Lead Product & UX Designer

About Think of Us

Think of Us (TOU) is transforming the child welfare system into one where young people and families can heal, develop, and thrive. We drive purpose-driven work aligned with meaningful systems change, powered by data and the insights of lived experience. Our focus is on prevention, keeping families strong before crisis, and on building kinship-first systems so children grow up with people they know and trust. Through bold collaborations with leaders and innovators across the public and private sectors — from Presidential Administrations to local providers — we identify leverage points and co-create solutions that re-architect child welfare for the future.

Here’s what this looks like:

• Built the Lived Experience Engine into the largest dataset of its kind (51,000+ voices), powering AI tools and shaping reforms
• Partnered with California to launch the Kinship Accelerator in 8 counties, backed by $150M and a budget increase from $317M → $896M
• Drove a national kin-first shift: 39 states (plus 5 tribes) adopting kinship standards, unlocking $3B for families
• Operate one of the largest direct resource networks, connecting 1,827 families to $28M+ in support

Our team members share a commitment to driving systems change through creative problem-solving, obsessive curiosity, and a love of quickly driving innovative, measurable, and impactful results.

Position Overview

Department: Technology & Innovation

Reports to: Chief Technology & Innovation Officer

Direct Reports: N/A

Location: Hybrid; Washington, DC (min. 3 days in the office)

Category: Full Time/Exempt

This is the senior design role across Think of Us’ emerging product portfolio. You bring deep product and UX expertise alongside a strong service-design practice, and you lead and do the design work across interaction design, research, prototyping, service modeling, and experience quality.

Your primary focus will initially be ConnectMe, a reimagining of our resource navigation warmline that connects young people and families involved with the child welfare system to the resources and support they need. You will also contribute to the discovery and design of other Think of Us products and initiatives as new opportunities emerge.

You will not have direct reports at the outset, but you will have genuine authority over the quality and integrity of the end-to-end experience. You will go deep yourself where it matters most and help identify where additional internal or external design and research support is needed.

This is not primarily a visual-design role, and it is not a research-only role. You will understand the full journey of young people, families, caregivers, and the staff who support them, across both software and service. You will help ensure that what we build is understandable, trustworthy, useful, and grounded in how people actually experience the child welfare system.

Program leadership retains accountability for program outcomes, service operations, practice standards, safety, and implementation. The Product Lead owns product strategy, roadmap, prioritization, scope, and release decisions. This role owns research practice, interaction design, service experience, human-AI experience, and design quality.

We operate as a modern, AI-enabled product team. We establish clear outcomes, prototype quickly, ship, measure performance with real users, learn, and iterate. Design is a first-class voice throughout that process.

About ConnectMe

ConnectMe is a warmline and resource navigation platform where Community Responders work directly with help-seekers, including young people and families connected to the child welfare system.

The platform is launching across multiple states. AI already plays a growing role behind the scenes. It can draft an initial assessment and support plan for a staff member to review and refine, suggest local resources matched to a family’s situation, and flag requests that may need urgent attention.

In every case, AI should work in service of the people doing the work. It prepares, assists, and suggests, while people remain responsible for reviewing, deciding, correcting, and acting before information reaches a young person or family.

Because this is sensitive work in a regulated and privacy-protected environment, decisions about how AI appears, what it is allowed to do, where people remain in control, and how trust is earned sit at the center of this role.

Over the coming year, the work will deepen. We will develop better tools for staff who support families, learn more about how young people and caregivers want to share information and reach us during moments of stress, and make careful choices about how AI supports rather than replaces the human relationships at the heart of the service.

You will partner closely with Product, Engineering, Data and AI, and Program colleagues to shape how AI appears in the experience, how people understand and control it, and how we determine whether it is genuinely working.

Key Responsibilities

Lead Product Design and UX

• Own interaction design for ConnectMe and CheckForUs — flows, states, information architecture, and interaction patterns.
• Design new features before they are built: AI chat, CR copilot, expanded workbench, and iterative improvements based on real user feedback.
• Build low- and high-fidelity prototypes to test ideas quickly and communicate intent to engineering.
• Partner closely with engineers to design feasible, high-quality solutions — and be in the room when implementation decisions are made.
• Own design quality: establish and maintain a design system and component standards across both modules and multiple state deployments.

Lead Research and Discovery

• Plan and conduct research with internal users, transition-age youth, and kin caregivers across all active states — interviews, field visits, usability testing, observation.
• Synthesize findings into clear insights that directly shape what we build.
• Ground product decisions in real-world context, especially for a user population navigating significant life stress.
• Frame problem statements and guide the team through ambiguity before jumping to solutions.
• Bring your research practice to other TOU initiatives where user-centered thinking can sharpen the work.

Service Design

• Map the end-to-end experience — not just the screens but the full journey of youth and families from first contact through case resolution, and internal staff’s workflow across a caseload.
• Design and evolve human-AI collaboration patterns: where AI assists, where humans decide, and how that boundary is made legible to users.
• Produce service blueprints, experience maps, and system-level artifacts that inform how the platform and the program work together.
• Identify experience gaps that live in operations, not just software, and propose solutions that span both.
• Apply service design thinking beyond ConnectMe — collaborate with other TOU teams where systems-level design can shape their approach.

Shape AI Experience

• Define how AI-powered capabilities (draft assessments, support plans, resource matching, urgency scoring) show up in interfaces in ways that are understandable, actionable, and trustworthy.
• Design for uncertainty: help-seekers and CRs need to understand what the AI is doing and why, and be able to override it.
• Partner with the data and AI team on AI quality, evaluation, and the design patterns that build (or erode) trust.
• Ensure AI-driven recommendations and copilot experiences are ethical and appropriate for a vulnerable population.

