Senior UX Designer

Babel Street; Reston (VA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Babel Street in Reston, Virginia is seeking a Senior User Experience Designer to shape vision and execution of UX across our product portfolio. You bring deep expertise in user-centered design, systems thinking, and product strategy to transform complex challenges into intuitive, elegant, and impactful solutions.

Success in this role is measured not only by the quality and usability of the experiences you create, but also by your ability to influence product direction, champion the voice of the

Qualifications

• 8+ years designing digital products in enterprise or government contexts.
• Experience leading complex software product design from concept to launch.
• Expertise in user-centered design, IA, usability testing, and interaction design.
• Strong portfolio showing strategic thinking and measurable impact.
• Proficiency with Figma, design systems, prototyping, and collaboration workflows.
• Experience partnering with engineering in Agile environments (Jira/Confluence).
• Ability to translate research into actionable design insights.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end design of complex product experiences from discovery to delivery.
• Translate user needs and business goals into scalable design solutions.
• Guide UX strategy and influence roadmaps through research and analytics.
• Create flows, IA, wireframes, prototypes, and polished visuals.
• Clarify requirements with PMs and Eng, map roadmaps to UX tasks.
• Facilitate discovery workshops, journey mapping, and design critiques.
• Champion accessibility and inclusive design across the lifecycle.
• Contribute to reusable design-system components and governance.
• Provide design critique and feedback to internal and external partners.
• Communicate complex concepts clearly to technical, business, and exec audiences.

Skills

User-centered design

UX strategy

Stakeholder management

Design leadership

Agile product development

Communication

Product discovery

Research synthesis

Tools

Figma

Jira

Confluence

Design systems

Job description

Babel Street is the trusted technology partner for the world's most advanced identity intelligence and risk operations. We deliver advanced AI and data analytics solutions providing unmatched, analysis-ready data regardless of language, proactive risk identification, 360-degree insights, high-speed automation, and seamless integration into existing systems. Babel Street empowers government and commercial organizations to transform high-stakes identity and risk operations into a strategic advantage. The actionable insights we deliver safeguard lives and protect critical assets around the world. Babel Street is headquartered in Reston, Virginia, with regional offices in Boston, MA and Cleveland, OH, and international offices in Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, and the U.K. For more information, visit www.babelstreet.com.

As a Senior User Experience Designer, you are a highly influential individual contributor responsible for shaping the vision, strategy, and execution of exceptional user experiences across our product portfolio. You bring together deep expertise in user-centered design, systems thinking, and product strategy to transform complex challenges into intuitive, elegant, and impactful solutions.

Success in this role is measured not only by the quality and usability of the experiences you create, but also by your ability to influence product direction, champion the voice of the customer, and elevate design maturity across the organization.

Join our innovative team developing disruptive Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) solutions for Federal and Commercial customers. As a key member of the Design Operations team, you will partner closely with Product Management, Engineering, Marketing, and customers to define and deliver industry-leading user experiences that solve complex mission-critical problems.

What You Will Do

• Lead the end-to-end design of complex product experiences, from discovery and concept development through delivery and continuous optimization.
• Translate ambiguous user needs, business goals, and technical requirements into innovative, intuitive, and scalable design solutions.
• Drive UX strategy and influence product roadmap decisions through customer insights, user research, analytics, and design thinking methodologies that improve customer outcomes, product adoption, usability, and overall product effectiveness.
• Create high-quality user flows, information architecture, wireframes, prototypes, interaction models, and polished visual designs that establish best practices across products.
• Partner closely with Product Managers and Engineering teams to clarify requirements, identify workflow gaps and edge cases, translate roadmap initiatives into actionable UX epics, stories, and design tasks, and support technically feasible delivery across multiple initiatives.
• Facilitate discovery efforts, workshops, user journey mapping sessions, design critiques, and stakeholder alignment activities, using qualitative and quantitative data to validate assumptions and continuously improve user experiences.
• Champion accessibility, usability, and inclusive design principles throughout the product lifecycle, including design and accessibility QA with Engineering to ensure implemented experiences meet approved UX standards.
• Support the evolution of reusable design-system components, patterns, standards, documentation, UX governance, and scalable design processes that improve team effectiveness and consistency in partnership with Design Engineering.
• Provide product context, design critique, and constructive feedback to internal and external design partners to support high-quality design execution.
• Communicate complex concepts and recommendations clearly to technical, business, and executive audiences.

What You Bring

• 8+ years of experience designing digital products and experiences within enterprise, B2B SaaS, government, or similarly complex environments.
• Proven track record of leading the design of complex software products from concept through launch and iterative improvement.
• Expertise in user-centered design methodologies, interaction design, visual design, information architecture, and usability testing.
• Strong portfolio demonstrating strategic thinking, problem-solving, and measurable impact on business and user outcomes.
• Advanced proficiency with Figma and modern design tooling, including design systems, prototyping, and collaboration workflows.
• Experience building, scaling, and governing design systems, including components, documentation, and coded implementation alignment to drive consistency across products and platforms.
• Strong understanding of accessibility standards (ADA/WCAG) and experience incorporating accessibility requirements into product design.
• Ability to synthesize research, analytics, customer feedback, and business objectives into actionable design insights.
• Excellent communication, presentation, and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence decisions across all levels of the organization.
• Experience working closely with engineering teams in Agile product development environments, including sprint planning, backlog refinement, iterative delivery, and UX work management through tools such as Jira and Confluence.
• Demonstrated ability to thrive in fast-paced, iterative environments while balancing strategic thinking with hands-on execution.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing intelligence, analytics, data visualization, cybersecurity, defense, or mission-critical software applications.
• Familiarity with Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) workflows and investigative user personas.
• Experience conducting and leading user research initiatives and translating findings into product strategy.
• Ability to influence without authority and drive alignment across multiple stakeholder groups.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted design or development workflows, Model Context Protocol (MCP), or modern component frameworks such as shadcn/ui.

Range for this position based on qualifications and experience$140,000—$170,000 USD