Senior UX Designer/Researcher (Accessibility Specialist)

About this role

Title: Senior UX Designer/Researcher (Accessibility Specialist)
Location: Des Moines, IA (Remote)
Duration: 8 Months
Interview type: Either Webcam & In-person

Job Description:
The Client is seeking a highly skilled, communication-focused Senior UX Designer / Researcher to join our digital modernization team. We are looking for a dedicated user experience and user research specialist. Front-end development skills are entirely optional, though any coding ability serves as a welcome asset.
In this position, you will closely collaborate with our lead UX/Accessibility Architect to scale high-quality digital standards across enterprise initiatives. You will possess specialized UX research capabilities that do not exist on the current team, taking ownership of user testing and UI optimization. This role requires an immediate start to support a high-priority modernization pipeline for the Iowa client Student Reporting in Iowa (SRI) initiative—advancing a large-scale project phase with tight milestones—with additional cross-agency support for the client and other state projects as needed.
The client prefers local or regional candidates who can attend occasional in-office meetings. Travel and related expenses will not be reimbursed.

Purpose

• Pure UX research and design role. No coding expected.
• Graduates of ISU HCI (Human Computer Interaction) program highly desired.
• Primary Focus
• UX research
• User-centered design
• User journey mapping
• Wireframes and prototypes
• Design recommendations
• Accessibility-first design
• Design documentation and annotations
• Required Skills
• Advanced Figma
• UX research methodologies
• User flow creation
• Prototyping
• Accessibility (WCAG)
• Stakeholder collaboration
• Design documentation

Preferred Experience

• Heat maps (Crazy Egg, Hotjar, etc.)
• Card sorting
• Usability testing
• Nielsen Norman Group training
• Google UX Certification
• Formal UX/HCI education
• Research Experi...