UX Designer

Job Description

Company Overview

AllianceBernstein (AB) is a global investment-management firm providing industry-leading research and investment solutions through a combination of innovation, intellectual curiosity and relentless ingenuity. We offer high-quality research and diversified investment services to institutional and individual investors worldwide. Our clients include some of the world's top institutions as well as private-wealth clients and retail investors. Through close partnerships with our clients, we collaborate on investment strategies across regions and sectors to inspire innovative thinking and deliver superior outcomes.We invest in our people and in the communities in which we operate, and we celebrate our diversity to showcase what makes us unique. We offer our talent the opportunity to grow professionally while working on cutting-edge ideas and outcomes in a global culture that operates as a tight-knit community.If you're ready to innovate and grow your career, join us.

IT Group Description

The UX team within Bernstein’s Digital Client Strategy group is a small team immersed in the world of investing for individuals and families, as well as investment support technology, with resources at our fingertips to learn even more about the world of global finance. We’re led by a Service Designer/UX hybrid and our commitment is to ensure user-centered thinking is a driving force behind our company’s technology decisions.

Responsibilities

We are seeking a User Experience Designer to join the Bernstein Digital Client Strategy Group’s UX Team in New York, NY or Nashville, TN.

Describe the role:

The User Experience Designer will be a generalist responsible for driving forward UX research and design on new features and products being developed for external (client) use as well as internal (employee) use within Bernstein. This role collaborates heavily with developers, project management, business analysts, business stakeholders, our product owner, and our end users in an agile process, to deliver high-quality and timely user research and product designs that meet user needs while balancing business and technology goals. This is a UX generalist role, and we are looking for someone who wants to work in the entire UX spectrum from user research through to UI/visual design.

Describe the applications and business or enterprise functions the role supports:

Private wealth client-facing technology (app, website), internal technology used by associates and advisors to conduct business. Our team’s UX designers are helping to ensure user-centered excellence in project teams they work with.

The key job responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Acting as the voice of the user and advocating for user-centered strategy and decision-making
• Asking questions of business and developer collaborators to uncover deeper needs and goals, hidden assumptions, and new possibilities for action
• Connecting user research findings (generative and testing-based) to business goals, outstanding questions, technological constraints, and more to provide useful and actionable recommendations to the product owner and project team
• Determining and producing the deliverable most needed for the job at hand, such as research plans, research summaries & recommendations, storyboards and journey maps, sitemaps, user flows, wireframes, UI designs, and prototypes
• Using information architecture and interaction design best practices to create user flows, screen layouts, and interactive elements that:
• Fit into existing complex web & mobile products, features, and hierarchies
• Are technically feasible and use existing design patterns and systems wherever possible
• Collaborating with developers to get feedback at every stage, from early ideation to tweaking the frontend during buildout
• Flexibly iterating throughout the design process to accommodate new information
• Confidently communicating design decisions to collaborators and stakeholders

What makes this role unique or interesting?

We strive to have a supportive, fun team environment. We’re close-knit and also work with teammates in other offices around the country. We like learning from one another and sometimes do knowledge-sharing activities between developer and designer teammates. AB has a generous paid parental leave policy and other family-friendly benefits.

What is the professional development value of this role, i.e. what learning and professional growth does the role offer the candidate?

This is a generalist role that will gain more experience in every part of the UX process; for an applicant looking to deepen skills in any part of the UX spectrum, this role will provide ample opportunity.

The person in this role will also have the opportunity to contribute to Bernstein-wide UX standards, as UX here is only a few years old. Furthermore, there are opportunities for mentoring younger employees wanting to learn UX, as well as teaching UX methods to other roles in the firm. This role reports to the Service Design Lead and so there is also opportunity for visibility into and learning in the service design process as well. Our company also has regular internal cross-department learning events and will be a great fit for anyone looking to learn more about finance and investing.

Qualifications

Job Qualifications (The ideal candidate should have the following):

• Have 4-5 years of hands-on experience creating both UX research and design deliverables
• At least some experience in all parts of the UX cycle from user research, through wireframing and prototyping, to high-fidelity UI/visual design, and deeper experience in 2 of these areas.
• Some experience designing easy-to-use solutions in complex technological and legal environments like Financial Services, healthcare, or government. B2B UX experience may also fill this requirement, depending on industry.
• Be able to speak to some past leadership responsibility (project-level or larger scale). Candidates with UX evangelism experience will stand out.
• Be fluent in wireframing, prototyping, and workflow tools such as Sketch/Illustrator/Adobe XD, InVision, and Zeplin.
• Be comfortable communicating about approach and process, rolling with feedback well and adjusting as needed.
• Be a supportive team player who collaborates equally well with senior stakeholders, product management, business analysts, developers, researchers, and designers.
• Be naturally curious, self-driven and motivated.
• Be comfortable prioritizing and planning your workstreams in an environment that moves quickly, as well as standing up for the integrity of the UX process.
• Be familiar with the way front-end languages work (including HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Swift, etc.), and have collaborated directly with developers.
• Be interested in staying updated with industry and competitive changes.
• For bonus points: have experience working with agile teams.
• For bonus points: have additional experience in detailed visual design, micro-interaction design, animation/micro-animation, etc.

Qualifications, Experience, Education:

• 4-5 years of UX experience
• At least 5 years of total full-time work experience (non-UX work fulfills this requirement)
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent, preferably in a related field (human factors, HCI, user research, interaction design, etc.)