UX Design Lead

Rotary Club of Monroe, Louisiana•Evanston, IL

2h•$117,000 - $130,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The UX Design Lead shapes the experiences of one or more products in Rotary’s product suite. The role requires deep understanding of users and responsibility for improving existing products and designing new ones, guiding their usability, accessibility, and effectiveness. The lead brings an entrepreneurial, proactive, and innovative approach to product design and team collaboration. This is a visual and product design leadership role focused on elevating the aesthetics and usability of Rotary’s digital products. The lead works end-to-end, from research and concepts to polished execution, and helps set standards for visual and interaction design. They create accessible experiences for global audiences, develop scalable visual systems, collaborate with users and cross-functional teams, and communicate design vision through critique, collaboration, and storytelling. The position is hybrid and fully flexible, with work at Rotary’s Evanston world headquarters expected from once per month to several times a week. Managers determine specific office days based on business requirements. Employees must live within reasonable daily commuting distance of Evanston. The role reports to the Manager of Product Design and is classified as exempt.

Requirements

6–8+ years of professional experience in visual or product design for consumer or SaaS applications.
A portfolio demonstrating end-to-end design process, including research, journeys, wireframes, and prototypes, as well as strong visual craft. Applications without a portfolio will not be considered.
B.S., M.S., B.F.A. in Communication Design, Graphic Design, Visual Design, Interaction Design, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
Demonstrable expertise in color theory, typography, layout and grid systems, iconography, and motion design.
Experience conducting and synthesizing user research and validating design decisions through usability and A/B testing.
Advanced fluency in Figma, including component architecture, variables, styles, and design tokens.
Experience with prototyping tools such as Figma prototyping, Framer, Protopie, or After Effects for high-fidelity motion and interaction design.
Experience designing and scaling a visual design system, including token structures for color, typography, spacing, elevation, and motion, and maintaining component and pattern libraries.
Experience designing UI for global audiences and strong understanding of accessibility as a visual design discipline, including WCAG 2.1/2.2 AA+, contrast, legibility, scalable type, and motion reduction.
Knowledge of localization considerations, including right-to-left layouts and variable text expansion.
Working knowledge of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript sufficient to understand implementation constraints and collaborate with engineers on design-to-code visual fidelity.
An eye for emerging visual and interaction trends and familiarity with AI-assisted design or generative tools for exploration and rapid visual iteration.
Ability to collaborate with diverse teams, communicate design rationale, mentor designers, and take ownership of design work.

Responsibilities

Help mature Rotary’s visual design system, including primitive, semantic, and component-level token architecture and reusable, on-brand web and mobile components and patterns.
Champion a high aesthetic bar across the design organization and help other designers improve their visual craft through feedback and example.
Stay current on visual and motion design trends and bring modern perspectives to products, including considerations for AI across the UX life cycle.
Balance Rotary’s brand identity with product UI needs to deliver consistent, beautiful, usable, and accessible experiences at scale.
Lead end-to-end design work, including research, personas, journeys, wireframes, and prototypes, through polished, high-fidelity visual execution.
Conduct research, including usability and A/B testing, to validate design solutions and inform visual and interaction refinements.
Pair with UX engineers and product managers to turn Rotary’s visual language into working, pixel-faithful artifacts.
Partner with engineering to ensure design tokens and visual details are consistently implemented and adopted across product surfaces.
Lead and prioritize design work across multiple teams and projects.
Collaborate with product, engineering, research, and brand teams to deliver polished, well-implemented work.
Mentor designers, provide constructive critique, and present research- and brand-informed design rationale persuasively to stakeholders.