Senior Product Designer (contract)

Company Description

Digitas is the Networked Experience Agency, built on the vision that we create magnetic experiences that earn the right for brands to exist in human networks. Today, and tomorrow. We deliver Networked Experiences by leveraging comprehensive data, technology, creative, media and strategy capabilities. Digitas delivers ambitious outcomes via unique solutions that include Creative Experiences, Integrated Media, Addressable Relationships, Social Marketing and Total Commerce. Celebrated by AdAge as Data and Insights Agency of the Year, U.S Campaign’s Brand Experience Agency of the Year, Media Network of the Year and celebrated by Forrester and Gartner, Digitas serves the world’s leading brands through a global network comprised of more than 5,500 employees across over 65 offices in 43 countries.

The Digitas culture is made up of fearless, inventive and generous Unicorns of all kinds.

Overview

Digitas is looking for a UI- and visually-focused contract Senior Product Designer to support our high-profile automotive client!

At Digitas, our Senior Product Designers build digital experiences people love to use. They sit squarely at the intersection of experience design, visual design, and systems thinking with an emphasis on precision, consistency, and craft. They are collaborators and innovators who thrive in multidisciplinary teams, can start from a blank page and help realize the vision for a great experience, and aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty making that vision a reality.

Our experience runs the gamut from site to mobile, eCom to campaign to B2B, marketing to editorial to product, with one foot in beautiful visual expressions and the other in rock-solid user experience. At heart, we are designers who love creating new, meaningful experiences and are well-versed in the practice of modern digital experience creation.

In this role, you will be supporting UI and visual design system and component enhancements for our premier automotive client s web-based marketing and product pages. You ll serve as the visual extension of our UX team and partner closely with internal Digitas creative, UX, and production teams to design polished, scalable experiences with a specific focus on designing and creating visual assets within Figma.

Who you are:

• You re a strong advocate for the customer. You re formally trained in design and passionate about customer-centric innovation. You take pride in your work. You obsess over details and insist on iterating until you ve gotten it right. You see feedback as a good thing. You re a storyteller who is at ease presenting and discussing your work with clients and stakeholders. You challenge old ways of thinking and put the customer at the center of everything you do. User-Centered Design methodologies are second nature to you.

What you do:

• You take ownership of UI and visual design assets for projects and work closely with other team members as well as other disciplines to create extraordinary digital experiences. You work directly with clients and serve as a design thinking resource across products/platforms and content/campaigns. You collaborate with all other disciplines and understand the dependencies that impact design and development throughout the project life cycle. You are skilled in all aspects of UI/interaction design and have a deep understanding of UX strategy.

PLEASE NOTE:

• This is a 40hr/week freelance role expected to start in mid-March/early-April and run for a period of 3-6 months. Extension beyond that window or conversion into a full-time role following the completion of the freelance period is possible but not anticipated.
• This is a hybrid role based out of our Chicago office and will require occasional onsite engagement of about 3 days/week. Candidates who are local to the Chicago area and willing to commit to a hybrid schedule will be prioritized but highly qualified candidates in other markets who are willing to work Central Time hours may also be considered.
• We are not able to support any form of current or future visa sponsorship needs for this role. No 3rd party-staffing agencies, please.

Job Responsibilities

• Design high-fidelity UI and visual experiences for web-based product and marketing pages across responsive breakpoints.
• Apply and evolve existing design systems, component libraries, and style guides with consistency and care.
• Create production-ready design artifacts including page layouts, component specs, interaction states, and documentation.
• Own design execution from concept through delivery, ensuring accuracy, clarity, and polish at every step.
• Partner with cross-functional teams including UX, copy, engineering, and client stakeholders to bring designs to life.
• Maintain rigorous attention to detail, QA-ing designs for visual accuracy, accessibility, and system alignment.
• Contribute to style guide creation, system documentation, and best-practice guidelines.
• Present work clearly and confidently, articulating design rationale and tradeoffs.
• Support multiple workstreams while managing priorities, timelines, and feedback efficiently.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in product design, digital design, or UI design within an advertising agency, media organization, in-house agency, consultancy, or product-driven environment.
• Bachelor s degree in interaction design, human-computer interaction, industrial design, or a similar field preferred; experience may be substituted.
• Prior experience working within or alongside the automotive industry preferred.
• Strong visual design foundation with proven experience designing polished, system-driven UI.
• Advanced proficiency in Figma (including components, variants, libraries, and documentation workflows) as well as other specialized tools including Adobe Creative Cloud, Sketch, InVision, and Keynote.
• Experience building visual high-fidelity UX deliverables including mockups, prototypes, and wireframes.
• Experience working within large-scale design systems and contributing to their evolution.
• Strong understanding of responsive web design, accessibility standards, and UI best practices; bonus points for experience in discovery-based activities, user research and agile processes.
• Ability to think holistically through user flows and other experience models.
• Experience in creating, evolving and maintaining design systems.
• Ability to annotate complex interactions.
• Curiosity for (or a deep immersion in) the technology of modern experiences.
• Comfort operating with a high level of ownership, autonomy, and accountability.
• Ability to accept and synthesize feedback quickly while maintaining design integrity.
• Experience working within a cross-functional, multi-disciplinary team on customer-focused products and services.
• A natural sense of urgency and an ability to work quickly, efficiently, and accurately within tight deadlines and constantly-evolving project parameters, scope, and goals.
• Flexible and adaptable with an ability to manage and prioritize multiple concurrent projects with constantly shifting parameters and targets.
• Highly collaborative but independently capable.
• Assertive, confident communication skills and a willingness to ask questions and take initiative.
• Scrappy and entrepreneurial with a drive to evolve and innovate.
• A portfolio showcasing innovative, high-quality UI, product, or marketing-driven digital experiences is REQUIRED and should be submitted at the time of application.

Additional Information