Product Designer

About Our Wave

Our Wave is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization building a trauma-informed digital platform to support survivors of gender-based violence (GBV), including sexual assault, domestic violence, and child sexual abuse. Our team is a mix of both full-time and part-time staff engineers, researchers, data scientists, designers, and operations volunteers. Since launching in 2019, we have supported hundreds of thousands of survivors globally through anonymous storytelling, resource matching, AI-powered triage, and survivor-centered research. You can learn more about our impact on our website (www.ourwave.org).

Position Overview

Our Wave is seeking a visionary UI/UX Product Designer to lead the design of Harbor, a first-of-its-kind online healing program for survivors of sexual and domestic violence. Harbor is not a typical web application. It is a deeply immersive, research-backed digital experience designed to create a warm, safe, and empowering space where survivors can heal on their own terms. This is a rare opportunity to design something that has never existed before, at the intersection of trauma-informed care and cutting-edge interactive design.

You will work hand-in-hand with our Director of Research to translate evidence-based program structure and therapeutic activities into a beautiful, intuitive digital experience. You won’t just be a builder. You’ll be a co-creator of something meaningful.

Project Overview

Harbor will be built on top of and deeply integrated with Our Wave’s existing community platform. The current platform is a survivor-centered space where members share stories, post messages of hope and healing, access a Q&A library, find crisis resources, and engage in grounding activities. It supports multiple languages (English, Spanish, and Japanese), serves survivors across dozens of countries, and is built around a warm, affirming visual and tonal identity.

A successful candidate will take the time to deeply understand the existing platform before putting pen to paper. It is important to visualize how it feels to be a survivor navigating this space, what design patterns are already in place, how content is structured, and where the current experience has room to grow. Harbor must feel like a natural, elevated extension of the community platform, not a separate product bolted on. That means honoring the design language already in place while pushing it forward into something more immersive and interactive.

Core Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end design of the Harbor program experience, from early-stage concepting through to pixel-perfect, developer-ready deliverables

• Partner directly with Our Wave’s Director of Research to understand the therapeutic intent behind each program module and activity, and translate that intent into interactive design

• Design highly interactive, immersive components and experiences. This will  include custom components, guided activities, reflective exercises, and multi-step program flows that feel intuitive and emotionally resonant

• Build Harbor as a cohesive extension of the existing Our Wave community platform, ensuring design continuity and a seamless user journey integrating both experiences

• Establish and maintain a comprehensive design language and style guide for Harbor that can be extended by future designers and developers

• Champion a mobile-first design philosophy across every screen and interaction

• Deliver and maintain organized, well-documented Figma files that support close designer-developer collaboration

• Advocate for the survivor experience in every design decision, bringing a trauma-informed and accessibility-first lens to layout, copy, color, interaction patterns, and WCAG compliance

• Navigate legal, safeguarding, and compliance standards integrating best practices from leading consumer therapeutic applications

What We’re Looking For

Visionary thinking. You don’t default to templates or patterns that already exist. You ask “what should this feel like?” before asking “what has been done before?” You’re energized by the challenge of designing experiences with no clear precedent while incorporating best practices from industry leading consumer engagement technologies. 

Deep experience with complex interactive consumer web applications. You have a strong portfolio demonstrating web application design.  Specifically, you have a track record showcasing experience designing sophisticated interactive components, multi-step user flows, and custom UI widgets in consumer applications. Static marketing sites alone will not meet this bar. We want to see previous experiences that thoughtfully engage end users. 

Design systems ownership. You’ve built and maintained a design language and style guide from the ground up, not just followed someone else’s. You understand how a coherent system scales, how to document it for others, and how to evolve it without breaking it.

Figma fluency. You work natively in Figma and know how to use it at an advanced level considering components, variants, auto layout, prototyping, and shared libraries. You keep files organized in a way developers can actually use.

CSS literacy. You have a working knowledge of CSS. Specifically layout systems like Flexbox and Grid, responsive behavior, and design tokens. You don’t need to write production code, but you understand what your designs ask of developers.

Mobile-first thinking. You design for small screens first, always. Your layouts, interactions, and component decisions reflect a genuine understanding of mobile constraints and opportunities, not an afterthought adaptation from desktop.

WCAG accessibility experience. Accessibility is a design value for you. You have demonstrated experience designing to WCAG standards and building for diverse user needs, including users with visual, motor, cognitive, and other disabilities. Given the population this platform serves, this is non-negotiable.

Sensitivity and emotional intelligence. You understand that this platform serves survivors of trauma. You bring care and intentionality to every design choice, from the weight of a button label to the pacing of an onboarding flow. You know that for this audience, design is care.

Qualifications

• Bachelors, Masters, or PhD  in Graphic Design, UI/UX Design, Human Computer Interaction, Interaction Design, or a related field. 

• 5+ years of formal UI/UX experience highlighted in a portfolio or supplemental materials.

• A deep interest in creating impactful software applications for sensitive populations.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building and/or evaluating digital therapeutics and consumer health applications.

• Background in Gender-Based Violence (GBV) and/or experience working with trauma-affected or vulnerable populations.

Portfolio Requirements

Your application must include a portfolio. We will specifically be looking for:

1. Related project experience and interest – share examples of consumer-focused projects that showcase your visionary thinking while navigating various sensitive user population needs.

2. Complex interactive web application design – show us something with real interactivity and motion, not just screens. Multi-step flows, custom components, and dynamic states are what we want to see.

3. A design system or style guide you created – demonstrate that you can build and document a coherent visual language, not just execute within one.

4. Evidence of mobile-first thinking – show us how your designs adapt across breakpoints, and ideally how mobile shaped your decisions from the start.

5. Accessibility in practice – show us how WCAG considerations shaped your design decisions, not just how you checked boxes after the fact.

Compensation & Benefits

We are seeking a Lead UI/UX designer on a part-time contract basis.  This is a 6 month contract with the possibility of extension. We are seeking a minimum of 20 hours per week for the duration of this contract. Fair market compensation will be discussed in the initial screening call.

Considerations

Transition to Full-Time: Our Wave is a small 501(c)(3) tech non-profit filled with talented and dedicated advocates. Our hiring committee evaluates hiring decisions that align with our compensation tiers and policies.  We are currently hiring for a 6 month extendable part-time contract but as we build capacity it is our intention to transition this role into a full-time position. 

Travel: This role may involve some on-site travel (10-20%) to work with the Director of Research and CTO. Standard travel expenses (flights, accommodation, and meals) will be covered by the organization for work-related activities. 

Impact of This Role

Harbor will be one of the most thoughtfully designed digital healing spaces ever built for survivors. We’re not designing an app. We’re designing an experience that could change someone’s life. If that excites you, and if you have the skill and the heart for it, we’d love to meet you. 

Contact

Please contact hello@ourwave.org with any questions you have about the position and we will respond promptly.