Product Designer (Contract)

Job Description

As a Senior Product Designer, you will collaborate with our multidisciplinary team to create engaging and user-friendly interfaces for custom web and mobile applications. You will be responsible for designing intuitive user experiences that align with client requirements, industry best practices, and current design trends. Your creative mindset, technical expertise, and attention to detail will contribute to the success of our projects and help us deliver exceptional web and mobile applications. 

This role is for a self-starter who has initiative and an ownership mindset for working within budget and time constraints to deliver user-centric design solutions. Comfortable working on up to three client projects at a time, you will have strong communication and time management skills. Experience working in an agency setting with small project teams and a focus on client services is a plus.

The compensation range for this position is $50 - $75 per hour. This position is fully remote within the United States and its Territories. This contract is for support of future SmartLogic projects with no immediate need for allocated hours, but hours expected this spring.

SmartLogic is an experienced and growing custom software development consultancy successfully serving clients since 2005. We are deeply committed to our team, our clients, and the communities where we work. Some of our recent company initiatives include leading on youth workforce development, software developer apprenticeships, our Elixir Wizards |> conference, and the Baltimore Women in Tech micro grants program. With your assistance, we will quickly bring more unique and innovative company initiatives to fruition.

In this role you will report to the Director of Engineering. Other people reporting to the Director of Engineering include Staff Engineers, Developers, and QA Analysts.

Requirements

1. Must have a minimum of 4 years prior working experience in a consulting/agency.
2. Must have experience working as an independent contractor.
3. Must have prior success working within budget and timeframe constraints.
4. Ability to show initiative and work independently to execute project work.
5. Demonstrated track record balancing client priorities while ensuring quality of user experience. This includes operating within time and budget constraints and context switching among projects.
6. Experience writing technical tickets, handing off designs to the development team, presenting designs to clients, implementing feedback, and working with developers to implement approved designs.
7. Expert level proficiency with Figma for design and prototyping. Familiarity with a CSS framework is a major plus (we use Tailwind CSS for most projects).
8. Experience with accessibility principles, standards, and best practices including WCAG 2.1 or later. Familiarity with designing for assistive technologies, such as screen readers, magnifiers, and keyboard navigation is a big plus!
9. Must reside in the USA, be legally authorized to work in the United States, and is available to work our core working hours of 10am-3:30pm US Eastern Time Monday through Friday. This position requires one to be available to work an average workload of 10-20 hours per week, with the possibility of some weeks being zero and some being more than 20 hours.
10. Familiarity with other common design tools such as Adobe Illustrator a plus.

Responsibilities

1. Work with the Staff Engineer, Project Manager, and a cross functional team of developers and designers to understand project requirements, scope, and deliverables to plan design milestones.
2. Balance the trade-offs between design quality, time-to-market, and resource constraints, making informed decisions to achieve project goals. Efficiently manage and prioritize tasks across projects.
3. Ensure that designs are accessible, responsive, and optimized for various devices and platforms.
4. Design and prototype user interfaces, including wireframes, mockups, and interactive prototypes, using industry-standard tools.
5. As needed, participate in client demonstrations, clearly articulating design concepts and justifying design decisions. Demonstrate a customer service mindset with responsiveness to client needs.
6. Participate in agile ceremonies and manage relevant tasks in our project management tool, ClickUp.
7. Ensure client work is well documented and organized.

Benefits

We are continuously working to cultivate a supportive and inclusive workplace that recognizes and respects diversity of background, experience, and thought. We believe that diversity benefits both our company culture and the software we write.

SmartLogic is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy and gender identity), national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, genetic information, age, membership in an employee organization, retaliation, parental status, military service, or other non-merit factor.

No phone calls or unsolicited emails, please. We do not work with recruiters or placement agencies.

This position is fully remote and you may work from anywhere in the United States.