What would you do next - UX Designer @ 2yr mark?

I work for a government organization that (surprisingly) practices agile, UCD, DevSecOps, etc. It’s the only organization I’ve worked for as a full-fledged UX Designer as my background is self-taught digital marketing / entrepreneurship.

I don’t have a bachelors—only an associates in business. Beginning of 2019, I completed a relatively exceptional UX bootcamp and then trained with Pivotal Labs (now known as VMware Tanzu) for 4 months as we ramped up our new product team.

Early on, I was recognized as the strongest designer (out of 10, in our portfolio) and about 6 months ago, I was asked to stand in as design lead since the contractor, who was doing the job, was no longer available. I didn’t get a raise (government bureaucracy) and recent events (project defunding) has me in a weird position where my leadership is trying to find me a new portfolio / team. I don’t love the current prospects as they are for internal applications that are not well established and I’ll be the only designer.

I consider myself inexperienced in UX because of amount of time, but fairly experienced by what I’ve been exposed to and have accomplished. I’d love some input from experienced designers, devs, PMs, etc. of what they would expect me to do next.

Side note: I’m in my early 30’s and job is located in Boston.

YOE: 2 in UX
TC: 90k

#ux #uxdesigner