Lead Designer

About Exygy

Exygy is a digital innovation studio on a mission to build resilient and healthy communities. We enable impact-focused organizations to rethink experiences and create digital products that solve their problems and delight users. Our diverse team brings a breadth of technical expertise, user-centric perspectives, and product strategy to every engagement. As a certified B-Corporation, we are driven by our fierce commitment to the betterment of humanity. Our clients include CARE International, QURE Healthcare, San Francisco Mayor's Office of Housing, and Hopelab. Exygy has embraced a work from home philosophy and we are now a remote-first company. This role can be located anywhere in the U.S and may occasionally require traveling for meetings or team building events.

Exygy remains connected and engaged with virtual team events, weekly all hands meetings and regular zoom workshops and training.

Summary

Exygy seeks an enthusiastic, experienced, and creative Lead Designer who is passionate about making a difference in the world with design and technology. Join our tight-knit and growing product team to build out CiviForm, a platform that makes it easier to access and administer public benefits. While you’ll be focused on CiviForm, you’ll also be a member of Exygy’s design team, learning from and collaborating with peers on our Consultancy and Bloom businesses. This is a full-time remote position.

CiviForm is an open-source software collaborative and digital public good, co-owned and directed by the governments who use it. This role is an exciting opportunity to drive a new chapter in the platform’s design and work directly with local and state governments to hone a key piece of infrastructure through which they speak and deliver services to their residents.   As Lead Designer on CiviForm, you will be responsible for setting the design strategy, mentoring other designers, and collaborating with product managers and engineers in all phases of the design process - from research to delivery and consistent, agile improvement. You will lead the creation of design assets that adhere to human-centered design principles. To support feature delivery, you will drive the governance of our design system, which helps the design and engineering teams be more effective and collaborative in delivery. This system includes themeable design tokens, a shared component library, and supporting documentation. You will also be a thought leader on the team, helping to establish and advocate for design best practices. CiviForm’s users are government administrators, benefits navigators, and residents—often members of underserved and underrepresented communities. Ensuring the final user experience is accessible, impactful, and equitable is essential to our approach to building.

Responsibilities

• Collaborating on the strategy for CiviForm: Work with the product team and design leadership to define the design strategy, aligning our design decisions with our sustainability goals and product priorities, across both the core platform and individual government feature roadmaps.
• Lead design solutions: Lead the creation of engaging and impactful UX and UI design solutions that successfully articulate the vision and goals of a product and solve users’ pain points. Including sitemaps, user journeys and flows, service blueprints, wireframes, clickable prototypes, and visual mockups.
• Evolving CiviForm’s design process: Collaborate closely with engineering and product partners to improve design and developer handoff and QA processes. Partner with other design leads across business lines to establish and refine best practices and design methodologies at Exygy. 
• Onboarding and design management: Help onboard and mentor staff designers and short-term design fellows to CiviForm's design strategy and delivery process so they can be effective. Activities include design reviews, QA, and weekly 1:1’s.
• Conducting research and discovery: Partner closely with design researchers to conduct qualitative and quantitative user research to gain insights into applicant and government partner goals, motivations, and challenges. Activities may include stakeholder-facing workshops (design sprints, co-design workshops), user interviews, and synthesizing and presenting findings. 
• Ensuring accessibility and usability: Advocate for accessibility standards and inclusive design principles through visual guidelines and UX best practices. In partnership with design researchers, conduct user research and testing (surveys, usability evaluations, accessibility evaluations).
• Maintaining our design system: Build and maintain CiviForm’s design system (built on USWDS) to support new product features (including auditing, creating new components or patterns, accessibility checks, and documentation)

Required Skills, Knowledge, and Abilities:

