User Experience Researcher Jobs in Maryland

Job Title: AI UI/UX Designer (Senior) (Onsite)
Location: Linthicum, MD, 21090
Duration: 12 Months + (possible extension)

Position Description:

Bring best practices in human centered design to support initiatives across the state to holistically improve users’ end-to-end experiences with state services. Be a champion for user needs and guide designers, researchers, content strategists as well as technical teams on projects with state agencies. Engage with stakeholders across organizations in order to build customer understanding, solve challenging problems, and empower teams to collaboratively develop metrics, measuring results, and integrate new methodologies optimizing customer experience and program performance. Communicate user research findings and insights through appropriate artifacts including personas, journey maps, wireframes and prototypes.

• AI-Enhanced Design: Using AI to automate repetitive tasks (e.g., resizing images), generate design options, and create personalized, adaptive user interfaces.
• User Experience (UX): Conducting user research, creating user flows, and building wireframes/prototypes that make AI applications intuitive.
• User Interface (UI): Designing visual elements, such as menus, widgets, and layouts, that are both aesthetically pleasing and functional.
• Data Analysis: Leveraging AI to analyze user data, heatmaps, and behavior patterns to make evidence-based design decisions.
• Collaboration: Working with AI engineers, data scientists, and product managers to ensure AI models are integrated into a user-friendly, cohesive design.
• Prototyping & Testing: Developing interactive prototypes and performing A/B testing on design elements.

Seeking a highly skilled and strategic Design lead to own and evolve the user experience of our web-based application. This role will lead a small team of UX/UI designers, collaborate closely with product and engineering teams, and drive the design vision from discovery through delivery. This role will play a key role in shaping the look, feel, and functionality of our platform, ensuring it's both user friendly and visually compelling.

• Lead the end-to-end design process across the web application, from research to final visual design and delivery.
• Define and execute the product design strategy in collaboration with product, engineering and leadership teams.
• Mentor and guide a team of UX/UI designers, ensuring high design quality and professional growth.
• Advocate for user needs through research, testing, and feedback loops.
• Create wireframes, user flows, prototypes, and high-fidelity UI designs.
• Develop and maintain a scalable design system and UI component Library.
• Collaborate with developers to ensure accurate implementation of design solutions.
• Ensure design consistency, usability, accessibility (WCAG) and responsiveness across all devices.
• Use analytics and user data to continuously improve the user experience.
• Present design work to stakeholders, clearly articulating rationale and user value.

Education:

This position requires a Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university. Five (5) years of equivalent experience in a related field may be substituted for the Bachelor’s degree.

Certification/Training:

Specialized courses, bootcamps (e.g., Designlab, Coursera), and certifications in AI-focused UI/UX design are highly preferred.

General Experience:

The proposed candidate must have a minimum of five (5) years of experience in user experience and service design.
- A strong portfolio demonstrating UX and UI design for responsive web applications.
- Proficiency in modern design tools such as Figma, Adobe XD, Sketch or similar.
- Deep understanding of web design principles, usability, responsive design, and accessibility standards.
- Solid experience with user research methods, usability testing, and design validation.
- Ability to guide and influence product decisions through design thinking.
- Strong leadership and mentoring capabilities.
- Excellent communication and presentation skills.
- High attention to detail and a passion for clean, intuitive design.
- Empathy for users and a collaborative mindset.

Specialized Experience:

The candidate should have experience planning and facilitating workshops, meetings and/or other interactive sessions in order to gather feedback and insight from key customers and stakeholders to determine operational needs and changes to the program.
- Human-Centered Design: Empathy for the user is crucial, as AI should enhance, not replace, human-centric design, according to Designlab.
- Prompt Engineering: Ability to generate high-quality outputs from AI design tools.
- Analytical Mindset: Capacity to analyze user data to identify pain points.
- Collaboration: Strong communication skills to bridge the gap between design and engineering.
- Experience designing for enterprise applications or dashboards.
- Familiarity with front-end frameworks (Angular), and design handoff tools (like Figma Dev Mode).
- Knowledge of accessibility standards (WCAG 2.1) and inclusive design principles.
- Familiarity with design tokens, versioning, and handoff tools (e.g., Figma Dev Mode).