Octo, an IBM company, is an industry-leading, award-winning provider of technical solutions for the federal government.  At Octo, we specialize in providing agile software engineering, user experience design, cloud services, and digital strategy services that address government's most pressing missions. Octo delivers intelligent solutions and rapid results, yielding lower costs and measurable outcomes.

Our team is what makes Octo great. At Octo you'll work beside some of the smartest and most accomplished staff you'll find in your career.  Octo offers fantastic benefits and an amazing workplace culture where you will feel valued while you perform mission critical work for our government.  Voted one of the region’s best places to work multiple times, Octo is an employer of choice!

You…

As the Senior User Experience Designer, you will help identify and build software products that significantly improve government-wide award processes using human-centered design practices. You will drive user experience activities, derive insights, generate concepts, and communicate those concepts. You will support the product team and product owners in capturing the strategy, scope, and plan for creating or modernizing functions. You will work with user researchers to design user engagement at all stages of development, from the initial framing of an idea to testing its implementation.  You will work with other UX designers to prototype concepts.  You will work with business analysts to derive requirements.  You will communicate with developers as they are building solutions. In coordination with product owners and with the support of the development and enabler teams, you will solve large complex problems and develop a deep understanding of the user and business goals, practices, and standards for buy.gsa.gov and similar acquisition market research applications.

Us…

We were founded as a fresh alternative in the Government Consulting Community and are dedicated to the belief that results are a product of analytical thinking, agile design principles and that solutions are built in collaboration with, not for, our customers. This mantra drives us to succeed and act as true partners in advancing our client’s missions.

Program Mission…                                                             

The program you will be supporting has a mission to provide development, security, and operations (DevSecOps) support to General Services Administration (GSA) with a focus on development, operations, and modernization of complex, large-scale IT systems in the cloud. The team utilizes human-centered design, open-source technologies, agile project management practices, and modern DevSecOps delivery to support enterprise systems critical to the services provided by GSA to members of the other federal agencies and to the public.

Requirements...

• A deep understanding of the end-to-end iterative design process, including discovery and research, design, wireframing, journey maps, persona development, user testing, and validating implementation
• Mentoring and providing guidance to junior/or peer designers across agile teams
• Identifying where challenges for our customers originate (ex. customer support, technical systems, policy) and how they are similar or different across user groups
• Working closely with Usability Team in planning and coordinating user research and testing to ensure the design solutions are informed by the challenges and pain points of our customers
• Enforce usability and consistency standards across the enterprise by utilizing The United Sates Web Design System (USWDS) components and promoting use of our internal shared component library
• Leading and sharing research, usability, and accessibility findings across the program
• Creating human-centered design artifacts that articulate and help identify relevant touchpoints, map user and service workflows and information architecture, and identify potential bottlenecks and negative customer experience points
• Creating low and high-fidelity prototypes to illustrate and test product concepts and assumptions
• Supporting engagements with governance agencies to provide transparency and ensure alignment with federal missions and strategies
• Supporting requirements capture by working closely with product owners and business analysts to synthesize human-centered design practices with business and policy considerations

·        Can share your portfolio that demonstrates your experience, storytelling, and design presentation skills

Desired Skills:

The Senior User Experience Designer would have

·        Prior experience with service design, design research, reviewing existing systems and processes to identify UX issues and develop UX recommendations

·        Background working on cross-functional, multidisciplinary teams that deliver digital products and services in an incremental, user-focused way

·        Experience with modern design tools like Adobe XD, Figma, or Axure and Adobe Creative Suite

·        Familiar with 508 compliance testing tools such as ANDI and AMP (in addition to manual testing) to provide guidance to testers and developers on findings and how to address issues

• Ability to work effectively in an Agile environment, including the ability to adapt quickly and effectively to changing requirements

Years of Experience:

• A minimum of 10 years of experience with human-centered design and accessibility, preferably in a highly regulated environment

Education: Bachelor’s degree (preferred)

Location: Remote

Clearance: Ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust is required