• Demonstrated knowledge of human-centered design principles and processes, from discovery and ideation to design and iteration.
• Professional experience in civic tech, affordable housing, and/or social impact work.
• Expert knowledge of Figma and additional design software (eg, Dovetail, Miro, and Google Workspace)
• Demonstrated ability to articulate and justify design strategy as it relates to solving human problems.
• Mentor more junior designers and collaborate with peers on UX/UI design best practices to complement each other's skill sets and fill any identified skill gaps.
• Strong collaboration abilities, along with a flexible and friendly approach to working with teams.
• A focus on both a macro and micro level in terms of design details.
• The ability to give and receive constructive feedback well to improve and develop.
• An interest in developing skills (design principles, tools, and trends) and sharing knowledge with fellow peers and community members.
• Comfortable working within an agile development process.
• Knowledge of equitable design processes and mindsets, how to make sure our products are truly equitable
• Experience designing solutions for underserved populations, such as those navigating social safety networks
• Experience working with and navigating a set of complex government stakeholders
• Knowledge of web accessibility best practices and standards for government websites 
• Experience with or knowledge of public sector design systems (such as US Web Design System, Gov.UK)
• Knowledge of building content strategy and best practices for government websites (such as plain language, reading levels, multilingual content, and content governance) 
• Experience building a government content management system

Education and Experience:

• Degree in Design or equivalent experience required; 7+ years of hands-on professional experience as a Product/UX and UI Designer
• An online portfolio that demonstrates experience with UX Design across multiple verticals and platforms (mobile/web/desktop) is required (if you don’t have a portfolio, you can send us links or PDFs for designs you have created and be ready to provide context/more information about them)

Benefits & Perks

Our Values

• Learning and Growth

• Pursuit of Excellence

• Leaning into Fear

• Spirit of Generosity 

• Embrace the Whole Person

Mission Statement

To ensure all communities, especially marginalized communities, have access to basic social needs. We use our expertise in strategic product development, thoughtful design, and tailored technical solutions to identify the greatest barriers and build solutions to overcome them.

Vision Statement

Everyone has equitable access to the basic social needs that encourage them to thrive. These social needs include but are not limited to affordable housing, physical and mental health care, food security, quality education, stable employment opportunities, and public benefits.

Employee Enablement Support: 

Laptop provided

$2000 annual (per calendar year) remote environment setup which includes using this budget to outfit your home office, co-working spaces, coffee shops or to meet up and collaborate with you team mates.

Wellness Budget

$100 monthly to pay for your wellness item of choice (gym membership, classes, massages etc.)

Professional Development:

$1000 annual (per calendar year) stipend towards professional development

Retirement & 401k Plans:

Employees are eligible for a 100% employer match of up to 4% of employee contribution

Medical:

Full benefits package with options up to 100% coverage toward select medical, dental, and vision plans.

Remote First Working Environment:

Exygy employees may work remotely across the US

Exygy employees main residence must be within the US

Work Life Balance 

Exygy proudly embraces work/life balance and has adopted a 4DWW policy beginning 2025, recognizing Monday - Thursday as business days. Full-time employees are expected to work 32-40 hours in a typical week. Fridays are flexible, allowing employees to take the day off when their workload allows.

Collaborative working hours: 

we aim to hold all  internal meetings between 10 AM - 3 PM PT. We expect all Exygy staff to be available during these set working hours

Time Off: 

Flexible paid time off, a minimum of 14 paid holidays, and an org-wide closure from Christmas Day through New Year's Day

Competitive paid parental and family leave

EEO & Commitment to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

We are actively seeking to create a diverse and equitable work environment because we believe that creates a stronger team.

Exygy values a diverse workplace and strongly encourages women, people of color, LGBTQIA individuals, people with disabilities, members of ethnic minorities, foreign-born residents, older members of society, and others from minority groups and diverse backgrounds to apply. Exygy is an equal opportunity employer. We will not discriminate against applicants because of race, color, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, religion, national origin, disability, ancestry, marital status, veteran status, medical condition, or any protected category prohibited by local, state, or federal laws. All employees and contractors of Exygy are responsible for maintaining a work atmosphere free from discrimination and harassment by treating others with dignity and respect.