Usability Expert Jobs (NOW HIRING)

If you're passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country-and you're committed to working hard to play your part in building that future-consider WGU as the next step in your career.
Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.
The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.
At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:
Grade: Professional 312
Pay Range: $106,700.00 - $165,400.00
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.

What Makes Someone Successful in This Role

• You are deeply passionate about UI design and design systems.
• You understand the distinction between UX and UI and excel at translating UX direction into polished, scalable interfaces.
• You combine creativity with systems thinking.
• You care equally about aesthetics, usability, accessibility, and implementation quality.
• You can operate strategically while remaining highly hands-on.
• You enjoy collaborating across teams and influencing design quality across an organization.
• You bring a strong sense of ownership, curiosity, and continuous improvement.

Additional Information

• This role may require occasional travel up to 20%, including attendance at company summits, conferences, and other business-related events.
• Responsibilities and priorities may evolve to support organizational and product needs.

Why WGU?
At WGU, our mission is centered on expanding access to higher education through innovative, student-focused learning experiences. Joining WGU means becoming part of a collaborative organization dedicated to improving outcomes for learners through technology, accessibility, and thoughtful design.
If you are passionate about creating cohesive, accessible, and beautifully crafted interfaces that make a meaningful impact for students at scale, we'd love to hear from you.
Position & Application Details
Full-Time Regular Positions (classified as regular and working 40 standard weekly hours): This is a full-time, regular position (classified for 40 standard weekly hours) that is eligible for bonuses; medical, dental, vision, telehealth and mental healthcare; health savings account and flexible spending account; basic and voluntary life insurance; disability coverage; accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages; legal and identity theft coverage; retirement savings plan; wellbeing program; discounted WGU tuition; and flexible paid time off for rest and relaxation with no need for accrual, flexible paid sick time with no need for accrual, 11 paid holidays, and other paid leaves, including up to 12 weeks of parental leave.
How to Apply: If interested, an application will need to be submitted online. Internal WGU employees will need to apply through the internal job board in Workday.
Additional Information
Disclaimer: The job posting highlights the most critical responsibilities and requirements of the job. It's not all-inclusive.
Accommodations: Applicants with disabilities who require assistance or accommodation during the application or interview process should contact our Talent Acquisition team at recruiting@wgu.edu.
Equal Employment Opportunity: All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any protected characteristic as required by law.