UX Design Lead

LMI is seeking a UX / Design Engineer to join the IronSled Platform-as-a-Service team. This role will own the design of the processes, workflows, and user experiences that determine how customers interact with and consume the platform.

This is not a traditional UI design role focused primarily on visual polish. The Staff UX / Product Designer will work across product, engineering, cybersecurity, and platform operations to simplify complex technical processes such as identity and access management, onboarding, application provisioning, environment access, and CMMC-related workflows. This position requires the ability to obtain a security clearance. U.S. citizenship is required. 

The ideal candidate understands that the user interface is often the final expression of a larger process. They will identify friction in the underlying workflow, work with stakeholders and engineers to determine what can be simplified or automated, and translate the resulting process into an intuitive user experience.

As an early member of a small, cross-functional team, this person will have significant influence over how IronSled evolves as a product and how users experience the platform.

LMI is a new breed of digital solutions provider dedicated to accelerating government impact with innovation and speed. Investing in technology and prototypes ahead of need, LMI brings commercial-grade platforms and mission-ready AI to federal agencies at commercial speed.

Leveraging our mission-ready technology and solutions, proven expertise in federal deployment, and strategic relationships, we enhance outcomes for the government, efficiently and effectively. With a focus on agility and collaboration, LMI serves the defense, space, healthcare, and energy sectors—helping agencies navigate complexity and outpace change. Headquartered in Tysons, Virginia, LMI is committed to delivering impactful results that strengthen missions and drive lasting value.

What You’ll Do

• Own the end-to-end user experience for IronSled, from initial access and onboarding through application deployment and ongoing platform use.
• Analyze existing technical and operational processes to identify unnecessary steps, manual dependencies, user friction, and opportunities for automation.
• Design workflows around complex platform capabilities including IAM, access control, RBAC, provisioning, application onboarding, environment selection, and CMMC requirements.
• Partner directly with platform engineers, security personnel, Product Management, and technical leadership to ensure proposed experiences are technically viable and aligned with backend constraints.
• Facilitate stakeholder discussions and drive alignment when improving processes requires changes across organizational or technical boundaries.
• Translate complex technical requirements into understandable user journeys, process flows, wireframes, prototypes, and implementation-ready specifications.
• Establish and maintain consistent UX patterns, reusable components, design standards, and documentation across the IronSled portal.
• Conduct user research and usability testing with internal and external tenants to validate assumptions and continuously improve platform workflows.
• Provide front-end engineers with clear specifications and assets that reduce ambiguity and allow implementation to move quickly.
• Use AI-assisted tools to accelerate research, validate workflows, stress-test designs, develop technical requirements, and create narrowly scoped implementation assets where appropriate.
• Contribute limited front-end artifacts when they materially accelerate implementation, such as design tokens, CSS variables, component specifications, or other low-risk assets.
• Ensure user experiences meet accessibility requirements and applicable Section 508 standards.
• Advocate for user needs while balancing security, compliance, technical feasibility, platform maintainability, and mission requirements.

What We’re Looking For

• 7+ years of experience in UX design, product design, service design, or a related discipline, with experience leading complex end-to-end design efforts.
• Demonstrated experience improving workflows where the primary challenge involved business processes, technical constraints, organizational behaviors, or system architecture rather than visual design alone.
• Experience designing complex enterprise, SaaS, PaaS, developer, cybersecurity, or other technically sophisticated products.
• Strong ability to create user flows, journey maps, process diagrams, wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity designs.
• Experience partnering directly with software engineers and technical stakeholders to translate designs into implementation-ready requirements.
• Working understanding of modern web technologies including HTML, CSS, responsive design, APIs, and component-based front-end development.
• Experience developing or maintaining design systems, reusable components, design tokens, or similar standards.
• Experience conducting user research, usability testing, and stakeholder interviews.
• Ability to communicate design decisions and tradeoffs to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to independently identify ambiguity, investigate underlying causes, and drive decisions.
• U.S. citizenship required.
• Ability to obtain and maintain the clearance or access required to support Department of War customers.

Target salary range: $123,000 - $170,000

Disclaimer: 

The salary range displayed represents the typical salary range for this position and is not a guarantee of compensation. Individual salaries are determined by various factors including, but not limited to location, internal equity, business considerations, client contract requirements, and candidate qualifications, such as education, experience, skills, and security clearances.