Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Neighborly Software provides a cloud-based platform that helps communities administer and disburse government funds for housing, economic development, disaster recovery, and related programs. The Lead UX Designer will establish the company’s UX practice as its first dedicated UX hire, owning design systems, standards, research, workflows, prototyping, accessibility, and responsive design while influencing product, engineering, and QA as an individual contributor.
Responsibilities
- Build and own a design system — a reusable component library, interaction patterns, and usage guidance that product, engineering, and QA work from
- Establish and maintain a style guide for consistent branding across the platform, aligned with company positioning and messaging
- Establish accessibility as an organizational norm — set WCAG-based standards, build accessible patterns into the design system, and define how compliance is validated before release
- Establish responsive design as an organizational norm so the platform behaves predictably across desktop, tablet, and mobile
- Hold the organization accountable to these standards, reviewing work in progress and partnering with product and engineering leadership when the bar isn’t met
- Redesign core workflows to reduce friction — fewer clicks, clearer paths, and meaningful status and feedback
- Modernize and simplify the interface, both visually and in how users interact with it
- Guide user experience solutioning for known pain points, turning recurring customer complaints into designed, validated solutions
- Assess core functionality for reuse across personas and program types — for example, extending an existing capability into a contractor portal — without fragmenting the product
- Build and document personas and user journeys, and keep them current as a shared reference for product, engineering, marketing, and sales
- Join client calls and discovery sessions with product managers to gather firsthand feedback and translate it into design direction
- Lead workshops — discovery sessions, journey mapping, design reviews, and prioritization exercises — with internal teams and customers
- Establish prototyping norms and a shared framework with the product team so concepts are tested visually before reaching engineering
- Guide engineering and QA on implementation fidelity, component reuse, and front-end quality, so what ships matches what was designed
- Partner with engineering on front-end performance and observability (for example New Relic), treating perceived speed as a design concern
- Use product analytics (for example Pendo) to understand user behavior, identify friction points, and validate whether design changes improved outcomes
- Define and track experience metrics — task completion, time on task, error rates, support volume — and report progress to leadership
- Performs other duties as required
Skills
- • Bachelor's degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
- • 5+ years of user experience and user interface design experience, including time as the lead or senior-most designer on a product or platform
- • A portfolio demonstrating end-to-end ownership of complex, workflow-heavy applications — not solely marketing sites or consumer apps
- • Demonstrated experience building a design system and component library from the ground up and driving its adoption
- • Hands-on expertise with modern design and prototyping tools (for example Figma), including component libraries, design tokens, and interactive prototypes
- • Working knowledge of accessibility standards (WCAG 2.1 AA or later) and experience designing and validating accessible interfaces
- • Demonstrated experience delivering responsive design across desktop, tablet, and mobile
- • Direct experience conducting user research and synthesizing findings into personas, journeys, and design decisions
- • Experience facilitating workshops and design reviews with cross-functional and customer audiences
- • Demonstrated ability to lead as an individual contributor — influencing engineering, QA, and product partners, and holding a standard across teams that don't report to you
- • Experience with product analytics tools and using behavioral data to inform design decisions
- • Working fluency with AI tools applied to design and research — synthesis, content drafting, and rapid concept generation
- • Excellent communication and presentation skills, including explaining design rationale to executives, engineers, and customers
- • Enough familiarity with HTML, CSS, and component-based front-end frameworks to have productive technical conversations with engineers
- • Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer
- • Must be able to lift up to 15 pounds at times
- • Experience as the first or founding design hire, establishing a UX practice where none previously existed
- • Experience in govtech, public sector, affordable housing, community development, or grant management software
- • Experience designing for multiple distinct personas within a single platform, including external-facing portals
- • Experience with enterprise or B2B SaaS platforms carrying configuration, permissions, and administrative complexity
- • Familiarity with performance monitoring and observability tools (for example New Relic)
- • Accessibility certification (for example CPACC or WAS)
- • Tech startup experience
Benefits
- Medical, Dental, Vision plan options
- Company-Paid Short-Term Disability and Life Insurance
- 401K Contributions – Generous employer match with immediate vesting
- 5 weeks of PTO
- 9 paid holidays
- 3 days of volunteer time off each year
Company Overview