Senior UX Designer, Data Products

Company: National Geographic Society
Location: Washington
Posted on: April 1, 2026

Job Description:

How You’ll Contribute The Senior UX/Service Designer plays a strategic user experience and service designer role and focus on improving the end-to-end journey for both our staff and technical users across a portfolio of internal systems, integrations, and third-party platforms. This role plays an important role in bringing this vision to life, leading current and future digital initiatives at the Society, and has the power to amplify National Geographic’s impact through value-based product delivery, transformational data services, and world-class support and infrastructure services. This role is not centered on traditional interface (UI) design. Instead, you will be the expert responsible for applying systems thinking and service design methodology to complex operational challenges, primarily concerning developer experience (DX), third-party software implementations (including Salesforce), and cross-system integrations. This also includes addressing content management challenges woven into the user experiences we work on, as several services and systems touch content production use cases. Your primary responsibility will be to act as the strategic user advocate, making informed, high-impact recommendations on resource investment. You will determine where the out-of-the-box (OOTB) user experience from a vendor is sufficient to meet core user needs and, critically, when the cost and effort of building a custom interface or solution is necessary and justified by a clear gain in user value and organizational efficiency. You will also collaborate with a team of UX designers who work on the end-user experiences that are shipped out into the world, which are affected by the internal users and content production processes. Your Impact Please note that submission of a cover letter is required. Please include links to your portfolio. Key Responsibilities Strategic Investment Decision-Making (10%): Conduct strategic analysis and user research to inform "build vs. configure vs. buy" decisions, providing clear, data-backed recommendations to product and engineering leadership on when to invest in custom solutions. This includes planning projects using multiple user-centered approaches to understanding user contexts, problems, and current approaches to outcomes. Service & System Mapping (20% ): Lead the creation of Service Blueprints and System Interaction Diagrams to visualize complex user journeys across multiple integrated systems, identifying points of friction in both the staff and technical workflows, including those related to content production. This also involves documenting processes, guidelines, and best practices that emerge from this work. Developer Experience (DX) Improvement (20%): Partner with Engineering teams to research, define, and design improvements to internal tooling, documentation, APIs, and overall technical onboarding/usage flows for developers. This includes collaborating with Product Designers and Engineers to create world-class prototypes, web apps, and digital products. Third-Party Configuration UX (20%): Deeply understand the user experience inherent in third-party platforms, especially Salesforce. Design how to best configure and leverage existing vendor interfaces, platform data models, and declarative tools (like Salesforce Flows), ensuring minimal friction and maximum value with OOTB tools, particularly in the context of content management. Information Architecture (IA) (15%): Drive IA strategy for a portfolio of data products and integrated systems, focusing on governance, discoverability, and accessibility of information and services across the enterprise, with a strong emphasis on content architecture. Strategic Research (15%): Employ a mix of quantitative and qualitative research methods, including interviewing and usability testing, to understand the needs of data-focused and technical users, including those involved in content production. Report on insights gained through testing for current and future product designs. Keep up with current trends and best practices in the marketplace through conferences, readings, and videos, building a practice of UX design Excellence at the National Geographic Society. What You’ll Bring Educational Background Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in the humanities with a specialization in systems design, UX, HCI, or information science. Minimum Years and Type of Experience 7 years of experience with solid understanding of data products and platforms, e.g. salesforce. Required Skills & Experience Platform UX/Salesforce Proficiency: Proven experience applying UX and service design principles within a major enterprise platform ecosystem like Salesforce (ideally Service Cloud or Experience Cloud). You must understand the platform's constraints, design standards, and the value/cost of customization (declarative vs. custom code). Systems & Service Design: Proven ability to apply service design principles and systems thinking to complex, non-customer-facing problems, with an emphasis on operational efficiency and content management workflows. Emphasize the ability to innovate and think in many systems simultaneously, balancing consistency with customization, reusability with innovation. Technical Empathy & DX : Experience designing for or working closely with developers and technical staff. Familiarity with core technical concepts like APIs, data models, data governance, and how they impact the user experience, especially in content production. Familiar or comfortable discussing JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. IA and Diagramming : Expertise in Information Architecture methods and using tools like Miro, spreadsheets, service blueprints, and cross-functional facilitation, particularly for complex content ecosystems. Strategic Communication : Exceptional ability to communicate research findings and strategic UX trade-offs to technical and executive stakeholders, clearly articulating the cost of user friction versus the cost of custom development. Strong presentation skills to business stakeholders. Research Methods : Proficiency in conducting strategic user interviews and assessing the success of work through relevant metrics, including those related to content usability. A/B testing experience. Prototyping Experience: Prototyping experience using Figma or similar tools. Portfolio: Expert-level online portfolio that includes site maps, user flows, and lo- and hi-fidelity prototypes. Preferred Skills Familiarity with data visualization and data analytics. Experience with integrating AI into one’s own workflows and as part of a UX solution Experience designing for workflows involving headless CMSs. Salary Information The National Geographic Society offers a competitive and holistic total rewards package. Our compensation structure and transparent pay philosophy are based on industry-specific market data for similar-sized nonprofit organizations. The salary range for this position accounts for a wide range of factors including but not limited to organizational need; specific skill sets; experience and training; certifications; and more. At the National Geographic Society, individuals are typically hired at or near the starting point of the salary range for their role, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. The salary range for this position is $114,000.00 - $120,000.00. In addition, the National Geographic Society offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits package that includes, but is not limited to, medical, dental, and vision insurance; engaging and comprehensive wellness program; 401(k) retirement savings plan with matching contributions after 6 months of employment; flexible paid time off benefits with up to 22 days of paid annual leave per calendar year (15 days for new hires in their first year, prorated based on the number of pay periods remaining in the year) and 10 days of sick leave; 12 paid holidays and a paid winter break between December 25 and 31 (May not apply to all roles that are required to work during high volume seasons or essential workers. Please check with the hiring manager for confirmation.); paid parental leave, adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, fertility benefits; learning and development opportunities; Lifestyle Spending Account; pet adoption assistance and insurance; pre-tax transportation benefits with a generous employer subsidy; employer-paid life insurance and disability benefit; and a variety of National Geographic discounts and perks. Job Designation Remote - Our Remote designation includes staff who must work in another location in the U.S. or abroad, such as our regional leads for our Education and International teams or regional fundraisers in Advancement. Staff may also be designated as Remote by their supervisors (with approval by the Senior Team lead) because of their job duties, and are afforded this status when it is beneficial to NGS, their respective team, and the employee. Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States. This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship. W e encourage you to apply even if your experience is not a 100% match with the position. We are looking for someone with relevant skills and experience, not a checklist that exactly matches the job description. We want to help you grow and in return, you help us grow into a stronger, more inclusive organization.

Keywords: National Geographic Society, Frederick , Senior UX Designer, Data Products, IT / Software / Systems , Washington, Maryland