Senior Designer

Overview

Proto leads innovation and transformation efforts for large organizations, often through the creation of new products, services, and platforms. The work involves understanding user needs, system behavior, and technical possibilities, and using that understanding to design solutions that are coherent, usable, and grounded in real constraints.

The Senior Experience Designer plays a central role in this work by shaping experience direction, conceiving and designing core concepts, and translating strategy into tangible product and service experiences. This role requires strong design skills and judgment, comfort with complexity, and the ability to work closely with strategy and technology partners—engaging directly with the work and owning the quality, coherence, and usefulness of experience outcomes.

• Frame experience problems by translating strategic intent and open-ended opportunities into clear experience challenges, design principles, and objectives;
• Develop journeys, flows, service models, and experience frameworks that reflect real user behavior, system constraints, and organizational context;
• Lead the design of product, service, and experience concepts, and carry them through sketches, wireframes, prototypes, and pilots as appropriate;
• Work with clients, colleagues across engagement, strategy, and design, and external partners to develop, test, and refine experience concepts over time—using real‑world constraints and feedback to guide decisions and enable teams to carry the work forward;
• Mentor junior teammates and contribute to raising the overall quality, consistency, and rigor of experience work across projects;
• Present experience work to client and internal audiences using clear narratives and artifacts that support understanding and decision‑making;
• Advance and strengthen the Experience practice by contributing to internal tools, patterns, and points of view.

• 4-7 years of experience in experience design, service design, interaction design, or systems design within innovation, consultancy, product, or venture‑building contexts;
• Undergraduate and/or graduate degree in design, human‑centered computing, psychology, engineering, or a related field;
• Proven ability to own complex projects from early framing through delivery, with a portfolio showing depth of thinking, not just surface polish;
• Fluency in journey mapping, interaction modeling, service blueprints, prototyping, and usability evaluation combined with an understanding of technical constraints, tradeoffs, and system behavior;
• Ability to stay focused under pressure, manage multiple priorities, and deliver high‑quality work under tight timelines, even when things are unclear;
• Strong communication skills, including the ability to explain experience decisions clearly to non‑designers and senior stakeholders;
• Operational resilience, including the ability to maintain quality under pressure, manage multiple work streams, and work through periods of intensity and change;
• Good judgment and low ego. Able to stay calm under pressure and handle disagreement constructively.

In New York City, the base salary for this position is $100–125K. Individual compensation varies by job‑related factors such as years of relevant skills and experience, level of responsibility, and qualifications. This position is based out of the New York office and reports into our Partner, Managing Director of Experience.

Proto is a New York‑based company with offices at 3 World Trade. Employees are encouraged to work from office on days of their choosing. Workplace flexibility is available to all staff within a 3‑hour time zone of Eastern Standard Time. Core business hours are generally 9:30 am–6:00 pm EST, though working hours may fluctuate to meet client deadlines.

As set forth in Proto’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.