***EMPLOYER IS A CONTRACTOR FOR THE U.S. GOVERNMENT. THIS POSITION WILL REQUIRE U.S. CITIZENSHIP.

Role Description: 

We are seeking a UX Researcher & Strategist to lead new and existing discovery and framing efforts for the Defense Unicorns Navy team. This Unicorn would be responsible for conducting in-person and virtual design sprints across multiple stakeholders, assisting Unicorn Product Managers with value stream mapping and visual diagrams, as well as creating user personas and user scenarios, and would mentor and uplevel design practices across the company including helping Delivery Product Managers develop and facilitate design-related activities. 

 

Responsibilities: 

  •  In-person and virtual design sprints across multiple stakeholders
  • On-site and virtual user interviews and “gemba walks” for internal and external teams
  • User journey mapping reflecting both internal and external teams
  • Assisting Unicorn Product Managers with value stream mapping and visual diagrams
  • Assisting Unicorn Product Managers in creating user personas and user scenarios
  • Develop a deep understanding of DevSecOps workflow and be able to communicate the flow to internal and external stakeholders.
  • Map out developer experience from development to production to identify and translate user needs into actionable improvements.
  • Create user flows to represent how our suite of tools integrates and interact with external requirements to influence internal prioritization and provide feature requests/bug fixes to Unicorn product teams.
  • Create and maintain user personas used within Navy delivery, and inform user personas for Defense Unicorns across Product and Growth teams.
  • Cultivate empathy for end-users across Navy Delivery teams, wider Unicorn teams, & stakeholders.
  • Mentor and uplevel design practices across the company including helping delivery product managers develop and facilitate design-related activities

 

Some projects you could be working on:

  • End-user and intermediate-user feedback in staging/production environments for mission-specific applications
  • Your App Your Environment (YAYE) - taking mission applications from development to production
  • Using Software Factory (SWF) to accelerate mission app development - supporting the building, testing, scanning, and delivery of mission applications
  • Using LeapFrog AI (LFAI) to accelerate submarine maintenance - enabling generative AI capabilities for mission heroes

Travel Expectations/Requirements: 15-25%

The listed responsibilities are not exhaustive and additional responsibilities may be assigned based on the evolving needs of the organization. We are seeking a dynamic individual who is able to adapt and take on new responsibilities as they arise. 

Preferred Experience and Qualifications:

  • 4 years experience working on complex, technical or enterprise level software solutions.
  • Experience working on developer tools, SAAS products, open-source software, or developer platforms.
  • Experience leading qualitative and quantitative user research for full product lifecycle.
  • Demonstrated success leading user engagements fully remote (ex., User interviews, usability testing, design workshops).
  • Experience collaborating with developers to design and build complex products that delight the user.
  • Has a professional portfolio demonstrating a breadth of design processes, overall solutions, and impact to be reviewed during the hiring process.
  • Experience identifying areas of risk and designing research experiments to validate assumptions and guide delivery direction.
  • Experience creating low fidelity and high fidelity UI flows
  • Experience using design software such as Figma 
  • Experience using UX research software such as Maze or Userbit
  • Ability to work independently to explore concepts from beginning to end, yet also craves healthy feedback loops with your ideas.
  • Enjoys tackling ambiguous problems and shaping them into clear goals
  • Generative and enjoy coming up with novel but simple solutions
  • Interested in the technology under the hood that enables secure software delivery
  • Ability to communicate effectively both in written and visual formats.
  • Passion for our mission-focused organizations who need secure software & capabilities.
  • Enjoys collaborating closely with multiple teams and have empathy for developer experience

Full compensation packages are based on candidate experience. Compensation ranges are established using national benchmarking data and apply across all geographic locations within the United States. 

Remote - USA
$145,614—$190,000 USD

Who We Are: Defense Unicorns delivers mission value by streamlining software delivery so our customers can focus on the most important challenges. We share a vision of freedom and security for the advancement of progress and innovation. Our commitment to this vision, and to our mission-driven customers, means a commitment to speed, user experience and optionality, without compromising security. Our team is composed of innovators, software engineers, and veterans with decades of experience delivering technology programs across the federal market.

What We Do: We create and deliver secure solutions for continuous software integration and delivery. Defense Unicorns consolidates the best practices for security pipelines, testing, and deployment automation in order to meet the high security requirements valued by mission owners. Our solutions are agnostic by design and we believe that growing a robust ecosystem of secure, cloud-native software solutions can help enterprise customers inside and outside the federal market buy and integrate software more easily.

Who We Serve: Defense Unicorns’ customers are mission-focused leaders across public and private enterprises. We proudly support defense and civil agencies across the U.S. government and we work closely with the creators of leading-edge software solutions to deliver value to the mission-owner by improving the security and consumability of commercial software products.

What We Work On:

  • Kubernetes
  • Cloud Environments (AWS/GCP and Azure)
  • Infrastructure-as-code (like Terraform/Pulumi)
  • Continuous Delivery and automation tooling
  • GitOps
  • Containers
  • CNCF projects and open source products and packages
  • Helm/Kustomize-Value Stream Mapping
  • Building and improving security delivery
  • Building Kubernetes and cloud native applications

Benefits Our Unicorns Enjoy:

Health:

  • Medical/Dental/Vision
  • Premiums are 100% Company Paid
  • Health Reimbursement Account
  • Life Insurance
  • Disability Insurance

Financial:

  • 401k with Employer Contribution (Regardless of Employee Contribution)
  • Company Stock Options
  • Home Office Setup Budget

Leave:

  • Unlimited paid time off, with a mandatory 10 days off on top of 11 federal government holidays, week of Thanksgiving, last two weeks of December (including New Year’s Day)
  • Paid Parental Leave

Learning:

  • Reimbursement for approved trainings/subscriptions
  • Conferences (travel, lodging, and fees)

Defense Unicorns is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, national origin, veteran status, genetic information, union status and/or beliefs, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.

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