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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Internal Designer

💰 $ - $

DesignInternal CommunicationsEmployee ExperienceUX DesignBrand

🎯 Role Definition

The Internal Designer is responsible for designing and delivering employee-facing communications and experiences—ranging from intranet pages and internal campaign creative to presentations, onboarding materials and UX patterns for internal tools. This role focuses on telling stories that drive behavior and alignment, maintaining internal brand standards, creating reusable templates and components, and using analytics and research to optimize engagement and accessibility. The Internal Designer acts as a trusted visual and UX partner to People & Culture, Internal Communications, IT, and business leaders to move programs from concept to execution with speed and consistency.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Graphic Designer with a focus on corporate or B2B communications
  • UX/UI Designer or Product Designer transitioning into employee-facing experiences
  • Internal Communications Specialist or Employee Experience Coordinator with strong design skills

Advancement To:

  • Senior Internal Designer / Lead Internal Designer
  • Manager, Employee Experience Design or Head of Internal Design
  • Design Systems Manager or Director of Internal Communications & Design

Lateral Moves:

  • Brand Designer or Art Director (corporate branding)
  • UX/Product Designer (external-facing products)
  • Content Strategist or Learning Experience Designer

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design and deliver compelling internal campaigns, including intranet landing pages, email templates, internal micro-sites, and hero visuals that increase employee engagement, comprehension, and action on key programs and initiatives.
  • Create high-quality, brand-compliant PowerPoint, Keynote and Google Slides presentations for senior leadership town halls, executive messages and team-wide roadshows, ensuring clarity, visual hierarchy, and narrative flow.
  • Develop and maintain a reusable internal design system (components, templates, patterns and tokens) that standardizes employee-facing interfaces, accelerates production, and ensures accessibility and brand consistency across channels.
  • Lead the visual and information design for onboarding and learning experiences — including printable and digital handbooks, e-learning slides, checklists, job aids and step-by-step workflows — to improve time-to-productivity and knowledge retention.
  • Design user-centered intranet pages and internal application interfaces using UX principles, wireframing and prototyping (Figma/Sketch) to improve discoverability of resources and reduce support requests.
  • Collaborate directly with HR, Internal Communications, IT, Legal and business stakeholders to translate strategy and messaging into creative briefs, project plans and measurable design outcomes.
  • Produce data visualizations, dashboards and executive-ready reports that transform HR, engagement and adoption metrics into clear, actionable stories that influence decision-making.
  • Conduct and synthesize qualitative and quantitative research (surveys, user interviews, analytics) to identify opportunity areas for internal communications and experience improvements and to validate design hypotheses.
  • Deliver motion and micro-interaction assets (short animations, GIFs, animated SVGs) to increase visibility and comprehension of complex processes and to promote internal campaigns across digital channels.
  • Manage the end-to-end production lifecycle for high-volume internal design requests—prioritizing, scoping, prototyping, iterating, exporting and handing off assets to communications, web or dev teams.
  • Create and enforce accessibility standards and QA checklists for internal content and interfaces, ensuring compliance with WCAG where applicable and improving readability for diverse employee populations.
  • Maintain and curate the internal brand asset library (templates, icons, imagery, fonts, guidelines) and provide clear guidance and training to internal partners and external agencies on usage and governance.
  • Lead design reviews, critique sessions and stakeholder workshops to align creative execution with business goals, drive consensus and accelerate delivery timelines.
  • Develop modular templated components for email campaigns and intranet CMS platforms (e.g., SharePoint, Confluence, Drupal) to increase speed and consistency in campaign launches.
  • Serve as a subject matter expert on internal visual identity, tone, and voice—coaching content authors and communicators on best practices for clarity, scannability and storytelling.
  • Conduct A/B tests and iterative experiments for subject lines, layout and call-to-action placement in internal emails and landing pages, and track engagement lift to inform future campaigns.
  • Collaborate with IT and engineering to provide design specs, assets, and responsive guidance for internal applications and mobile-first experiences used by distributed workforces.
  • Manage relationships with external vendors, print shops and agencies for production of signage, event materials and printed employee communications, ensuring quality, budget adherence and brand fidelity.
  • Prioritize and triage incoming design requests and intake tickets, set realistic delivery timelines, and maintain transparent status updates for requestors across the business.
  • Create contextual and role-based design solutions (executive decks vs. team newsletters vs. frontline worker bulletin boards) that reflect different audience needs, devices and accessibility requirements.
  • Train and mentor junior designers, contractors and internal stakeholders on the use of templates, the design system and visual storytelling techniques to build internal design capability.
  • Establish KPIs and dashboards for internal design effectiveness (open rates, page views, time on page, task completion rates) and present monthly or quarterly impact reports to stakeholders.
  • Oversee print and environmental design for internal offices, including wall graphics, signage and wayfinding that reinforce culture and improve employee orientation.
  • Resolve complex design problems by balancing business constraints, technology limitations and user needs through pragmatic, elegant design solutions that scale.
  • Document processes, asset naming conventions, version control and handoff protocols to improve cross-functional collaboration and maintain a high-performing design backlog.
  • Support crisis communications and rapid-response design needs—delivering timely, clear, and brand-consistent assets under tight deadlines to ensure organizational alignment.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Expert-level proficiency in Figma for interface design, component libraries, prototyping and design system documentation.
  • Strong command of Adobe Creative Cloud (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign) for advanced visual production and print-ready assets.
  • Advanced presentation design skills in PowerPoint, Keynote and Google Slides with a focus on narrative flow and executive storytelling.
  • Hands-on experience building and maintaining design systems, component libraries and pattern documentation for internal-facing products.
  • Familiarity with web CMS platforms used for intranets (SharePoint, Drupal, Confluence) and ability to create templates compatible with those systems.
  • Basic front-end knowledge (HTML, CSS, responsive layout principles) to provide accurate specs and troubleshoot implementation issues with developers.
  • Experience with prototyping and usability tools (InVision, Marvel, Framer, Principle) and conducting user testing on prototypes.
  • Data visualization skills using Excel, Tableau, Power BI or Data Studio to create clear charts, dashboards and executive summaries.
  • Motion and interaction design experience (After Effects, Lottie) for short animations, explainer videos and micro-interactions.
  • Strong file and asset management skills, including version control, export settings, and production-ready asset delivery for both digital and print.
  • Knowledge of accessibility standards (WCAG) and experience applying accessible design patterns for typography, contrast, and navigation.
  • Familiarity with collaboration and project management tools (Asana, Jira, Trello, Slack, Miro) for intake, tracking and cross-functional delivery.

