UI/UX Design Lead (Contract)

Up Partners - San Francisco, CA

Full-time - Mid Level

San Francisco, CA

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

About the position

UP.Labs is seeking an experienced lead designer for a contract role focused on driving design strategy and execution. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in the SaaS software life cycle and will thrive in a collaborative environment, working on both B2B and consumer products. This role involves moving from high-level concepting to detailed design and prototyping, while also overseeing user research to inform design decisions.

Responsibilities

• Drive design strategy and execution for B2B and consumer products.
• Move fluidly between high-level concepting, wireframes, product design, user-interface, interaction design, visual design, storytelling, and prototyping.
• Oversee quantitative and qualitative user research that drives design decisions and roadmap.
• Participate in concept sessions leveraging ethnographic research and design thinking.
• Introduce trends and exemplars across a variety of emerging technologies.
• Balance customer frictions and needs with business goals, market viability, and technical feasibility.
• Deliver concepts, personas, user journeys, storyboards, system maps, user flows, wireframes, visual design comps, and prototypes using tools like Figma and Adobe CS.
• Collaborate effectively with multi-disciplinary teams including management consultants, product managers, engineers, marketers, and corporate executives.
• Communicate the product's vision and articulate design decisions and trade-offs to partners and clients, both verbally and visually.
• Partner with engineering to ensure designs are properly implemented.
• Work within and continue to evolve the design system.

Requirements

• 7+ years of professional experience building, prototyping, and evolving digital products from ideation to implementation.
• Proven experience delivering concepts, personas, user journeys, storyboards, user flows, wireframes, and prototypes.
• Working experience with Figma, Adobe CS, and Zeplin.
• Ability to communicate the process, approach, and impact of design in verbal and visual presentations.
• Excellent collaborative skills with cross-functional teams including product, engineering, and business.
• Ability to participate effectively in qualitative user research and usability testing.
• Experience shipping a product to users and iterating based on user feedback.
• Ability to translate a desired product vision into a practical user experience prompt and break it down into tasks.
• Ability to work well on small teams as the true design owner in a fast-paced, iterative environment.
• A love for user research, balancing qualitative feedback, quantitative data, and empathy to deliver innovative, user-centric solutions.

Benefits

• Opportunity to connect with a network of professionals across a portfolio of companies.
• Work on a portfolio of companies backed by leading corporate investors and Venture Capital partners.
• Competitive compensation and investment in personal development.