Job Description

Who We Are:

Kessel Run is an Air Force software development organization that continuously delivers war-winning software that our Airmen love.  We are striving to be a “software company” within the Air Force that can sense and respond to conflict in any domain, anytime, anywhere.

We value continuous learning, continuous user feedback, continuous integration, continuous delivery, continuous security & continuous testing. We combine lean principles, user-centered design (UCD) and eXtreme Programming (XP) using a flat management, balanced team approach to ensure we are always building the most valuable thing possible, the simplest way possible, and as fast as possible.

We are offering the opportunity to work in a modern work environment, to use cutting-edge technologies and modern processes, all while making a meaningful impact every single day. Come help us solve our nation’s toughest, most complex challenges while enjoying yourself at work every day.

The Position:

The OpsC2 Design Practice Lead is responsible for enabling a self-sustaining lean and agile design community and practice. This is a full-time, dedicated role – i.e., the Design PL is not part of any specific product team. They will serve as the functional leader of the Design practice across OpsC2, ensuring clarity in processes, practices and tools to enable our design professionals. Working with design leadership across the Portfolios, this person will serve as a mentor to product designers and enable growth across the community.

This is not a design delivery role. This is an operations role, where the candidate will work directly with the other Design Leads in OpsC2 to determine the proper methods, practices, processes and tools that will solve enterprise challenges across the product lines. This person will use their significant experience to navigate where standardization and guardrails will benefit the product line and balance that with ensuring we are empowering teams to be successful.

The primary goal of this role is to support the designers in their pursuit of delivering meaningful outcomes by building the structural support needed for the design practice to be successful.

What You Will Do

• Lead Design Practice Time with meaningful content and activities, ensuring the themes are applicable to the designers day-to-day focus
• Facilitate Design Crits across the product teams to foster a culture of design analysis and feedback
• Enable designers to support, learn, and help develop each other; share knowledge; and find ways to scale common approaches
• Build credibility amongst the design staff, as the resident expert in the design practice
• Stay up-to-date with industry trends to ensure continuous evolution of Kessel Run’s design practice
• Standardize approaches to processes, practices and tools across the product teams where appropriate and message accordingly
• Work closely with design across product teams to understand evolving business needs and iterate practices to meet them
• Actively identify, prioritize, and solve problems that impact designers within the practice to increase the effectiveness and productivity of the design team
• Model and advocate for feedback culture, including but not limited to gathering, synthesizing, and presenting feedback to practitioners
• Work with others in the leadership team to hire new designers and advocate for staff that are practice fit for upcoming roles and needs
• Iterate our design practices to meet our evolving needs
• Work with teams, both hands on and in a coaching capacity, to ensure they use and benefit from Lean and Agile
• Develop an effective model for KR’s user engagements and how to measure for successful user engagements w/ appropriate frequency, taking into account user communities that are being pursued by multiple app teams or portfolios
• Work with other practice leads to model and support a balanced team approach to product delivery

Who You Are

• You are well-versed in User-Centered Design (UCD) and user research processes

• You have demonstrated experience in leading a design practice as a large, enterprise company or organization

• You have experience managing and shipping complex products successfully
• You have experience coaching and mentoring other designers and managers of designers and interested in growing talent
• You believe that…
  • the smaller the batch, the smaller the risk
  • outcomes are more important than outputs
• You are skilled at communicating expectations of design practitioners
• You don’t mind jumping into the weeds or taking the 10K foot view when necessary to optimize
• You love to facilitate meetings and ensure the expected outcome is met
• You have experience with both lean startup and agile software development
• You have experience working as part of a cross-functional team
• You have top-quality written and verbal communication skills (e.g., capable of public speaking, changing your messaging based on the audience, etc.)

• You are a U.S. citizen and are eligible to obtain a U.S. Security Clearance (see eligibility requirements here)

This is a Federal civilian service position within the United States Air Force. We are hiring at the equivalent of a GS-13 up to GS-14 level for this position. This means you can expect a base salary of $79,468 to $122,077 multiplied by your locality rate, based on your experience. You can find your locality definition here and see the pay tables for the GS scale here. Our headquarters is located in Boston, MA; for a Boston-based employee, this would translate to a range from $102,601 to $157,614

We also provide paid time off, health, and retirement benefits. There are advancement opportunities to promote to more senior levels after hiring.

We understand that there is no such thing as the ideal candidate for any job and we believe in empowering people to learn and grow throughout their careers. We encourage any applicant who is interested in making an impact in the Department of Defense to apply to this position regardless of background and qualifications.

How to Apply

Job Types: Full-Time.

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