Visual/Graphic Designer – Research, Design, and Innovation

Charles River Analytics creates solutions and technology to tackle the world’s most challenging problems. Our team of technological entrepreneurs works together to push at the forefront of human-AI teaming, robotics, smart sensing, and human-centered computing. The resulting research and development help to continuously advance government programs and discover new possibilities in the commercial marketplace. We are a 100% employee-owned company, encouraging participation, innovation, and responsibility from our entire staff. At Charles River, we take great pride in our success in attracting and retaining the most talented and creative problem-solvers in our field. Are you interested in being an Employee Owner at one of Boston's Best Places to Work? If this sounds like you, then we’d love to hear from you!

We are looking for a passionate designer with outstanding skills in graphic design, visual communication, and illustration, along with experience in user interface and interaction design. The ideal candidate should be adept at employing their strong foundation of graphical design elements, such as typography, hierarchy, and layout,  to develop polished illustrations of interaction concepts and novel information visualizations. The ideal candidate will be able to implement and communicate design decisions and relate them to foundational principles in graphic design, visual communication, human-computer interaction, and usability.

In this role, you will collaborate with small teams of research scientists and software engineers to design novel information representations and innovative user interfaces as part of a user-centered design process. You will employ principled and creative approaches to move from early conceptual research sketches to detailed and mature illustrations of interaction concepts. You will work with our scientists and software engineers throughout the systems engineering process, including determining design requirements, iterating on novel interaction approaches, informing the development of live software systems, and supporting interface evaluation and design refinement. You will capture, and communicate the overall process and results of your work and the team to key stakeholders, clients, and end users through concept illustrations, PowerPoint briefings, dynamic prototypes, and/or short interaction videos.

Responsibilities include understanding requirements and conceptualizing novel information representation methods,  user interfaces, and interactive data visualizations while leveraging clean, clear, and balanced graphical elements; illustrating and articulating design ideas using conceptual wireframes, storyboards, high-fidelity mockups, and final graphics; leveraging, developing,  and contributing to set of design assets and visual patterns; rapidly iterating through multiple concepts and prototypes; delivering prototypes and communicating functions and requirements to describe interactions; capturing and developing process artifacts; communicating design concepts visually, clearly, and concisely to different audiences (e.g., product teams, customers, and end users); extending, maintaining, and supporting others in using design systems and libraries to empower the overall team.  In addition to researching and designing quality concept illustrations, you must be able to present design rationale through written, visual, and verbal means to project teams, stakeholders, users, and clients.

How you’ll help us grow

• Research, design, and support the development of novel data visualizations, user interface designs, and interaction approaches
• Develop content and supporting visual artifacts to contribute to proposals, reports, and papers, and present work at briefings and conferences as appropriate
• Interact with customers, users, and subject matter experts to analyze and understand domain challenges and needs within a problem domain
• Able to quickly learn by example, by trial and error, and by searching and reading
• Collaborate with the team to define and respond to requirements, and develop visual concepts to support solving complex problems
• Flexibility in working across a diverse set of projects and timelines
• Independently seek and learn from feedback to grow technical skills and employ new work going forward
• Work with Principal Investigators and project technical leads to identify and apply cutting-edge HCI design methodologies and points of intersection across multiple similar domains
• Work with software engineers to develop envisioned technology solutions

What you’ll need

• U.S. Citizenship
• Degree in Graphic Design, Visual Communication, Human