Senior/Staff Product Designer (U.S. Air Force)

About Skylight

Skylight is a digital consultancy using design and technology to help government agencies deliver better public services.

We’re at the forefront of a civic movement to reinvent how all levels of government serve families, patients, and many others in today’s digital world.

If you want to play a part in driving this critical movement forward, we’d love for you to join our growing team of public interest technologists.

The work we do matters.

About the job

At Skylight, product designers play a critical role in understanding the problem space, identifying opportunities, and developing solutions using a lean-agile approach. Product designers are the primary user advocate on their team and engage in continuous research throughout the product life cycle. Working end-to-end from concept to implementation, product designers conduct research, facilitate design activities, and ensure the product team is building the right thing.

Skylight has partnered with the U.S. Air Force across multiple legacy modernization efforts. The work spans modernization of legacy systems, new capability development in multi-vendor environments, iteration on established platforms, all inside an agile transformation and broader organizational change.

You’ll mostly ownUI/UX design and potentially support user research, and bring a product mindset to strategy conversations so design shapes what gets built, not just how it looks.

What to know going in

Your first 30 days are about working with the Skylight team and government personnel, learning the client’s domain and organization, and enabling your government partners. Access to users varies from team to team, so you’ll need to get creative about how you reach them. The client is early- to mid-transformation, so expect organizational and operational change along the way.

This role is contingent on Skylight being awarded the underlying contract. If we’re not awarded the contract, we’ll let you know promptly and discuss whether there are other opportunities that fit.

What you’ll do

• Define end-to-end flows that incorporate well-thought-out information architecture, systems thinking, design principles, and common design patterns
• Create simple and elegant user interfaces in Figma, and evolve existing visual systems with clear rationale
• Work alongside product managers, engineers, researchers, and government partners to shape product strategy for net-new capabilities
• Find creative ways to reach users where access is limited, and bring what you learn back to the team and client
• Plan and conduct generative and evaluative research to inform strategic product and design direction
• Uphold human-centered design principles and help the client organization become more customer-centric as it goes through agile transformation

What we’re looking for

Basic qualifications

• Can define scalable, end-to-end interaction flows that incorporate key design principles, intentional information architectures, common design patterns, and accessibility
• Can create simple, elegant, and thoughtful user interfaces through the implementation of visual design elements, such as branding, illustration, iconography, typography, or microinteractions
• Understand how to use different design processes (e.g., double diamond) and can produce documentation for storytelling that helps your team and stakeholders empathize with users
• Able to plan, synthesize, and share out generative and evaluative user research to inform product and design direction
• Can contribute to product strategy decisions by aligning design processes with lean/agile methodologies, serving as the primary voice for users, prioritizing and balancing user and business decisions, and crafting mental models to help define and refine product opportunities
• Can facilitate and communicate well, including communicating your design rationale to different groups (users, teammates, stakeholders) effectively
• Ability to demonstrate product design leadership through actions such as driving excellence in your team’s design execution
• Experience working on cross-functional teams (product, design, engineering, ops) in iterative delivery
• Ability to coach and enable government partners on human-centered design principles
• A mindset and work approach that aligns with our core values

Nice-to-haves

• Experience with legacy modernization and/or enterprise digital transformation efforts
• Hands-on experience designing in Figma
• Military or Department of Defense experience
• Experience delivering technology in government, regulated industries, or other public-benefit settings
• A track record of staying aligned and accountable on remote teams

Portfolio

Please include a portfolio of 1–2 work samples with your application. Your portfolio can be anything from a website to a slide deck — whatever best showcases your work. We suggest choosing work samples that highlight your skills and experience in relation to the qualifications outlined in the job posting. Unless specified in the job requirements, your portfolio doesn’t need to be tied to any particular industry or field — just select samples that best represent your expertise. To ensure we can review your application promptly, please remove any access passwords on your portfolio or provide access details.

Don’t meet every qualification but think you can do the job? We’d still love to hear from you. If you’re excited about the role, apply. We consider candidates with a range of backgrounds and experiences.

Other requirements

• Some of our available roles are on federal contracts that require a degree or additional years of experience as a substitute.
• All work must be conducted within the U.S., excluding U.S. territories.
• This contract requires U.S. citizenship to be eligible for employment.
• This role doesn’t require a security clearance, but you must be able to obtain a Common Access Card (CAC), which includes a government background check.
• You must complete a company background check successfully.

Logistics

Position type

This is a full-time, exempt position.

Location

This is a fully remote position.

Travel

You may travel to Air Force bases across the U.S., quarterly at most.

Care package

Salary

We want to give you the most competitive salary possible. After all, you deserve it! To that end, we use the results of our interview process to determine what salary is most appropriate given your current level of seniority. For a Product Designer at Skylight, the current salary ranges are as follows:

• Associate Product Designer: $90,000–$125,000
• Product Designer I: $120,000–$140,000
• Product Designer II: $135,000–$160,000
• Senior Product Designer: $150,000–$185,000
• Staff Product Designer: $170,000–$203,000
• Principal Product Designer: $180,000–$230,000

Benefits

Your well-being is important to us, so we focus on supporting you in a variety of ways:

• Medical insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance
• Short-term and long-term disability insurance
• Life and AD&D insurance
• Dependent care FSA, healthcare FSA, health savings account
• Dollar-for-dollar 401(k) match up to 10% of your salary with no vesting period
• Flexible paid-time-off policy (generally around 25 days per year), plus 11 paid federal holidays
• Up to 12 weeks paid-time-off for all eligible new birth, adoption, or foster parents
• Performance rewards, including annual salary increase, annual performance bonus, spot bonuses, and stock options
• Business development / sales bonuses
• Referral bonuses
• Annual $2000 allowance for professional development
• Annual $750 allowance for tech-related purchases
• Annual swag budget of $100 to display your Skylight pride with some merchandise (hoodies, hats, and more)
• Flexible, remote-friendly work environment
• An environment that empowers you to unleash your superpowers for public good

Interview tips

Our process includes a preliminary screen, a skills interview, a behavioral interview, and a reverse interview where you meet your potential team — usually four conversations across two to three weeks. Here are some tips to help you prepare for a successful interview:

• Visit our join page to learn more about how our interview process works.
• Check out our Career Pathways framework to learn more about the different roles within Skylight and the skills needed to do them.
• Browse our case studies to learn more about our work.

If you’d like to request reasonable accommodations during the application or interviewing process, please contact our recruiting team at View email address on aiapply.co.

We participate in E-Verify and upon hire, will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you’re authorized to work in the U.S.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, veteran status, or any other category protected by applicable law.