Senior Designer (Remote)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Senior Designer serves as an experienced individual contributor within a team, with the expectation that you will further develop your leadership, guidance, and mentoring skills. With minimal oversight from leadership, you will be responsible for supporting the goal of meeting scope, schedule, and delivery requirements. A Senior Designer impacts the long-term goals of the program, while contributing to the development of the program's design strategy. You may serve as the discipline's primary lead when working with stakeholders and utilize strong influential skills to drive improvements in design processes and practices. Primary expectations of a Senior Designer include:

• →Lead UX design work across program workstreams including discovery artifacts, user flows, wireframes, low and high fidelity prototypes, and heuristic evaluations in Figma using federal Design System components
• →Drive Design System governance, proposing and validating new components, design tokens, and patterns through the six-step contribution workflow in collaboration with frontend engineers and agency stakeholders
• →Conduct and synthesize user research including stakeholder interviews, usability testing, and workflow observations, delivering actionable findings that inform PI planning feature prioritization
• →Annotate Figma designs with keyboard navigation, ARIA patterns, focus management, and screen reader labels before sprint planning, ensuring accessibility requirements are defined before code is written
• →Collaborate with UX researchers, accessibility specialists, frontend engineers, and product owners to validate designs for technical feasibility and Section 508 compliance before sprint commitment
• →Lead competitive analysis and heuristic evaluations, presenting findings and recommendations to federal stakeholders and program leadership
• →Facilitate cross-functional design discussions with multi-disciplined teams, translating complex regulatory and policy requirements into clear, user-centered design solutions
• →Contribute to and maintain versioned Figma libraries accessible to frontend engineers and software team managers across all program workstreams
• →Mentor junior designers with actionable, growth-oriented feedback and lead design critiques that maintain quality and consistency across the program
• →Identify design risks and communicate recommendations to mitigate them to program leadership
• →Participate in candidate homework evaluations and panel interviews

• 8+ years of relevant UX and product design experience and a Bachelor's degree, or equivalent additional experience in lieu of a degree
• Must meet federal suitability requirements and pass a background investigation as a condition of employment
• Expert proficiency in Figma for wireframing, prototyping, and Design System contribution and governance
• Demonstrated experience leading human-centered design processes end-to-end, from discovery through validated, production-ready designs
• Strong working knowledge of WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards and how they apply at the design stage, including annotation practices for keyboard navigation, ARIA, and focus management
• Experience conducting and synthesizing user research including usability testing with assistive technology users
• Proven ability to contribute to and govern Design System component libraries across a large, multi-team program
• Strong storytelling and presentation skills, able to distill complex design decisions for federal agency stakeholders and executive audiences
• Experience working within agile or SAFe delivery environments, integrating design work into sprint-based development timelines
• Prior experience mentoring junior designers and leading design critiques

• Prior experience with federal agency digital services or government contracting environments
• Familiarity with LCR 5-220 or comparable federal accessibility standards
• Experience authoring accessibility conformance reports or VPATs prior to major releases
• Familiarity with a federal agency user-centered design process including Discover, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Validate phases
• Experience with Miro, Adobe Creative Suite, or other collaborative design and research tooling
• Exposure to SAFe PI planning and cross-team design coordination across multiple workstreams