Senior Product Designer, Learner Assessments

ABOUT KHAN ACADEMY

Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission to deliver a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere. Our proven learning platform offers free, high-quality supplemental learning content and practice that cover Pre-K - 12th grade and early college core academic subjects, focusing on math and science. We have over 155 million registered learners globally and are committed to improving learning outcomes for students worldwide, focusing on learners in historically under-resourced communities.

OUR COMMUNITY 

Our students, teachers, and parents come from all walks of life, and so do we. Our team includes people from academia, traditional/non-traditional education, big tech companies, and tiny startups. We hire great people from diverse backgrounds and experiences because it makes our company stronger. We value diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging as necessary to achieve our mission and impact the communities we serve. We know that transforming education starts in-house with learning about ourselves and our colleagues. We strive to be world-class in investing in our people and commit to developing you as a professional.

THE ROLE

Imagine being a teacher in Sarasota, Florida with a classroom full of 6th graders who haven’t had a normal year of school or learning since before the COVID pandemic. It’s the reality of so many educators and students who use Khan Academy – and our team is uniquely positioned to help them when they need it most.

We have no end of fascinating challenges that can only be solved with a deep empathy for our users, diligent product & UX thinking, and a strong drive to make a positive impact. Some questions we’re working on answering right now are:

• How do we support teachers who are dealing with the impact that the pandemic had on learning?
• How do we help students with learning gaps catch up to their grade level?
• How do we center schools serving historically under-resourced communities in our product design and development?
• How do we reach more school districts so our learning experience gets used in more classrooms?
• …and more

The best part? Our work really matters: catch Sal talking to CNBC about low math and reading test scores.

We’re looking for a Senior Product Designer to deliver innovative K-12 assessment solutions. The heart of this role will be designing accessible and innovative product experiences for students in a scrappy, iterative environment. You should feel at home working in ambiguity and charting a path forward. Along with product and engineering, you will help define critical areas for re-imagining the Assessments experience, leveraging expertise from subject matter experts, new capabilities from generative AI,  and data from our pilot studies. Additionally, you will be ensuring our experience is accessible and is integrated into our larger product portfolio. Because this role offers the opportunity to develop new interaction patterns and visual cues, previous experience contributing to a design system is required.

You will play a vital role on an inclusive, collaborative, small but mighty Design team, helping us fulfill the mission of the organization: to provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere. We genuinely care about people and value compassion in our everyday interactions. You’ll be able to be yourself, feel valued, supported, learn and grow, no matter how experienced you are.

If you’re looking for the opportunity to design and ship high-quality, innovative products that solve real problems for learners and educators, we'd love to hear from you. Even if you don’t check every box (no one does), we encourage you to apply!

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Design innovative assessment experiences for learners, positively impacting individual learning goals and metrics
• Conduct discovery work to understand key problem areas in the Assessments space
• Collaborate closely with UX research to define knowledge gaps, research plans, and execute on generative and evaluative research with support from the UX research team
• Create strategic design artifacts that help the broader organization understand how the Assessments team fits in the larger organizational product portfolio and supports our goals of deep student learning (e.g. customer journey maps, competitive analysis)
• Design WCAG AA-compliant widgets in collaboration with the Learning Components team to be prioritized for Assessment content delivery
• Regularly contribute components and style guide documentation for our design system.
• Collaborate with horizontal Learner product teams to design the end-to-end experience of how Assessments integrate with the existing educational platform
• Ideate on how generative AI features can be leveraged to support item creation and assessment content development
• Partner with the Director of Assessment and Chief Learning Officer to design iterative concepts towards the shared vision for assessment
• Partner with User Research and Data teams to understand user insights from the field, and leverage to improve the design experience
• Provide thoughtful input on the product roadmap, strategy and vision for what’s next
• Set a standard of operational excellence by driving the design side of projects effectively through strong project management, lightning-fast execution on design iterations, and clear communication.
• Build alignment across diverse teams by being able to successfully present ideas to a range of teams and stakeholders across Khan Academy.
• Invest in our org by mentoring, coaching and developing both your Design team comrades and your cross-functional partners.
• Write about, present, and share what you have learned, both internally and with the wider Design community via our blog and industry events.

WHAT YOU BRING

• You have at least 6+ years of relevant experience on an in-house product design team.
• You have at least 5+ years of conducting research and working collaboratively with a UX research team.
• You have 4+ years of experience designing accessible experiences.
• You are outstanding across interaction design, prototyping, and information architecture, with visual design chops.
• You are comfortable in ambiguous situations and dynamic environments that run similar to a startup, where you regularly interact with and gather feedback from Senior Leadership.
• You have the ability to juggle ambiguous and broad problems/opportunities along with smaller well-defined projects.
• You are a critical participant in design reviews, both in delivering feedback to teammates to strengthen their work, but also in soliciting feedback at every step of the process.
• You have strong verbal and written communication skills for technical and non-technical partners, internally and externally.
• You are scrappy, have a bias toward action, and love moving fast.
• You know how to build strong relationships cross-functionally and bring people into the conversation when their input and buy-in is crucial.
• You bring a lean approach to product design and regularly ask yourself: how do we learn quickly and ship regularly? What’s the most concise experience we can deliver that still provides value?

