Ui ux designer Jobs in Cambridge, MA

Description

Summary

For over forty years, HarbourVest has been home to a committed team of professionals with an entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to deliver impactful solutions to our clients and investing partners. As our global firm grows, we continue to add individuals who seek a collaborative, open-door culture that values diversity and innovative thinking.

In our collegial environment that’s marked by low turnover and high energy, you’ll be inspired to grow and thrive. Here, you will be encouraged to build on your strengths and acquire new skills and experiences.

We are committed to fostering an environment of inclusion that promotes mutual respect among all employees. Understanding and valuing these differences optimizes the potential of both the individual and the firm.

HarbourVest is an equal opportunity employer.

This position will be a hybrid work arrangement. You will receive 18 remote workdays per quarter to use at your discretion, subject to manager approval. For example, you may choose to work in the office 4 days per week and take one remote day weekly (typically 13 weeks per quarter), leaving 5 additional remote days to be used as needed.

Role Overview

We’re looking for a Senior Associate with strong UX/UI instincts and hands‑on front‑end experience to help shape and maintain HarbourVest’s digital presence! In the near term, this role will support the transition to a new web content management system, working closely with external agencies to ensure a smooth, well‑executed launch. After launch, our focus shifts to maintaining and improving the site—shipping front‑end updates, refining user journeys, and ensuring design quality remains high across our marketing ecosystem.

This role sits at the intersection of design, content, and web delivery. You’ll work closely with our marketing, IT, compliance, and external partners to translate ideas and requirements into clear, usable digital experiences.

What You’ll Do

You’ll build and refine user experiences across the firm's digital touchpoints, including the public website, campaign landing pages, thought leadership content, digital reports, and email templates. Your work will focus on clarity, accessibility, and consistency, ensuring every experience aligns with our brand and meets the expectations of both institutional and private wealth audiences.

You’ll develop high‑fidelity wireframes, mockups, and interactive prototypes using Figma and Adobe CC. You’ll collect input from executive leaders, incorporate user feedback, and iterate on designs—particularly when working with sophisticated financial data and visualizations. Over time, you’ll improve investor journeys by simplifying navigation and making firm insights easier to understand.

You’ll also support the ongoing evolution of HarbourVest’s design system. This includes ensuring new pages and components follow established patterns, preparing clear documentation and build specs for component‑based development, and supporting quality assurance through UAT.

From a technical perspective, this role will handle front‑end updates using HTML, CSS/SASS, and JavaScript within a component‑based CMS environment. You’ll help keep the site performant, responsive, and consistent across devices, while assisting with light troubleshooting and issue resolution as needed. Collaboration with IT and external development partners will be an important part of making sure designs are feasible and well implemented.

You’ll act as a day‑to‑day partner to external design agencies, helping maintain high standards and ensuring output aligns with HarbourVest’s brand. Internally, you’ll collaborate with Marketing, Content, Marketing Operations, Events, and Compliance/Legal, clearly explaining design decisions and rationale to both technical and non‑technical executive leaders.

Skills and Approach

You will have demonstrated experience designing for our highly professional audience. You will bring a balance of visual polish with restraint, and translate sophisticated, data‑heavy concepts into clear, credible digital experiences. Attention to detail matters —especially when working on high‑visibility, client‑facing content.

You’ll be successful if you:

• Communicate design decisions clearly to a range of executive leaders
• Stay organized when handling overlapping design, build, and QA workstreams
• Bring a practical, productive approach to moving work forward
• Look for ways to simplify handoffs, improve repeatability, and reduce friction throughout the development process

Key Competencies

This role requires someone who can balance thoughtful design with practical delivery in a highly regulated industry. You should feel at ease working through ambiguity, making informed decisions, and explaining reasoning clearly to others.

Executive leader engagement and communication

You’re able to present concepts and UX recommendations with confidence, tailoring your message to senior leaders, marketers, technologists, and external agencies. You can explain not just what you’re proposing, but why—grounding decisions in user needs, brand standards, and technical feasibility.

Handling complexity and ambiguity

You have experience working with incomplete inputs, evolving requirements, and multiple workstreams. You can synthesize feedback from different sources, prioritize what matters most, and move projects forward without losing sight of quality or user experience.

Good judgment and decision‑making

You make thoughtful design and experience decisions by balancing data, user needs, business context, and implementation constraints. You know when to advocate strongly for a solution—and when to adapt based on practical considerations.

User‑centered approach

You approach work with a strong focus on the end user, designing digital experiences that build trust, clarity, and confidence for clients and investors. This includes simplifying sophisticated information and ensuring experiences feel intuitive and purposeful.

Planning and process orientation

You can coordinate development, construction, and quality assurance efforts across timelines and collaborators, helping ensure smooth handoffs and predictable delivery. Over time, you look for opportunities to improve workflows, documentation, and repeatability across the design system and web process.

Collaboration and relationship‑building

You work well across teams and with external partners, building trust through clear communication, reliability, and a shared focus on outcomes. You value collaboration and understand how to navigate cross‑functional environments.

Qualifications

• Consistent track record in UX/UI and digital design, ideally within financial or professional services
• Bachelor’s degree in design, computer science, or a related field, or equivalent experience
• A portfolio that demonstrates UX thinking, polished visual design, web and CMS work, and design system experience

Salary Range

$89,000.00 - $133,000.00

This USD base salary range represents only one component of total compensation for this role and is provided in accordance with local requirements. This role is eligible for a discretionary annual bonus, which is determined based on individual and overall firm performance. In addition to salary and bonus, total compensation may include eligibility for long-term reward programs and a comprehensive total rewards package that may include retirement, health, insurance, paid time off, and wellness programs. Our total rewards offerings are influenced by several business factors, and eligibility for certain components will vary by position and geography. Please note the posted ranges do not apply outside the U.S. and should not be converted to other currencies as a proxy for compensation in other countries.