Senior UX Leader with Excellent Design Skills for a High-End Interactive Agency

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This role is at an agency that works with high-profile, innovative clients (particularly ones that focus on media and sports) on high-end, high-concept interactive products and advertising campaigns. Despite the advertising and marketing focus, the company nevertheless possesses full-fledged software development capabilities, combining strong creative and marketing capabilities with solid UX, research, engineering, and system integration capabilities to build websites, web apps, mobile apps, rich media productions, social media tools and campaigns, and other brand-driven interactive products.

This posting represents a range of opportunities as a senior UX leader at this agency. People interested in applying for this role must have a very strong portfolio of exceptional design work on high-profile accounts. While the company recognizes that UX is more than visual design, strong aesthetic sensibilities and an impressive roster of clients are very important to them, and are necessary to establish one's leadership credibility with the existing UX and design teams. As well, the company uses high-concept design work as a primary means of attracting new accounts and then building them, so exceptional design skill is a necessary component to being able to add strategic and account value, which is the pathway to promotion.

This is an excellent opportunity for UX professionals who want to be in the context of a creative agency working on sexy, UX-centered projects for well-known brands. Even though the agency has a focus on brand and campaigns, its UX roles are nevertheless full-fledged and challenging ones for practitioners with deep experience in the field. UX at this company is truly UX, and not just "campaign plus" or solely web-oriented.

The agency provides a full range of UX-related services including strategy, planning, ideation, product development, research, requirements-building, information architecture, interaction design, visual/UI design, software architecture, software engineering, marketing, and analytics. They work on products for web, mobile, smart TV, social media, and other types of deployment and media.

UX team members at this company have deep and substantial experience in UX and work in cross-disciplinary teams on complex problems. They're expected to be good communicators, eager to learn, interested in new technologies and practices, and able to participate meaningful in all stages of the UX cycle from research to implementation.

The company offers competitive compensation and benefits. The role is being represented by Didus, a staffing and career development service focused on user-centered roles in research, design, technology, and strategy. We are not your typical recruiting agency that just wants to sell you on any role that fits your keywords; we work one-on-one with you to find the perfect fit. For more information, please visit: http://didus.com/experience-professionals

Requirements

Exceptional design talent and experience working with high-profile accounts and clients
8+ years of experience in UI design
Advanced knowledge of user-centered design principles, methodologie, and practices, particularly in web and mobile contexts
Excellent communication, collaboration, and organization skills
Capable of contributing to teams both as a leader and as a contributor
Curiosity and drive to continuously improve skills and stay abrest of trends and new technologies, and sharing that with the team
Strong skills with tools such as InDesign, Omnigraffle, and Visio
Knowledge of designing for cross-channel and cross-platform experiences
Familiarity with front-end technologies and accessibility standards
Experience conducting and applying user research and usability testing

Key Functions & Deliverables

Be a key contributor and leader in cross-disciplinary teams
Lead UX and mentor small and medium-sized teams across multiple clients and projects
Oversee the design process, decision-making, issue tracking, client communications, and project management for client engagements
Work directly with client stakeholders to identify business needs and strategies, and to present the design team's work to generate consensus
Plan and conduct user research, client and user workshops, requirement-gathering efforts, and other research practices
Conceptualize and design UX solutions for multiple project and contextual factors, as well as multiple platforms and project threads
Establish and guide UX practices, techniques, systems, and disciplines for the team and for clients and projects
Guide, direct, and participate in the creation of personas, journeys, scenarios, wireframes, prototypes, workflows, interaction and experience models, and functional specifications, and ensure deliverables are client-ready

Desirable Skills & Experience

Advanced degree in IxD, IA, HCI, or related design or behavior sciences
Experience with multi-channel design for major brands
Experience working in consulting environments on high-complexity UX projects
Knowledge of areas such as game dynamics, behavioral economics, brand strategy, data visualization, activation tactics and SEM, and storytelling and narrative as they relate to UX

Portfolio Requirements

Although this company is looking for very strong visual design skills, they also understand that design is about sophisticated problem-solving and not just visual design aesthetics. Be prepared to show how you've used research and interaction design techniques and artifacts (e.g., wireframes, personas, experience maps, etc.) to support thinking, design, and collaboration on complex projects. This company will be concerned with how your portfolio demonstrates how you've worked on high-value accounts with high-profile clients to solve problems and apply user-centered design principles and practices. All that being said, strong visual design and high-concept work products will be exceedingly important to this client because of the nature of the projects and clients they work with, so make sure to include aesthetically pleasing end-products and not just intermediate deliverables in your portfolio.