Qualities we value in ourselves, and those who join our team:

• Introspective, mature, low-ego, and emotionally intelligent
• Growth mindset, willingness to learn and to teach others
• Proactively seek out the people/information you need to move work forward and unblock yourself
• High comfort level working within a strong top-down product and pedagogical vision led by our CEO, Sal Khan, and our Chief Learning Officer, Kristen DiCerbo, PhD
• Able to balance the immediate tactical needs of helping deliver and ship features with scouting ahead for what’s next
• Comfortable with frequent change and ambiguous situations, like you’d experience in a startup
• Willing to roll your sleeves up and pitch in when a project goes off-script
• Excited about education and engaging learning experiences, deeply curious about how and why people learn

NOTE: Submitting a portfolio with your application is required (if you have a password, please provide it). We're looking for a portfolio that demonstrates exceptional design solutions and visual design chops that are aligned to business objectives within tight timeframes and constraints.

PERKS AND BENEFITS

We may be a non-profit, but we reward our talented team extremely well! We offer:

• Competitive salaries
• Ample paid time off as needed – Your well-being is a priority.
• Remote-first culture - that caters to your time zone, with open flexibility as needed, at times
• Generous parental leave
• An exceptional team that trusts you and gives you the freedom to do your best
• The chance to put your talents towards a deeply meaningful mission and the opportunity to work on high-impact products that are already defining the future of education
• Opportunities to connect through affinity, ally, and social groups
• And we offer all those other typical benefits as well: 401(k) + 4% matching & comprehensive insurance, including medical, dental, vision, and life

At Khan Academy we are committed to fair and equitable compensation practices, the well-being of our employees, and our Khan community. This belief is why we have built out a robust Total Rewards package that includes competitive base salaries, and extensive benefits and perks to support physical, mental, and financial well-being.

The target salary range for this position is $127,423 - $138,291 USD / $172,188 - $186,875 CAN. The pay range for this position is a general guideline only. The salary offered will depend on internal pay equity and the candidate’s relevant skills, experience, qualifications, and job market data. Exceptional performers in this role who make an outsized contribution can make well in excess of this range.  Additional incentives are provided as part of the complete total rewards package in addition to comprehensive medical and other benefits.

MORE ABOUT US

• Sal’s TED talk from 2011
• Sal’s TED talk from 2015
• Sal's TED talk from 2023
• Our team:  http://www.khanacademy.org/about/the-team

OUR COMPANY VALUES

Live & breathe learners

We deeply understand and empathize with our users. We leverage user insights, research, and experience to build content, products, services, and experiences that our users trust and love. Our success is defined by the success of our learners and educators.

Take a stand

As a company, we have conviction in our aspirational point of view of how education will evolve. The work we do is in service to moving towards that point of view. However, we also listen, learn and flex in the face of new data, and commit to evolving this point of view as the industry and our users evolve.

Embrace diverse perspectives

We are a diverse community. We seek out and embrace a diversity of voices, perspectives and life experiences leading to stronger, more inclusive teams and better outcomes. As individuals, we are committed to bringing up tough topics and leaning into different points of view with curiosity. We actively listen, learn and collaborate to gain a shared understanding. When a decision is made, we commit to moving forward as a united team.

Work responsibly and sustainably

We understand that achieving our audacious mission is a marathon, so we set realistic timelines and we focus on delivery that also links to the bigger picture. As a non-profit, we are supported by the generosity of donors as well as strategic partners, and understand our responsibility to our finite resources. We spend every dollar as though it were our own. We are responsible for the impact we have on the world and to each other. We ensure our team and company stay healthy and financially sustainable.

Bring out the joy

We are committed to making learning a joyful process. This informs what we build for our users and the culture we co-create with our teammates, partners and donors.

Cultivate learning mindset

We believe in the power of growth for learners and for ourselves. We constantly learn and teach to improve our offerings, ourselves, and our organization. We learn from our mistakes and aren’t afraid to fail. We don't let past failures or successes stop us from taking future bold action and achieving our goals.

Deliver wow

We insist on high standards and deliver delightful, effective end-to-end experiences that our users can rely on. We choose to focus on fewer things — each of which aligns to our ambitious vision — so we can deliver high-quality experiences that accelerate positive measurable learning with our strategic partners.

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, or Veteran status. We value diversity, equity, and inclusion, and we encourage candidates from historically underrepresented groups to apply.

As part of this commitment, Khan Academy will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations for the hiring process. If reasonable accommodation is needed, please contact careers@khanacademy.org