Product Designer

SteerBridge•Vienna, VA

About The Position

SteerBridge is seeking a Product Designer to join their Experience Design team, specifically supporting the Aviation Tech team and the ongoing development of AIRES, their aviation readiness capability. The role involves creating high-fidelity UI prototypes in Figma, contributing to the design system, and translating research, workflows, and technical requirements into user-friendly product experiences. The designer will work within a small product design team, receiving direction and mentorship from a senior product designer, and collaborating with UX researchers, engineers, data teams, product stakeholders, and aviation subject-matter experts. The ideal candidate possesses strong UI skills, understands design systems, is comfortable with complex data-rich interfaces, and thrives in a feedback-oriented environment. The role is expected to evolve from executing defined design tasks to taking on more ownership of product workflows and features.

Requirements

Must be a U.S. Citizen.
Bachelor’s degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, or a related field, or equivalent relevant work experience.
An active Secret security clearance or the ability to obtain one is required.
2–4 years of professional experience in UI or product design preferred. Exceptional early-career candidates with strong portfolios will also be considered.
A portfolio demonstrating strong UI craft, design system work, and the ability to organize complex information and design multi-step user workflows.
Ability to present and walk through a previously designed user flow as part of the interview process, including explaining design decisions, constraints, and tradeoffs.
Strong proficiency in Figma, including components, variants, auto layout, and interactive prototyping.
Solid understanding of design systems, including how components, tokens, and patterns fit together and should be used and extended.
Strong foundational UI skills, including typography, visual hierarchy, layout, spacing, and color.
Experience turning wireframes, workflows, or requirements into high-fidelity, developer-ready prototypes.
Working knowledge of Section 508 compliance and WCAG accessibility standards as applied to UI design.
Comfort working in Jira or a similar ticketing or Agile tool to manage and complete assigned work.
Strong communication skills and openness to direction, critique, and mentorship.

Nice To Haves

Experience designing data-rich applications, dashboards, enterprise software, decision-support tools, or other complex interfaces.
Experience presenting complex data, system states, dependencies, alerts, operational status, or similar information in a clear and usable way.
Working knowledge of foundational UX principles, including usability heuristics, information architecture, and interaction design, sufficient to ask informed questions about user flows and flag usability concerns.
Working knowledge of HTML/CSS sufficient to understand implementation feasibility and communicate effectively with engineers.
Experience contributing to or helping maintain a design system component library.
Experience working within Agile/Scrum ceremonies, including sprint planning, backlog refinement, and retrospectives.
Prior experience supporting DoD, federal, aviation, logistics, fleet management, or other government clients.
Basic motion or interaction design skills.
Experience using AI-assisted design, prototyping, or development tools such as Claude, ChatGPT/Codex, or comparable platforms.
Ability to use rapid prototyping techniques to demonstrate interactions and product concepts beyond static screens.

Responsibilities

Design and build high-fidelity prototypes in Figma, translating wireframes, user flows, research findings, and requirements into polished, production-ready interfaces.
Design complex data-driven workflows and interfaces supporting aviation readiness, maintenance, logistics, and operational planning.
Turn UX research findings, subject-matter expert input, operational workflows, and technical requirements into product concepts and production-ready designs.
Support and help maintain the team’s design system, using existing components and tokens correctly and flagging or proposing new patterns as needs arise.
Receive design direction and assigned work from the senior product designer, execute against established priorities, and track progress through Jira.
Manage several concurrent design tasks and tickets in a fast-paced environment, prioritizing and estimating work across sprints.
Annotate and document handoff specifications, including states, edge cases, interaction details, and expected behaviors, so engineers can build without guesswork.
Perform design QA on shipped features, verifying that implementation matches Figma specifications, states, and interaction details.
Collaborate with product stakeholders, engineers, UX researchers, data teams, and aviation subject-matter experts to ensure designs are feasible, consistent, and aligned to operational requirements.
Participate actively in design reviews and critique sessions, incorporating feedback into iterations.
Apply consistent visual and interaction design standards across screens, workflows, and features.
Communicate design rationale clearly to designers, engineers, and stakeholders.
Incorporate feedback and direction between check-ins and proactively escalate blockers.
Partner with UX researchers to translate research findings and validated operational workflows into product designs.
Turn research findings, user flows, and operational requirements into wireframes, interaction models, and high-fidelity prototypes.
Work with aviation subject-matter experts to understand operational context and clarify design requirements.
Support interaction design and information architecture decisions for complex workflows.
Iterate on designs based on usability testing, stakeholder feedback, technical constraints, and changing operational requirements.
Help visualize concepts early so product and engineering teams can evaluate potential solutions before development.