Job description
At AKQA, we believe in the imaginative application of art and science to create beautiful ideas, products, and services. With an entrepreneurial and collaborative approach, we design adaptive digital services and applications that capture the imagination, delivering impressive returns for our clients.
We are seeking a highly experienced and passionate Freelance Senior UI Designer to join our team, focusing on one of AKQA’s most enduring and prestigious accounts – a relationship we’ve proudly maintained for over 15 years. This is an exceptional opportunity to contribute to a flagship digital product, leveraging your deep expertise in UI design and, critically, your proven track record in working with and evolving complex design systems.
This role is a critical addition to our team, starting ASAP through the end of 2025. While remote work is fully supported, the ability to collaborate effectively within Eastern Time (ET) hours is essential.
ROLE REQUIREMENTS
- Lead UI Design: Drive the visual and interactive design of key features and components for a high-profile digital product, ensuring exceptional user experiences and brand consistency.
- Design Systems Mastery: Act as a champion and hands-on contributor to our existing design system, ensuring its integrity, scalability, and adoption across the product. This includes contributing new components, refining existing ones, and documenting usage guidelines.
- Collaborate & Innovate: Work closely with product managers, developers, and other designers to translate complex requirements into intuitive, elegant, and user-centric interfaces.
- Strategic Contribution: Participate in strategic discussions around product evolution, bringing a strong UI and design system perspective to the table.
- Quality Assurance: Maintain an exacting eye for detail, ensuring that all design outputs are pixel-perfect, adhere to accessibility standards, and are optimized for various platforms.
- Prototyping & Testing: Create interactive prototypes to convey design concepts, user flows, and micro-interactions, facilitating user testing and stakeholder feedback.
- Documentation: Contribute to comprehensive design documentation, ensuring clarity and consistency for development teams and future design iterations.
QUALITIES AND CHARACTERISTICS
- Extensive UI Design Experience: A compelling portfolio showcasing a strong foundation in user interface design, visual hierarchy, typography, color theory, and interaction design for complex digital products.
- Deep Design Systems Expertise: Demonstrated experience working within, contributing to, and evolving robust design systems. You understand the principles of component-based design, tokenization, and the importance of consistency at scale.
- Digital Product Focus: Proven experience designing for web and mobile applications, with a strong understanding of platform-specific guidelines and best practices.
- Collaborative Spirit: Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to articulate design decisions, receive feedback constructively, and work seamlessly within a multidisciplinary team.
- Tool Proficiency: Expert-level proficiency with modern design tools (e.g., Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD) and prototyping tools.
- Problem-Solving Acumen: A proactive and analytical approach to identifying user needs and translating them into effective design solutions.
- Adaptability: Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, agile environment, managing multiple priorities and delivering high-quality work under tight deadlines.
- Minimum of 5+ years of relevant professional experience in UI design, with a significant portion dedicated to design systems.
Contract Details:
- Duration: ASAP through end of 2025.
- Working Hours: Must be able to work effectively within Eastern Time (ET) hours.
- Location: Remote.
- Weekly Rate: $2,400 - $3,200, depending on experience.
AKQA is an Equal Opportunities Employer, we believe that diversity is vital to AKQA’s ability to provide our clients with the best recommendations and are committed to fostering a varied and inclusive work environment. Your race, color, ancestry, religion, gender, gender identity, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability or veteran status have no bearing on our hiring decisions. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know. Explore our extensive range of benefits here.
We believe great work happens when we’re together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and connection. That’s why we’ve adopted a hybrid approach including required in-office days. If you require accommodations or flexibility, please discuss this with the hiring team during the interview process.
AKQA is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to particular characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers.