Soft Skills

  • Exceptional stakeholder management and influencing skills with the ability to translate strategy into tangible design outcomes and gain leadership buy-in.
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills for crafting design briefs, presenting creative rationale and explaining design decisions to non-designers.
  • Empathy and user-centric thinking to design solutions that meet diverse employee needs across roles, cultures and devices.
  • Excellent prioritization and time-management abilities to balance rapid turnaround requests with long-term initiatives and design system work.
  • High attention to detail and quality orientation, with a track record of delivering polished, error-free assets under deadlines.
  • Collaborative mindset and coaching ability to upskill content creators, HR partners and junior designers in best practices.
  • Analytical and data-informed decision making — comfortable interpreting engagement metrics and iterating designs based on results.
  • Problem-solving orientation with creativity to propose elegant solutions where constraints (budget, tech, policy) exist.
  • Adaptability and resilience in fast-paced, changing business environments, especially during large transformation or change programs.
  • Diplomacy and negotiation skills to balance competing priorities, scope constraints and stakeholder expectations.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design, Visual Communication, Interaction Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Communications, or a related field.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree plus specialized certifications in UX/Interaction Design, Design Systems, or a Master’s degree in Design or HCI preferred but not required.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Graphic Design
  • Interaction / UX Design
  • Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
  • Visual Communication
  • Organizational Communication / Internal Communications
  • Information Design

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 3–7 years of professional experience in visual design, UX, internal communications design, or employee experience design.

Preferred:

  • 5+ years designing employee-facing experiences, intranet or internal campaign work, with demonstrable portfolio pieces (intranet pages, executive presentations, templates, design systems, onboarding materials) and experience working cross-functionally with HR, Communications and IT.
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