Product Designer

We are Skyward.

That is, a love for people, for improvement, for human advancement through information technology. We are a people-centered business with a desire to serve others. We are diverse and unified; creative and collaborative; a collection of complementary, not competing talents. And though on the surface we remain relaxed, beneath, a torrent of energy links us to our civic tech mission.

We stand by our values, and we won’t compromise on any of them.

Integrity: We’re conscientious, intentional, and empathetic. Our words and actions align. That’s our character. Please don’t ask us to play another part, we’re poor actors.

Compassionate: If we may borrow a quote from Theodore Roosevelt: “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” Because our team is thoughtful and supportive, caring deeply for each other, our clients, and our work, this comes naturally.

Inquisitive: We remain students by failing openly and turning lessons into solutions.

Unconventional: For us, life isn’t what happens outside of work. Work happens inside of life and our culture erases the line often dividing the two.

Authentic: Made possible only because we embody the values listed above. We’re relaxed and fun yet intensely curious and driven. Team members are placed with thought, care, and precision to ensure that Trust, Truth, and Transparency continue to represent our brand.

Because of that, we continue Onward, Upward, and Skyward.

We need a Product Designer.Do you get a little thrill from turning a tangle of requirements and research into a screen so clean it feels obvious? The kind where users just… get it? Are you the designer who sweats the spacing, the hierarchy, and the one-word label that makes a confusing flow finally click? You lead with craft, you back it with evidence, and you’re not happy until the pixels earn their place.

If you love designing the answer (and know how to prove it’s the right one), please apply.

Let’s go Skyward together.

What you’ll do:

• Design the experience.Own the UX and UI for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service’s (CMS) enterprise AI platform, and for CMS’s AI products, from concept to polished, high-fidelity, USWDS-aligned designs in Figma that are intuitive, elegant, and ready to build.
• Make it tangible fast.Move from sketches to wireframes to interactive prototypes, iterating quickly so stakeholders can see and feel the solution, not just read about it.
• Build and extend the design system.Create and maintain reusable components, patterns, and standards so the product stays consistent and scalable as it grows.
• Design with evidence.Plan and run lightweight research (usability sessions, interviews, feedback loops) and fold what you learn straight back into the design (design-primary, research-informed).
• Map the experience.Build user flows, journey maps, and service blueprints that show how people move through AI services and where the friction lives.
• Make accessibility non-negotiable.Design to Section 508 and WCAG from the first frame so what ships works beautifully for every user.
• Partner across the team.Work shoulder-to-shoulder with engineers, the AI team, and CMS stakeholders in a badgeless, one-team culture, handing off designs that developers love to build.

What we’d like you to have:

• A bachelor’s degree and 5+ yearsin UX/product design (with hands-on research exposure) or a closely related field.
• A standout portfoliothat shows strong visual and interaction design — real products you took from concept to polished, shipped UI.
• Deep Figma fluency:high-fidelity design, prototyping, and building/maintaining design systems and component libraries.
• A solid grasp of UX fundamentals:information architecture, interaction patterns, and usability principles, plus the ability to run lightweight research to validate your work.
• Familiarity with the USWDSand federal CX mandates.
• Genuine accessibility awareness.508 and WCAG are part of how you design, not an afterthought.
• Deep research chopsto complement your design. You can lead the discovery as confidently as the design.

What would blow us away:

• Front-end familiarity(HTML/CSS, or designing closely with React teams) so your handoffs are build-ready.
• Experience designing data-heavy or AI-driven products (dashboards, search, chat, or knowledge tools).
• You previously supported CMSor another federal agency.

*Even if you don’t meet 100% of the qua…