Expert User Interface Designer

Job Description

Western Governors University (WGU) is seeking an experienced and highly collaborative Expert User Interface (UI) Designer to lead the evolution of digital product design across our student, employee, and public-facing platforms. This role plays a critical part in scaling and maturing WGU's UI practice through design system leadership, accessibility expertise, and exceptional visual design execution.

This is not a hybrid UX/UI role. WGU has a dedicated UX organization, allowing this position to focus deeply on user interface design, visual systems, accessibility, and front-end design consistency across products and platforms.

The Expert UI Designer will partner closely with engineering, product, accessibility, brand, and UX teams to deliver cohesive, scalable, and accessible experiences that align with WGU's brand vision and support student success.

As part of a small but highly impactful UI team supporting a broad portfolio of products, this role requires someone who thrives in complexity, enjoys solving systems-level design challenges, and can balance hands-on execution with strategic influence.

Why This Role Matters

The UI discipline at WGU has evolved significantly over the past several years, and this role will help drive the next phase of maturity across our digital ecosystem. A major focus of this position will be helping consolidate multiple design systems into a unified, scalable framework while partnering closely with web platform and engineering teams to expand and maintain a robust component library that promotes consistency across WGU products.

This role is ideal for someone who:

• Has deep experience managing and evolving enterprise design systems
• Understands design tokens and component-driven development
• Brings strong visual and interaction design expertise
• Has worked extensively with accessible digital experiences
• Enjoys collaborating across large organizations with brand, product, UX, and engineering stakeholders
• Can mentor others while raising the quality bar across teams

What You'll Do

Design Systems & UI Leadership

• Lead the creation, consolidation, maintenance, and evolution of enterprise design systems across multiple products and platforms.
• Partner closely with engineering and web platform teams to support scalable component libraries and consistent implementation standards.
• Help drive the unification of multiple existing design systems into a cohesive, centralized experience framework.
• Define and maintain design tokens, reusable components, interaction patterns, and visual standards.
• Establish scalable UI practices that improve consistency, usability, and accessibility across products.

Visual & Interaction Design

• Create polished, pixel-perfect user interfaces, high-fidelity mockups, prototypes, and production-ready assets.
• Apply exceptional typography, hierarchy, color, spacing, layout, animation, and interaction design principles.
• Design responsive experiences across desktop, tablet, and mobile environments.
• Utilize motion and interaction design thoughtfully to enhance usability and engagement.
• Translate product goals and technical requirements into visually compelling and technically feasible solutions.

Accessibility & Inclusive Design

• Champion accessibility best practices across all digital products and experiences.
• Ensure designs meet WCAG and ADA compliance requirements and collaborate with developers to support accessible implementation.
• Advocate for inclusive design principles that support learners with visual, auditory, physical, cognitive, speech, and neurological disabilities.
• Identify opportunities to improve accessibility and usability throughout the student portal and learning environment experience.

Collaboration & Mentorship

• Collaborate with UX researchers/designers, engineers, product managers, accessibility specialists, and brand teams to deliver cohesive experiences.
• Take established brand and marketing guidelines and apply them effectively across digital products and systems.
• Present design rationale clearly and confidently to stakeholders and leadership.
• Mentor junior designers through active coaching, collaboration, and design feedback.
• Contribute to continuous improvement of processes, workflows, and design operations.

What We're Looking For

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Design, Visual Communication, Graphic Arts, or related field (Equivalent experience may substitute for degree requirements.)
• 6+ years of experience in UI design, visual design, interaction design, or related fields.
• Experience creating, maintaining, and scaling design systems in collaboration with engineering teams.
• Hands-on experience with design tokens and component-based design methodologies.
• Strong understanding of responsive web and mobile-native design patterns.
• Excellent communication, presentation, and stakeholder management skills.
• Demonstrated leadership, mentorship, and collaboration skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working within Agile product development environments.
• Higher education, student portal, or learning platform experience.
• Agency or consulting experience.
• Experience designing for large-scale, multi-product ecosystems.