Federal Associate Designer

Curiosity and a constant quest for knowledge serve as the foundation to success in IBM Consulting. In your role, you'll be encouraged to challenge the norm, investigate ideas outside of your role, and come up with creative solutions resulting in ground breaking impact for a wide network of clients. Our culture of evolution and empathy centers on long-term career growth and development opportunities in an environment that embraces your unique skills and experience.

Your role and responsibilities

As an Associate Designer, you'll focus on customer and employee strategies that explore opportunities to improve digital innovation, addressing user needs and designing world-class digital experiences.

You'll create user experience designs and prototypes to test your ideas. You'll share your knowledge and collaborate with your team to address ambiguous, complex problems and projects. Applying User Experience, Design Thinking, and Information Architecture methods, you'll help to uncover user and business requirements in the context of the technical landscape. Join us, as we are a next generation services company dedicated to creating transformative ideas that get our clients into the future, first.

Work you could do as an Associate Designer:

• UX and UI work such as: creating wireframes, visual interfaces and prototypes; annotating the wireframes; collaborating with other designers, researchers, consultants and developers; making sure the interaction is getting recorded and addressed correctly.
• Conduct user research leveraging IBM Enterprise Design Thinking and do direct user research as part of managing a project.
• Lead client interactions related to design thinking workshops.
• Supporting a Senior Designer on UX and UI production tasks, getting and incorporating the feedback, and working very closely with developers and testers on a day-to-day basis.
• Visual Design work, such as creating delightful concepts and exploring art of the possible, creating mock-ups and prototypes from sketches and wireframes, working closely with clients, senior designers, front-end developers to implement dynamic human-centered digital solutions.
• Create storyboards, layouts, impactful presentations, graphics, data visualizations, and other design artifacts in preparation for client meetings or product development.
• Participate in design workshops, incorporate input from multiple stakeholders, communicate conceptual ideas and design rationale, outline digital experiences screen by screen, working with front-end development teams.

This role requires candidates to work on-site 5 days a week at the Washington, DC office.

These positions are anticipated to begin in Summer of 2026.

Candidates must have the ability to obtain and maintain a Federal security clearance while in IBM Consulting-Federal

The below requirements are guidelines. If you have transferable skills, we encourage you to apply for this role.

Required education

Bachelor's Degree

Preferred education

None

Required technical and professional expertise

• Professional or University-based design experience with a portfolio representing design artifacts and associated projects.
• Experience working with design tools such as Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, XD), Sketch, InVision, as well as communication and workflow platforms like Slack, JIRA, Workfront.
• Understanding of the principles and methods for human-centered design including user research, rapid ideation and iteration, prototyping, and user testing.
• Ability to communicate design approaches and complex situations clearly and simply (via voice, words, and pictures), listen actively, and convey difficult messages in a positive manner.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a Federal Security Clearance.
• Willingness to travel up to 100% of the time.

Preferred technical and professional experience

• Demonstrated accountability and adaptability with willingness to readily and voluntarily take ownership of highly challenging tasks and problems, even beyond initial scope of responsibility.
• Thorough, design-focused, and analytical with the capability to apply logic to solve problems.
• Possesses deep empathy for users and their needs, humility to recognize the limits of assumptions, and boldness in the conception of solutions.
• Effective interpersonal skills with ability to collaborate and work with individuals, strengthening relationships to achieve win-win solutions.
• A passion for innovative ideas, coupled with the ability to understand and assimilate different points of view.
• Background in Human-Computer Interaction / User Experience methodologies, Graphic Design, Visual art.

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM Consulting is IBM's consulting and global professional services business, with market leading capabilities in business and technology transformation. With deep expertise in many industries, we offer strategy, experience, technology, and operations services to many of the most innovative and valuable companies in the world. Our people are focused on accelerating our clients' businesses through the power of collaboration. We believe in the power of technology responsibly used to help people, partners and the planet.

YOUR LIFE @ IBM

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you'll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you'll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

ABOUT IBM

IBM's greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we're also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 50 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it's time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualifiedapplicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race,color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexualorientation, national origin, caste, genetics, pregnancy, disability,neurodivergence, age, veteran status, or other characteristics. IBM is alsocommitted to compliance with all fair employment practices regardingcitizenship and immigration status.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS

IBM offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits program. Eligible employees may have access to:

• Healthcare benefits including medical & prescription drug coverage, dental, vision, and mental health & well being
• Financial programs such as 401(k), cash balance pension plan, the IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan, financial counseling, life insurance, short & long- term disability coverage, and opportunities for performance based salary incentive programs
• Generous paid time off including 12 holidays, minimum 56 hours sick time, 120 hours vacation, 12 weeks parental bonding leave in accordance with IBM Policy, and other Paid Care Leave programs. IBM also offers paid family leave benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law
• Training and educational resources on our personalized, AI-driven learning platform where IBMers can grow skills and obtain industry-recognized certifications to achieve their career goals
• Diverse and inclusive employee resource groups, giving & volunteer opportunities, and discounts on retail products, services & experiences

The compensation range and benefits for this position are based on a full-time schedule for a full calendar year. The salary will vary depending on your job-related skills, experience and location. Pay increment and frequency of pay will be in accordance with employment classification and applicable laws. For part time roles, your compensation and benefits will be adjusted to reflect your hours. Benefits may be pro-rated for those who start working during the calendar year.

This position is eligible for participation in an IBM Sales Incentive plan. Actual incentive opportunity will be based on performance and the eligible Target Incentive, as addressed in the applicable plan, all of which is subject to change. The compensation range listed for this position is the IBM Reference Salary that is used when you are not actively participating in a sales plan. Your actual base pay plus incentive opportunity will be determined by the Incentive Plan assigned to you.

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.

This position was posted on the date cited in the key job details section and is anticipated to remain posted for 21 days from this date or less if not needed to fill the role.

IBM will not be providing visa sponsorship for this position now or in the future. Therefore, in order to be considered for this position, you must have the ability to work without a need for current or future visa sponsorship.

Client-provided location(s): Washington, DC

Job ID: IBM-54849

Employment Type: OTHER

Posted: 2025-08-23T18:47:45