UX Lead, Public Website and CMS Migration (credit unions)

UX Lead, Public Website and CMS Migration

Location: Canada, remote
Engagement: Contract
Compensation: $70–$100/hour, depending on experience

Aequilibrium is seeking a Canadian-based UX Lead to lead the public website experience for credit unions transitioning away from the Central 1 Forge platform and its OpenText CMS. This is a public website redesign and CMS migration role, not a SaaS or application product-design role. The successful candidate must have experience modernizing large, content-rich websites and guiding organizations through decisions about what content, navigation, functionality, and user journeys to retain, redesign, consolidate, or retire.

The UX Lead will ensure the migration is not treated as a simple lift-and-shift from OpenText into a new CMS. They will lead discovery, assess the current website, define the target member experience, and help the credit union establish a more effective information architecture, content structure, navigation system, and reusable component framework.

Although the primary responsibility is the public website, the UX Lead must understand how it connects with account opening, digital banking, product applications, calculators, branch and ATM services, and other member touchpoints. The goal is to create a coherent member journey while recognizing that the public website and the authenticated banking product are different platforms.

The ideal candidate combines deep website UX and CMS migration expertise with strong content, information architecture, and stakeholder-facilitation skills. Experience in credit unions, banking, insurance or another regulated industry is strongly preferred.

• Lead discovery and experience strategy for complex public website redesigns and CMS migrations.

• Assess the current Forge/OpenText website, including its content, information architecture, navigation, templates, functionality, and member journeys.

• Identify what should be retained, improved, consolidated, redesigned, or retired.

• Define the target public website experience and establish clear experience principles to guide the migration.

• Prevent the project from becoming a page-for-page recreation of the existing website.

• Facilitate discovery sessions and decision-making workshops with credit union executives, marketing, digital, technology, and business stakeholders.

• Lead the development of the website’s information architecture, navigation, taxonomy and content hierarchy.

• Partner with credit union marketing and digital teams on content audits, content prioritization and migration decisions.

• Simplify complex financial information so members can understand products, compare options and take appropriate action.

• Design effective paths to products, services, rates, calculators, educational content, branch and ATM information, support and account opening.

• Help establish content models and page structures that are scalable, maintainable and practical for CMS authors.

• Incorporate SEO and findability considerations into navigation, content structure and page design.

• Map priority journeys that begin on the public website and continue into account opening, digital banking or other third-party platforms.

• Identify gaps, friction and inconsistencies across these connected experiences.

• Develop personas, journey maps or service blueprints where they will support better decisions.

• Translate business objectives into measurable website outcomes, including qualified leads, account-opening conversion, digital adoption, task completion, accessibility and member satisfaction.

• Use research, analytics and usability testing to validate recommendations.

• Create sitemaps, user flows, wireframes, prototypes and detailed interaction specifications.

• Define or evolve the website design system and reusable CMS component library.

• Design components that balance member needs, brand consistency, accessibility and content-author flexibility.

• Partner closely with the CMS Technical Lead to ensure the proposed experience is achievable within the selected platform.

• Collaborate with the Front-End Lead throughout implementation to maintain design quality and responsive behavior.

• Review implemented pages and components, identify gaps and support remediation before launch.

• Incorporate WCAG accessibility requirements from the beginning rather than treating accessibility as a final-stage review.

• Present research findings, experience recommendations and design decisions to senior credit union stakeholders.

• Facilitate discussions where marketing, technology, compliance and business priorities may compete.

• Explain complex UX and content decisions in practical business terms.

• Help AEQ position the public website as a critical part of the broader Forge transformation.

• Eight or more years of experience in website UX, digital experience, information architecture or related fields.

• Demonstrated experience leading complex, content-rich public website redesigns or CMS migrations.

• A portfolio showing public website work, including information architecture, navigation, content strategy, wireframes and responsive page design.

• Experience conducting website and content audits and making evidence-based recommendations about what to retain, redesign, consolidate or retire.

• Strong understanding of CMS-driven design, content models, templates, reusable components and authoring needs.

• Experience creating or evolving website design systems and component libraries.

• Strong knowledge of responsive design and WCAG accessibility requirements.

• Working knowledge of SEO, website analytics, conversion optimization and usability testing.

• Strong workshop facilitation, presentation and stakeholder-management skills.

• Ability to work at both the strategic and detailed design levels.

• Ability to work directly with executives, marketing leaders, digital teams, business stakeholders and technical delivery teams.

• Must be based in Canada and legally eligible to work in Canada.

• Experience with credit unions, banks, insurance companies or other regulated organizations.

• Experience designing financial-services websites and journeys involving products, rates, calculators, applications, account opening or authenticated banking.

• Experience migrating websites from OpenText or another enterprise CMS.

• Familiarity with content governance, migration planning and authoring workflows.

• Experience defining analytics frameworks and measurable website-experience outcomes.

This position is NOT focused on designing a SaaS platform, internal enterprise application, or digital banking product. Candidates with application or product design experience must also demonstrate substantial experience leading public website redesigns, information architecture, content strategy, and CMS migrations, particularly for credit unions!

Strong visual or product-design skills alone will not be sufficient. The successful candidate must understand how to transform a large public website and its content, not simply redesign application interfaces or move existing pages into a new platform.