Forward Deployed UX Designer

Company Description

Job Description

As a Forward Deployed UX Designer, you will embed directly with our customers in the field to understand in detail their mission and how they evaluate continuous readiness. You will do that through a deep understanding of the end-user's jobs, problems, needs, and friction to achieve their goals. You turn this understanding into a product direction and work with other forward-deployed roles to design and develop innovative AI-native solutions to create a 10x better way of satisfying customer needs, instantly. The “job” would not be finished without integrating the work back to the core platform and completing the full cycle: Mission discovery → Prototype → Ship → Measure → Improve the Platform. This is a highly collaborative, fast-paced, customer-facing role where you own the discovery work end-to-end—from framing the question to delivering insights that direct what we deliver.

To succeed in this role, you are a curious and rigorous problem solver who values outcomes over process, exercises exceptional judgment when balancing competing priorities, and thrives in ambiguous, high-stakes, empowered environments.

This role is a full-time position located out of our office in Arlington, VA / Pittsburgh, PA / San Francisco, CA / Anywhere in the US.

This role may require up to 75% travel.

Scope of Responsibilities

• Partner with other forward-deployed roles (engineers, data scientists) to scope research, frame hypotheses, and translate findings into 0-to-1 product initiatives and prototypes.
• Run fast, pragmatic research: contextual inquiry, interviews, usability sessions, and concept tests against working prototypes.
• Assess, prioritize, and help correct the most important gaps in solutions under development based on what you hear from users.
• Synthesize quickly, share insights early, and iterate—learn fast, adjust, and go again.
• Work with core platform researchers, designers, and product managers to distill what’s customer-specific and what needs to become part of our core offering.
• Spend 50-75% of time at customer sites to diagnose and deeply understand user needs, workflows, and pain points.
• Plan and execute qualitative and mixed-methods research across the end-to-end product development lifecycle.
• Build and maintain lightweight, reusable research practices—interview guides, synthesis frameworks, and insight repositories—that scale with the team.
• Iterate quickly alongside engineering and design to progressively unlock customer value.

Qualifications

• U.S. Citizenship is required

• Bachelor’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Psychology, Design, a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Proficient in Figma, with the ability to translate research insights and ambiguous requirements directly into wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity mockups that can be rapidly iterated on in the field.
• Deep understanding of design systems—able to work within established component libraries and design tokens, extend them thoughtfully, and maintain consistency across a product as it evolves.
• Strong, well-reasoned opinions on the structure and composition of UI elements: how components should be organized, when and how they should be combined, and how layout and hierarchy affect usability and clarity
• Worked in a startup or entrepreneurial environment.
• Experience conducting applied UX or product research in a professional setting, including planning studies and synthesizing findings independently.
• Strong command of qualitative methods (interviews, contextual inquiry, usability testing) and comfort with mixed-methods work.
• Ability to work independently with minimal supervision and a strong desire to work in a challenging, fast-paced environment.
• Excellent communication skills—able to tell a clear, compelling story with research and influence cross-functional partners.
• Experience in AIND to generate prototypes and validate 

Desired Skills: 

• A current U.S. security clearance, or the ability to obtain one with Air’s sponsorship.
• Experience researching complex, domain-heavy, or enterprise software, ideally in defense, government, or other regulated settings.
• Experience working within the boundaries of a federally accredited software environment.
• Experience in a customer-facing, consulting, or embedded role.