Senior UX Researcher

About A1M

A1M Solutions is a woman-owned small business driven by the aspiration to provide value to our customers, employees, partners, and community while remaining aligned to our guiding principles of foundational values, deliberate focus, and empathetic connection.

A1M’s mission is to preserve and improve government healthcare programs that are lifelines for underserved people in the United States, including people in poverty, elderly people, members of ethnic and racial minorities, immigrants, and refugees. We look for projects with nation-wide impact at the intersection of policy, data, and user experience design.

Besides building useful and usable digital services, A1M helps teams improve their agile, user-centered design practices – or helps them get started. Our goal is not just to build sustainable public services, but also to leave our teaming partners and customers more skilled and more confident in the future.

Experience at A1M

All members of A1M’s Experience practice work in cross-functional, cross-organizational teams, often with policy experts and data specialists as well as developers and product managers. It’s wonderful if you’ve got a background in policy or data – but you don’t need to have deep knowledge. What we do expect is that you are fascinated with complex problems and treat policy and data as crucial to the overall success of government digital services.

About this Role

As an A1M Senior UX Researcher, you think and work strategically and tactically to plan, design, and conduct user research that informs products, policy, content, and design. You collaborate with stakeholders such as policy SMEs, designers, and technology leads, using a range of skills to uncover user needs and align research with strategic goals. Senior UX Researchers do not always have formal people management or lead responsibilities, but skills in teaching and coaching are essential. 

Skills and Responsibilities

Technical capabilities 

• Lead complex or multi-stream research efforts that inform program and contract strategy.
• Apply advanced qualitative and quantitative methods to solve multifaceted research needs.
• Mentor peers and strengthen team capability through guidance and feedback.
• Craft compelling insights that shape product priorities and stakeholder alignment.
• Drive adoption of research findings across teams to influence roadmap decisions.
• Coach others on how to integrate user feedback and an understanding of human behavior at every stage of the process.
• Guide clients and teams on how to make user research analysis and findings actionable.
• Influence impactful, strategic improvements to user experiences through implicit and explicit leadership.
• Shape how your discipline expresses its intent across the program and ensure prioritization of accessibility and scalability.
• Articulate rationale to complex stakeholder groups who may have competing priorities.
• Set clear objectives and make informed decisions to drive long-term success.

Communication and collaboration

• Build connections and relationships between people, teams/projects, and A1M and clients in ways that prevent and break down silos, enabling new opportunities for improved delivery.
• Get buy-in from relevant parties (teammates, team leads, government stakeholders, etc.) to make sure necessary work happens.
• Proactively recognize risks and conflicts within the team and clients, help identify approaches, and take action – manage up (understanding timing, context and other pressures, etc.) and escalate when appropriate.
• Evaluate your own skills and deliverables, and proactively seek learning opportunities to continuously improve.

Cross-domain understanding

• Initiate and drive projects that require working with multiple people in other disciplines and practices on challenging problems.
• Coach and mentor people not just within your own practice or discipline, but across practice areas – for example, designers coaching engineers.
• Anticipate and proactively provide information needed by other practices and disciplines.

Government domain acumen

• Proactively identify and respond to government requirements or policy that may impact project work, such as accessibility, PRA, FOIA, acquisition regulations, and security compliance.
• Sufficient government understanding to anticipate needs of government partners and users, and be prepared to speak to them proactively.
• Trusted to represent the company and team to clients, including in challenging situations.
  
  

Qualifications

8+ years of relevant professional experience.

