools are built for remote work, enabling us to bring together top talent nationwide. At Ad Hoc, remote life empowers our teams to design work environments that fit their lives and that foster flexibility and collaboration to achieve positive outcomes for our customers. Committed to high expectations and a welcoming culture Ad Hoc values acceptance, accountability, and humility. We aren’t heroes. We learn from our mistakes and improve the process for the next time. We build small, inclusive teams to collaborate closely with our partners to solve the right problems and deliver software that works. The Federal Civilian business unit supports many customers spanning the federal, commercial, and nonprofit space. Our customers include NASA, the General Services Administration, Office of Personnel Management, the Library of Congress, Health & Human Services, and the FDIC. We partner with these agencies to build new capabilities, deliver products, establish data as a strategic asset for informed decision-making, modernize legacy systems, and build the digital service infrastructure necessary to scale their mission impact. The Mission We’re rebuilding how 330 million Americans access public health information while increasing trust. The White House National Design Studio has raised expectations for what federal websites should look and feel like. Consumer-grade polish is now the standard and we’re looking for a design leader who can meet that standard and while delivering an accessible, fast, and highly usable site for real people. As design lead for the modernization of a high traffic public health site, you’ll directly shape how a major federal agency communicates health information to millions of Americans. The experience needs to feel modern and trustworthy. The kind of thing where someone visits and thinks “this doesn’t feel like a government site” while also being one of the most accessible .gov health properties on the internet. You’ll work closely with a team of forward looking technologists where your designs feed directly into frontend engineering. The quality and pace of your output sets the tempo for the whole team. You own the visual and interaction quality of everything the public sees. Primary Responsibilities As a Design Lead, you will be responsible for working with leadership to shape the direction of the program, while gaining exposure into people management. A Design Lead is a people manager, leader, and mentor with the ability to cross-functionally lead program delivery. You are an emerging subject matter expert that is developing the skills to successfully lead through team members and effectively communicate and execute against program and organizational objectives. In this role, a Design Lead will support leadership in partnering with peers to meet delivery requirements. A Design Lead will enhance their communication, and leadership skills to prepare them to successfully manage through direct reports. Primary expectations of a Design Lead include: • Set the visual identity and design system for the site. The direction should align with the National Design Studio’s approach while establishing a visual language appropriate for public health, where trust and clarity matter as much as aesthetics. • Design the full user experience: splash page, content browse and search, detail pages, AI-powered features, data visualizations, mobile layouts, and potentially a mobile app. • Build and maintain a component library in Figma that maps to the frontend implementation. Your components should be ready for engineers to build from, not aspirational concepts. • Design AI interactions. How do users enter queries? How do results appear? How do citations show up? What happens when the system isn’t confident in an answer? • Design engaging data visualizations. These could be charts, maps, and dashboards that the public can understand without need for a data science background. • Run rapid prototyping and usability testing for fast iterations with real feedback. • Partner with accessibility experts to make sure every design decision meets WCAG 2.1 AA from the start. That means color contrast, focus states, motion preferences, heading hierarchy, and touch targets are all part of how you design. • Keep the design pipeline ahead of engineering. • Manage supporting designer(s). • Present your work to stakeholders and leadership. You need to be able to sell the vision, explain your decisions in plain language, and take feedback without losing the thread. • Care about the details most designers skip. Micro-interactions, transitions, loading states, empty states, error states. These are the things that separate a site people use from a site people remember. Basic Qualifications • 7+ years of product design experience, with at least 2 of those leading design for a consumer-facing digital product. Could be a web app, mobile app, SaaS platform, or high-traffic content site. • A portfolio that shows both strong visual craft and systematic thinking. We want to see work that shipped over concepts. • Expert Figma, Figma Make skills, or equivalent product skills: component libraries, auto-layout, variants, prototyping, design tokens. You should think in systems, not individual screens. • Deep understanding of responsive, mobile-first design. • Experience designing for AI-powered interfaces. Search, conversational UI, recommendations, or something similar. You understand the interaction patterns that AI introduces and how they differ from traditional UI. • Experience designing data visualization products or features. Know how to take complex datasets and turn them into something visual that tells a clear story and invites interaction. • Track record of building design systems that actually bridge the gap between design and engineering. You know how your components translate to frontend code. • Working knowledge of accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA). • Ability to move fast on tight deadlines in a high visibility space without letting quality slip. • Strong communication and presentation skills as you’ll present to stakeholders who don’t share your design vocabulary. • Bachelor’s degree and 7+ years of profession experience in UX Design Design Strategy • 2+ or more years of people management experience, responsible for defining expectations for team operations and performance management; • 4+ years experience directing assignments for cross-functional team • Experienced with government contracting requirements and regulations • Extensive experience with people management, software development, customer interactions, formal and informal communication, and mentorship Preferred Qualifications • Time at a high-growth startup, design agency, or consumer tech company where design quality was a real differentiator for the business. • Motion design skills. The ability to concept and spec animations and transitions that make the experience better without creating performance or accessibility problems. • Experience designing for health, wellness, or the public sector, where trust and clarity carry extra weight. • Familiarity with the National Design Studio’s visual direction and the broader federal design landscape. • Comfort with Figma-to-code workflows, AI-assisted design tools like Figma Make or v0, or hands-on CSS/HTML prototyping. Why This Role Design is at the center of the federal technology conversation right now in a way it hasn’t been before. You’ll bring the same level of visual ambition but pair it with the rigor and craft that good consumer design actually requires. The work reaches millions of people making real health decisions for their families. If applying top-tier design skills to public service impact sounds like something worth doing, we should talk. To learn more about working at Ad Hoc, please visit: https://adhocteam.us/join Benefits • Company-subsidized health, dental, and vision insurance • Flexible PTO • 401K with employer match • Paid parental leave after one year of service • Employee Assistance Program Ad Hoc LLC is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, age, pregnancy, disability, work-related injury, covered veteran status, political ideology, marital status, or any other factor that the law protects from employment discrimination. In support of various state and city equal pay transparency laws, Ad Hoc job descriptions feature the starting range we reasonably expect to pay to candidates who would join our team with little to no need for training on the responsibilities we've outlined above. Actual compensation is influenced by a wide range of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, and responsibility. The range of starting pay for this role is $150,000-$200,000. Our recruiters will be happy to answer any questions you may have, and we look forward to learning more about your salary requirements. Job Reference https://adhoc.team/