UI/UX Design Lead (Contract)

Job Description

UP.Labs is looking for an experienced, lead designer for a contract role who can drive design strategy and execution. You are someone who is familiar with SaaS software life cycle, can adapt quickly with a small, collaborative team, and thrives on designing and iterating B2B and consumer products. You have significant experience conceptualizing ideas and quickly moving from proof-of-concept to MVP to Alpha, and beyond.

In this role you will:

• From conceptual design to deliverables: move fluidly between high-level concepting, wireframes, product design, user-interface, and interaction design, visual design, storytelling, and prototyping
• Oversee quantitative and qualitative user research that drive 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 our client’s business goals, market viability, and technical feasibility
• Deliver concepts, personas, user journeys, storyboards, system maps, user flows, wireframes, visual design comps, and prototypes with Figma, Adobe CS, InVision, and other tools
• 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 our design system

You should have:

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

What You’ll Get

• The chance to connect with our network of professionals spanning across our portfolio of companies and the greater UP ecosystem
• As a venture team hire helping create our companies from the very early days, you will get to work on a portfolio of companies that are backed by leading corporate investors and our Venture Capital partners
• We will compensate you very well, invest deeply in your development, and do everything we can to make sure this is a job you love!

UP.Labs Summary:

1. Risk: We reward our entire team and ecosystem of partners with meaningful equity
2. Technology: We build and launch scalable technology products that form the basis for each venture
3. Industry Focus: We stay focused on the underlying fabric of society mobility and transportation 

Timeframe: 3-4 months, with the potential to extend

Location: SF Bay Area