DESIGN STRATEGIST

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BILLET DESCRIPTION

The Design Strategist serves as the primary advocate for the end user within the Marine Coders team, ensuring that software solutions are intuitive, usable, and tailored to the operational needs of Marines. This billet plays a critical role in bridging the gap between users and developers by conducting research that informs design decisions across the full product lifecycle.

Design Strategists are responsible for planning, conducting, and synthesizing research data in order to develop user insights, design principles, and artifacts such as UI/UX designs and/or wireframes. This research can be gathered through industry analysis, user interviews, usability testing, prototyping, field observation, UI/UX tools (ie: Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity, etc.), and other methods. Design Strategists work closely with product managers, analysts, other designers, and developers to translate research findings into actionable recommendations to build and improve upon the functionality, accessibility, usability, and overall effectiveness of Marine Coders-developed software.

This billet requires deep expertise in user-centered design, operational empathy, and collaboration within an agile, distributed development team. The Design Strategist leverages research and creative problem-solving to improve outcomes at tactical and operational levels, effectively identifies user insights, and clearly communicates recommendations. They consistently advocate for user needs throughout the product lifecycle.

PRIMARY DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

  • Plan and execute user research efforts, including interviews, contextual inquiries, usability tests, and surveys
  • Synthesize research findings into clear, actionable insights to inform design and development decisions
  • Collaborate with product managers, designers, and developers to align software features with user needs and workflows
  • Create user personas, journey maps, task flows, and other UX artifacts to communicate findings and design direction
  • Validate design concepts and prototypes through iterative testing with representative users
  • Advocate for accessibility, usability, and mission effectiveness in all user-facing aspects of the application
  • Contribute to the creation of style guides and interface standards to ensure consistent and user-friendly experiences

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

  • Experience conducting, synthesizing, and communicating UX research using both qualitative and quantitative methods
  • Creation of design artifacts such as journey maps, wireframes, prototypes
  • Familiarity with design, research, and collaboration tools such as Figma, Adobe Suite, Sketch, Miro, Tableau or similar platforms
  • Ability to produce clear research documentation and communicate insights to technical and non-technical audiences
  • Understanding of agile software development and working within cross-functional teams
  • Experience designing for users in complex or high-stakes environments (e.g., military, medical, industrial)
  • Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to build trust and rapport with end users and stakeholders
  • Self-directed and able to contribute meaningfully in a distributed, asynchronous work environment