On a Typical Day, You Might…

• Spend a day in the field interviewing transition-age youth or kin caregivers to understand their lived experience — listening to how they navigate the system and what they need from us to feel genuinely served.
• Interview three Community Responders in one of our active states to understand how they're actually using the workbench, then synthesize what you heard into a set of design opportunities.
• Design the interaction model for the AI chat interface — how a help-seeker starts a conversation, how the AI transitions them to a CR, and what happens when the AI isn't sure.
• Pair with the Director of Data & AI on how the support-plan generation surface should communicate confidence and uncertainty to internal staff — sketch options, decide what to prototype.
• Map the full service blueprint for an upcoming state launch — software touchpoints plus the program team's operational workflow — to find gaps before they become problems
• Review a developer's implementation of a new feature and flag three interaction issues before they ship.

About You

We recognize that candidates may not meet every listed qualification. Research shows that individuals from underrepresented groups are more likely to opt out of applying if they don’t meet 100% of the criteria. If you believe you meet many of the criteria and can succeed in this role, we encourage you to apply — we want to learn about your unique strengths and experiences.

Qualifications:

• 8–12 years of experience in product design, UX, or service design, with a portfolio demonstrating complex, shipped software products.
• Strong interaction design: flows, states, information architecture, and prototyping at both low and high fidelity.
• Service design practice: experience thinking beyond screens, including journey mapping, service blueprints, system maps, and non-software touchpoints.
• User research skills: has planned and conducted qualitative research, not just reviewed someone else's findings.
• Experience designing AI-powered or data-driven interfaces, specifically how to make algorithmic outputs legible and trustworthy to users, including human-in-the-loop patterns.
• You bring experience working with or alongside systems that impact youth and families — or you’re deeply committed to learning about these systems and approaching the work with humility, curiosity, and care.
• You’re motivated by impact and systems change. You thrive in a fast-growing, evolving organization and see change as an opportunity to innovate, learn, and make things better.

How You Work:

• Operate as a self-directed practitioner: you can establish and lead a design practice, set your own priorities, and make progress without waiting to be told what to do next.
• Move cross-functional work forward through influence rather than authority, building alignment across engineering, product, data, and program teams.
• Communicate and facilitate clearly: you frame problems, make your thinking visible, and guide a group through ambiguity toward a decision.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and fast-moving priorities, and able to decide where to go deep and where good enough is enough.
• Bring sound judgment and genuine empathy to designing for people navigating stress and crisis.
• Build alignment across stakeholders: you're experienced at navigating competing priorities and bringing engineering, product, program, and leadership partners to a shared direction.

Desired / Nice to Have:

• Background in civic tech, social impact, healthcare, or human services.
• Experience designing for vulnerable populations — crisis services, case management, behavioral health, or similar contexts.
• Familiarity with AI-augmented or human-in-the-loop service models.
• Experience building or contributing to design systems.

Why This Role Matters

ConnectMe serves people navigating real challenges — youth and families in the child welfare system seeking stability and support. The Lead Product & UX Designer holds the full experience in view: intake that feels human and clear, a CR workbench that amplifies what a good responder can do, and AI that is legible and trustworthy to the people using it. This is the person who grounds every product decision in real user needs and makes the platform measurably better for the people it serves.

Compensation & Benefits

At TOU, we believe that taking care of our people is foundational to the impact we aim to make. Our compensation philosophy is rooted in transparency and a holistic understanding of people’s needs. We believe fair, market-competitive pay is essential to attracting and retaining the exceptional talent needed to achieve our ambitious goals. As a not-for-profit organization, we design our compensation packages—including both salary and benefits—with care and in alignment with our financial sustainability.

The annual salary for this role is $150,000–$180,000. Starting salaries for new hires will be determined based on a combination of the new hire’s relevant experience and market demands.

TOU’S benefits go beyond the basics. They’re designed to support your well-being, growth, and sense of purpose at work and beyond. From comprehensive health coverage to professional development support and meaningful time off, our benefits reflect our commitment to nurturing a workplace where people can thrive, both personally and professionally.

Health & Insurance

• 100% employer-paid medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees; 50% for dependents.
• Access to Talkspace for confidential therapy and mental health support.
• Short-Term Disability, Life, and AD&D Insurance included.
• Optional Long-Term Disability and Supplemental Life Insurance.
• Health Care and Dependent Care FSAs available.

Financial Benefits

• 401(k) Plan for pre-tax retirement contributions.
• Work-from-home setup stipend to optimize your workspace.

Paid Time Off

• Flexible PTO policy, plus sick leave and paid leaves of absence.
• 8 company holidays, plus two organization-wide seasonal breaks.

Learning & Development

• TOU values continuous learning and invests in the professional development of its employees in alignment with organizational needs based on role, performance, business needs, and Company policies.
• Regular organization-wide learning sessions on relevant and reflective topics.

Application Instructions

As part of your application, please submit a resume outlining your skills and experiences relevant to this role.

Please note: We do not accept phone inquiries about this position in order to ensure a fair and consistent hiring process for all applicants.

Equal Opportunity Statement

Think of Us is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We welcome and value applicants of all backgrounds, knowing that diverse perspectives strengthen our work with children, youth, and families. All qualified candidates will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity), national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other status protected by law. We provide reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities and for applicants’ religious practices as required by law.