Your portfolio or resume should demonstrate:

• Prior experience working in government or government consulting (local, state, or federal)
• Critical thinking about the process and outcomes of research
• Well-crafted research deliverables, such as reports or presentations
• Facilitation of research synthesis activities, generating insights and opportunities for intervention
• Identifying opportunities to introduce change and scale successful research efforts within organizations

Preferred:

• Experience working with a social impact-focused product team or in civic tech
• Experience working with distributed, cross-functional teams, including product managers, designers, engineers, and subject matter experts
• Personal experience with government health and human services programs
• Working knowledge of Medicare, the ACA, MACRA, Medicaid, or CHIP
• Familiarity with SAFe and agile methodologies
• College degree in Psychology, Information Science, Graphic Design, or a related field

Applicant Requirements

• Our contracts require employees to work from the United States. That includes all 50 US states, the District of Columbia, and all US territories.
• A1M employees must have been residents in the United States for 3 of the past 5 years.
• Due to tax reasons, A1M employees cannot reside in New York state.
• You must already have legal authorization to work within the US and not require ongoing visa sponsorship to maintain legal authorization to work.
• You must be a permanent US resident.
• Because A1M employees have access to government data and systems, new hires will need to complete a Public Trust form. Public Trust is a type of background investigation, but it is not a security clearance. Depending on the role, you must complete either the Standard Form 85 (SF85) or 85P (SF85P) questionnaire. You will at the very least get asked questions about where you’ve lived, worked, went to school, military history, police records, and substance use. You’ll also need to have your fingerprints taken.
• Our partners primarily work on Eastern Standard Time (EST), and will require flexibility in your hours if you reside outside of EST. We do offer flexibility for non-work-related life responsibilities during the day.
• Active participation in client virtual meetings, including being on camera, is an essential function that helps strengthen trust and open communication.

Compensation and Benefits

This is a fully remote full-time, permanent position. The salary range for this role is $125,000 – $155,000. This range is set by our contracts and reflects the full range for someone in this position over time, so you may not start at the top of the range.

A1M offers a benefits package that includes:

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Life insurance, short-term disability, and optional voluntary benefits
• 401(k) retirement benefits with employer matching 
• Four weeks of paid time off, seven company holidays, two personal days, and your birthday off
• Paid volunteer time
• Wellness reimbursements 
• Budgets to support training, development, travel, and office supply needs
• Donations to a nonprofit of your choice upon hire and a few times throughout each year

Interview process 

We typically have five rounds of conversations to help ensure every employee we hire is the right addition for us and that we’re the right fit for them. Each interview is about 45–60 minutes long.

1. A1M Overview - We like to start off by getting to know more about you, how you work, what you are looking for in your next role, and what you’re passionate about. This is your opportunity to ask questions and get a feel for us as A1M. We’ll talk about our mission and vision, and what we hope to accomplish through the business. We’ll also cover some particulars about federal contracting that may affect the timelines of when folks can expect to start. We talk about the type of contracts we have, and how our team tends to work. 
2. Technical Assessment - If our work at A1M broadly matches what you’re looking for, we’ll set up time to get into the nitty-gritty of your technical skills. In this conversation, you’ll meet with one of our managers to walk through one or two projects in-depth that you feel are most relevant to A1M’s work so that we can get an in-depth understanding of your skill set and interests. Please be prepared to speak about one or two projects you feel are most relevant to the work of A1M. 
3. Values Interview - After the technical assessment, we’ll schedule a conversation focused on A1M’s core values. This interview helps us understand how you approach your work, collaborate with others, and align with the way we operate as an organization, including areas like impact, collaboration, relationship management, curiosity, and active listening.
4. Project Overview - Based on what we’ve learned in our prior conversations, we will match your unique background and goals with the right opportunity. Members of the project team will share the day-to-day of the project to outline its vision, objectives, and team dynamics. This conversation ensures the specific position aligns with your career goals as well as ensuring you’ll be successful on the team. 
5. Offer - At this point, you’ve made it! You'll meet with our leadership to go over the offer letter and have a chance to ask any remaining questions.

Equal Employment Opportunity

A1M Solutions is building a culturally diverse and pluralistic organization committed to working in a multicultural environment where differences are valued and respected.  Women, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, people with disabilities, members of ethnic minorities, foreign-born residents, and veterans are strongly encouraged to apply.

A1M Solutions is an equal-opportunity employer. Applicants will not be discriminated against because of race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, religion, national origin, citizenship status, disability, ancestry, marital status, veteran status, medical condition or any protected category prohibited by local, state or federal laws.

As a federal contractor and subcontractor, we certify that we do not operate any programs that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws.

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