UX Design Engineer

UX Design Engineer

A Brief Overview

N2IA is hiring a UX Design Engineer to build and evolve a scalable design system that powers multiple product experiences. You'll define standards, components, patterns, and governance that help teams ship faster with consistent, accessible, and secure user experiences across complex, role-based applications.

This role sits at the intersection of product design, front-end engineering, and platform enablement. You'll partner closely with designers and developers to ensure the system is not only beautiful and usable, but also production-ready, documented, and adopted.

What You'll Need to Succeed

Design System & Component Design

• Design and maintain a library of UI components, templates, and interaction patterns for web applications.
• Create reusable patterns for complex workflows (forms, tables, navigation, search, case views, dashboards).
• Define visual foundations (typography, color, spacing, layout, elevation, motion) and apply them consistently.

Design & Discovery

• Conduct user research to understand needs, constraints, and service pain points (interviews, contextual inquiry, surveys, usability testing).
• Translate research into insights, personas, journey maps, service blueprints, and prioritized design opportunities.
• Create information architecture, user flows, wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity designs for websites and applications.
• Facilitate design workshops with cross-functional stakeholders (program owners, legal/policy, IT, operations, call centers, and community partners).

Documentation & Adoption

• Produce clear guidance and examples for component usage, do/don't rules, and accessibility requirements.
• Maintain a system site or documentation hub (e.g., Jira, Storybook, Figma libraries).
• Support onboarding and enablement for product teams through office hours, design reviews, and playbooks.

Accessibility & Quality

• Ensure WCAG-aligned accessibility across components (keyboard nav, focus states, contrast, ARIA guidance).
• Establish UX quality gates and design system best practices to reduce inconsistency and rework.

Collaboration & Governance

• Partner with engineering to align components with implementation (React, design tokens, CSS conventions).
• Help establish a contribution model: intake, review, versioning, and release notes.
• Coordinate across product teams to prioritize system backlog and roadmap.

Research & Iteration

• Gather feedback from product owners, designers and engineers, track adoption, and improve components and design based on real usage.
• Identify UX debt and propose standardized solutions that simplify product experiences.

Required Qualifications

• 4+ years of product design experience, including design systems work (or equivalent demonstrated impact).
• Strong proficiency in Figma (libraries, variants, auto-layout, tokens/workflows).
• Experience designing for complex, data-heavy applications (not just marketing sites and mobile apps).
• Working knowledge of accessibility (WCAG) and inclusive interaction patterns.
• Ability to communicate clearly and drive alignment across design and engineering.
• Clearance: DoW SECRET

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience collaborating with a React component library
• Brings a positive, collaborative energy; curious, has a sense of humor, and helps teams do great work under real-world constraints.
• Familiarity with design tokens, theming, and scalable UI architecture.
• Experience in enterprise, government, or compliance-heavy environments (role-based access, auditing, security).
• Ability to prototype interactions and demonstrate flows (Figma prototypes, Framer, or light code).