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Software - Lead UX Specialist

Employer
Northrop Grumman
Location
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
Closing date
14 Apr 2021

Job Details

Job Description

Are you a Lead UX Specialist who would like to join a leading software engineering team within an evolving and dynamic organisation?

Due to the success of a number of strategic Gloucestershire based programmes, we are growing our User Experience team with creative and ambitious UX Specialists. With a primary focus on developing cutting-edge digital surfaces in a rapid iterative way, this is an opportunity for you to help shape the future of our HCI provision.

Different thinking for a Different world

Northrop Grumman is a leading global security company providing innovative systems, products and solutions to government and commercial customers worldwide. In Northrop Grumman’s rapidly growing UK Cyber and Intelligence business, we support our customers’ work to make the UK the safest place to live and do business, both physically and online.

Working with and alongside our customers, we use modern software engineering methods (Scaled Agile Development, DevSecOps, Site Reliability Engineering, micro-service architectures) and cutting edge techniques (data science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning) to tackle complex and challenging problems and deliver cost effective, reliable, supportable solutions.
Our solutions support complex analysis of substantial amounts of data, requiring state of the art ‘big data’, stream processing and cloud-based analytics, identifying and using ‘best of breed’ commercial and open source technologies and integrating them with our own software to meet customer needs quickly and efficiently.

At Northrop Grumman we pride ourselves on our ability to combine agile development with sound engineering and security practices to ensure that our solutions are robust and resilient; designed and built to start secure and stay secure against ever evolving cyber security threats. As well as designing for security, Information Assurance and legal / policy compliance, we actively assess products and services, identifying vulnerabilities and weaknesses that could be exploited by cyber attackers, and we create and run exercises to pit cyber security specialists against secure systems and each other.
We carry out research and innovation locally in the UK, with commercial and academic partners, and across our 85,000+ worldwide workforce.

How you will make a difference

What you'll be doing

  • Delivering cutting edge User Centred Design (UCD) focused applications 
  • Researching, ideating and conceptualising digital solutions within a multi-disciplinary team of stakeholders, analysts, developers, UX specialists (and more)
  • Planning, organising and participating in user research, research analysis and user interviews
  • Testing your output with varied and inclusive user groups so that you may validate your ideas and use feedback to introduce new features and/or discover methods of improvement
  • Documenting features, specifications and use-cases into practical guides for development teams and peers to follow
  • Planning, organising and hosting weekly design forums and knowledge sharing workshops
  • Presenting to stakeholders in multi-team project demonstrations
  • Participating in wider stakeholder meetings in order to shape the direction of the project(s) you will be working on for the better
  • Planning and organising internal workshops that promote and foster a better understanding of UX practices to the wider business
  • Promoting UX standards and practices across the wider business as well as contributing to the internal UX community

What we're looking for in you:

  • A varied portfolio showing the quality of your design work, UX work and any user research
  • Must have experience as a UX Specialist
  • Experience managing people, or at the very least mentoring
  • Experience delegating tasks yet remaining vested in and responsible for the delivery of those tasks by your peers
  • Capable of understanding business/stakeholder needs as well as user needs
  • Familiar with Agile & Lean methodology with a willingness to work in a fast paced agile environment
  • Evidence of good communication skills across the project-team and stakeholders in order to manage and make progress, keeping the product delivery on track
  • A solid understanding of UX practices with particular emphasis on digital surfaces and software development
  • A solid understanding of accessibility (WCAG 2.1) and inclusive design techniques or keen willingness to learn
  • An ability to analyse user behaviour and needs from both qualitative and quantitative methods
  • An ability to use your own initiative to generate ideas, suggest processes and ways of working
  • A keen eye for detail and consistency across your own work
  • At ease using typical UX design tools, (either) Figma, Balsamiq, Draw.io and where there is an absence of tools, capable of using your own initiative in order to maintain progress
  • Comfortable participating in collaborative workshops
  • Good interpersonal skills and a willingness to teach others the principles of UX

What would also be advantageous?

  • Scrum master training or experience running daily stand-ups
  • Experience using Agile tools such as Jira and Confluence
  • Comfortable with HTML5, CSS3 and vanilla JavaScript
  • Experience using a range of design tools, Photoshop, Illustrator, InkScape, Gimp, PowerPoint
  • A knowledge of, or experience with, JavaScript front-end web frameworks such as React.js or Angular
  • A knowledge of, or experience with, modern style libraries such as Bootstrap or Material Design
  • An interest in current UX communities and events


Additional information for your consideration...
You must be able obtain and hold UK Government clearances
Opportunities exist across the UK to enhance your career progression

Being a part of Northrop Grumman gives you the opportunity to use your skills to make a difference in our mission of enabling global security. Our company grows because of our employees' dedication and commitment to achieving our mission, something we always remember. In return for working for us you will have access to a benefits package that provides you with flexibility to balance your professional career with your personal life, health & well-being benefits, discount schemes, pension benefits and investment in your future development.

We are committed to equality and diversity in our workplace. Northrop Grumman provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to an individual’s protected status, including race, ethnic origin, colour, nationality, national origin, ancestry, sex/gender, gender identity/expression, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, marriage/civil partnership, pregnancy/maternity, religion or belief, creed, age, disability, genetic information, or any other protected status or characteristic.

Company

Northrop Grumman solves the toughest problems in space, aeronautics, defense and cyberspace to meet the ever evolving needs of our customers worldwide. Our 85,000 employees define possible every day using science, technology and engineering to create and deliver advanced systems, products and services.

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