Design Lead

This is a Hybrid position.

Ad Hoc is a technology company that empowers organizations to deliver scalable, impactful digital services. Using modern, agile methods, our team creates products that meet people’s needs and transform their experience of government.

Work on things that matter

Our collaborations have shaped some of the defining moments in public-sector service delivery. We’ve helped build products that connect Veterans to tailored services, help millions access affordable health care, and support important programs like Head Start. As we work with agencies to deliver critical services, we’re also changing how the government approaches technology.

Built for a remote life

Our culture, communications, and tools are built for remote work, enabling us to bring together top talent nationwide. At Ad Hoc, remote life empowers our teams to design work environments that fit their lives and that foster flexibility and collaboration to achieve positive outcomes for our customers.

Committed to high expectations and a welcoming culture

Ad Hoc values acceptance, accountability, and humility. We aren’t heroes. We learn from our mistakes and improve the process for the next time. We build small, inclusive teams to collaborate closely with our partners to solve the right problems and deliver software that works.

The Federal Civilian business unit supports many customers spanning the federal, commercial, and nonprofit space. Our customers include NASA, the General Services Administration, Office of Personnel Management, the Library of Congress, Health & Human Services, and the FDIC. We partner with these agencies to build new capabilities, deliver products, establish data as a strategic asset for informed decision-making, modernize legacy systems, and build the digital service infrastructure necessary to scale their mission impact.

The Mission

We’re rebuilding how 330 million Americans access public health information while increasing trust. The White House National Design Studio has raised expectations for what federal websites should look and feel like. Consumer-grade polish is now the standard and we’re looking for a design leader who can meet that standard and while delivering an accessible, fast, and highly usable site for real people.

As design lead for the modernization of a high traffic public health site, you’ll directly shape how a major federal agency communicates health information to millions of Americans. The experience needs to feel modern and trustworthy. The kind of thing where someone visits and thinks “this doesn’t feel like a government site” while also being one of the most accessible .gov health properties on the internet.

You’ll work closely with a team of forward looking technologists where your designs feed directly into frontend engineering. The quality and pace of your output sets the tempo for the whole team. You own the visual and interaction quality of everything the public sees.

Primary Responsibilities:

As a Design Lead, you will be responsible for working with leadership to shape the direction of the program, while gaining exposure into people management. A Design Lead is a people manager, leader, and mentor with the ability to cross-functionally lead program delivery. You are an emerging subject matter expert that is developing the skills to successfully lead through team members and effectively communicate and execute against program and organizational objectives. In this role, a Design Lead will support leadership in partnering with peers to meet delivery requirements. A Design Lead will enhance their communication, and leadership skills to prepare them to successfully manage through direct reports. Primary expectations of a Design Lead include:

• Set the visual identity and design system for the site. The direction should align with the National Design Studio’s approach while establishing a visual language appropriate for public health, where trust and clarity matter as much as aesthetics.

• Design the full user experience: splash page, content browse and search, detail pages, AI-powered features, data visualizations, mobile layouts, and potentially a mobile app.

• Build and maintain a component library in Figma that maps to the frontend implementation. Your components should be ready for engineers to build from, not aspirational concepts.

• Design AI interactions. How do users enter queries? How do results appear? How do citations show up? What happens when the system isn’t confident in an answer?

• Design engaging data visualizations. These could be charts, maps, and dashboards that the public can understand without need for a data science b