Senior UX Designer
Upstaff · Toronto, Canada · hybrid
Position: Senior UX Designer
Client: Labour and Transportation Cluster
Ministry: Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement, Ontario
Location: 87 Sir William Hearst Ave., Toronto, ON M3M 0B4
Work Model: Hybrid – 3 days onsite per week, no flexibility
Contract: October 7, 2026 – March 31, 2027
Extension: Up to 135 days; maximum 1 extension term
Openings: 2
Allocation: 100%
Security Clearance: No clearance required
Closing Date: October 9, 2026 at 2:30 PM ET
Position Overview
The Labour and Transportation Cluster is seeking Senior UX Designers to support complex digital products and services through user-centred design, research, prototyping, usability testing, accessibility, and Agile delivery.
The successful candidate will be responsible for applying UX design best practices, mobile-first and responsive design principles, user research, usability testing, prototyping, and iterative design throughout the Ontario Digital Service delivery lifecycle.
The UX Designer will work closely with Product Owners, business stakeholders, developers, technical teams, and other UX professionals within an Agile/Scrum environment and will contribute across the Discovery, Alpha, Beta, and Live delivery phases.
Relationship Management & Stakeholder Responsibilities
The Senior UX Designer must demonstrate strong relationship-management capabilities, including:
- Communicating effectively with business stakeholders and core project teams.
- Mediating competing requirements and stakeholder perspectives.
- Keeping UX activities aligned with project/product schedules.
- Working effectively with Product Owners, developers, business teams, technical teams, and other stakeholders.
- Supporting organizational change throughout the delivery lifecycle.
- Developing strategies and actions to:
- Overcome resistance to change.
- Build stakeholder support.
- Capitalize on forces supporting change.
- Understanding and contributing to projects across Discovery, Alpha, Beta, Live, or similar delivery methodologies.
- Working effectively within distributed teams and maintaining regular communication.
Soft Skills
The successful candidate should demonstrate:
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
- Strong presentation skills.
- Ability to clearly explain UX processes, ideas, design rationale, and solutions.
- Strong interpersonal and negotiation skills.
- Excellent analytical and problem-solving capabilities.
- Strong decision-making skills.
- Ability to collaborate closely with teams and stakeholders.
- Ability to work effectively in a distributed/hybrid environment.
- Strong stakeholder engagement and facilitation skills.
RequirementsMandatory Qualifications / Must-Haves
Candidates must demonstrate the following:
1. UX Design & Responsive Design – Mandatory
- Extensive experience applying UX design best practices to design digital solutions.
- Deep understanding and hands-on experience with:
- Mobile-first design
- Responsive design
- User-centred design principles
- Ability to efficiently and intelligently iterate designs and solutions based on user feedback, research findings, testing, and stakeholder input.
2. Complex Projects & Agile – Mandatory
- 3+ years of relevant experience participating in complex projects/products of different sizes.
- Experience ensuring UX activities align with:
- Project plans
- UX/design best practices
- User-centred design processes
- Agile/Scrum methodologies
- Experience working as part of a balanced Agile delivery team consisting of Product Owners, UX Designers, developers, and other stakeholders.
3. Communication & Mediation – Mandatory
- Demonstrated communication and mediation skills when working with business teams and core project team members.
- Ability to collaborate with stakeholders to ensure client projects/products progress according to schedule.
- Ability to communicate design decisions, resolve competing requirements, and build alignment among stakeholders.
Education
- Degree or diploma in Graphic Design is preferred/required as applicable to the candidate's background.
- Degree or certification in any of the following is considered an asset:
- Usability
- Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
- Technical Writing
UX Research & Usability Testing
The Senior UX Designer must have experience facilitating User Research and Usability Testing activities.
Experience should include producing deliverables such as:
- User Interview Topic Maps
- User Interview Scripts
- User Interview Synthesis, including collection, aggregation, and analysis of written observations from interviews
- User Research Findings Reports
- Usability testing plans and findings
- Accessibility compliance testing is considered an asset and is specifically required during applicable delivery phases.
UX Tools & Technical Skills
Strong expertise with UX/design tools, including one or more of the following:
- JustInMind
- InVision
- Sketch
- Adobe Creative Cloud
- Axure
- Figma
- Zeplin
The following technical skills are considered an asset:
- HTML5
- CSS3
- JavaScript
- React
- Angular
- NodeJS
Ontario Digital Service UX Delivery Lifecycle
The UX Designer will produce deliverables across four distinct delivery phases following the Ontario Digital Service Design Playbook.
Phase 1 – Discovery
The Discovery phase focuses on understanding the problem space, business objectives, user needs, and existing solutions before building a product or service.
Responsibilities & Deliverables
Facilitate project kick-off activities and produce outputs such as:
- Business Model Canvas
- 5 Whys
- User Personas
- Stakeholder Mapping
- Strategy Map
- Short- and Long-Term Goals
- Fears and Challenges
- Problem Statement
Facilitate user research activities and produce:
- User Interview Topic Maps
- User Interview Scripts
- User Interview Synthesis
- User Research Findings Report
Support Inception / Science Fair Day, including:
- Showcasing project work and key findings to stakeholders outside the core project team
- Aligning business and technical stakeholders on next steps
- Planning activities for the Alpha phase
Additional Discovery deliverables may include:
- User Storyboards
- Technical Service Blueprints
- Business Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Phase 2 – Alpha
Alpha focuses on testing hypotheses, experimenting with potential solutions, and validating approaches with users before development.
Responsibilities & Deliverables
- Optionally facilitate or participate in a Google Ventures Five-Day Design Sprint, or an appropriate variation.
- Create clickable prototypes for multiple potential solutions.
- Validate clickable prototypes through user usability testing sessions.
- Produce research findings reports.
- Iterate and improve prototypes based on research and usability testing findings.
- Identify existing processes or policies that may need to change to support the proposed product/service.
- Produce a business proposal supporting funding for the Beta phase.
- Define a clear vision for the solution to be developed during Beta.
- Develop a prioritized feature list and plan for Beta.
- Define the user solution and delivery KPIs.
Phase 3 – Beta
Beta focuses on building and validating a real, user-facing service/MVP based on prototypes tested during Alpha.
The UX Designer will work within a Scrum/Agile methodology and participate in:
- Daily Stand-ups
- Sprint Planning
- Backlog Grooming/Refinement
- Reporting
- Acceptance activities
- Retrospectives
The UX Designer will typically create and validate user stories one iteration ahead of development.
User Story Creation & Validation
For each feature/function, the UX Designer will:
- Participate in determining feature priorities.
- Facilitate/participate in sketching workshops to visually represent ideas and user flows.
- Create UX/UI designs.
- Enhance and refine designs.
- Conduct user interviews for validation.
- Synthe