Job details

Design Manager, Learner Experience - Mountain View, CA / Remote-Friendly ( US + Canada Only)

ABOUT KHAN ACADEMY

Khan Academy is a nonprofit organization on a mission to provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere. We already reach millions of students every month and are growing rapidly, and right now we’re hard at work helping learners address any unfinished learning that the COVID-19 pandemic may have caused. We also know that not all communities have been impacted equally by this pandemic, which makes our work focusing on providing equitable solutions to historically under-resourced communities even more important.

WE ARE DRIVEN BY OUR COMMUNITY

Our students, teachers, and parents come from all walks of life and so do we. We are fun, diverse, quirky people that come from a variety of backgrounds. Our team includes people from academia and from high tech companies and tiny startups. We hire great people from diverse backgrounds and experiences, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it makes our company stronger. Valuing diversity, equity and inclusion is necessary for us to actualize our mission and truly impact the communities we serve. We believe that the best way to provide impactful education is to create a diverse team of people from different backgrounds, races, religions, genders, sexual orientations, ages, and experiences. We’re a hardworking team that’s passionate about helping learners and teachers around the globe! 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, almost three years after the pandemic started, with a classroom full of 6th graders who haven’t had a normal year of school or learning since 2019. 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 & design thinking, and a strong drive to make a positive impact. Some questions we’re working on answering right now are:

How do we empower 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 matters: catch Sal talking to CNBC about low math and reading test scores.

In this role, you will act as the manager for the Learner Experience design team, leading a small group of senior product designers working on ambitious, high-impact experiences for in-classroom learning. This “player-coach” role is roughly 50% individual contributions, 50% people management and leadership.

As an IC, you might work on solutions for helping learners catch up to grade-level content, increasing the joy and engagement of our core content experience, or something else. As a manager, you’ll be a force multiplier for your reports, applying your expertise and proven design process as you guide and coach your team across several different active projects. You will also use your strong process and project management skills to improve how our team collaborates with cross-functional teams.

You will play a vital role on an inclusive, collaborative, small but mighty Design team, helping us shape and fulfill the mission of the organization: to provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere. Designers have been in leadership roles here, including at the executive level, for a long time. This has made Design a keystone in the way we “deliver wow” (one of our values), and means that you’ll never have to justify the importance of design. We report directly into the CEO and work closely with him to deliver on our mission.

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. Even if you don’t check every box (no one does), we encourage you to apply.

What you'll do:

Partner with Product, Engineering, Content, Brand, Data and other departments to shape an inspiring vision and strategy for the future of our in-classroom experience.
Own the end-to-end design strategy and solutions for high-profile, complex projects – from IA to wireframes to user flows to high-fidelity mockups to clickable prototypes, and everything in between.
Set a standard of operational excellence by driving the design side of projects effectively through project management, clear communication, and a focus on outcomes.
Validate ideas throughout the lifecycle of the project by partnering with UX Research, incorporating insights into design iterations and helping translate learnings into product decisions.
Build alignment across diverse teams by successfully presenting ideas to a range of teams and stakeholders across Khan Academy.
Act as a player-coach by managing a small group of 3 experienced, high-performing designers who contribute work to your product group.
Maintain weekly 1:1s with your reports to understand how they are doing and help them ship the best work of their careers.
Play an active role in the growth of your reports, collaborate with them on amplifying their strengths and working on areas for development.
Provide regular feedback to your reports during 1:1s and on Slack (our primary communication tool), as well as quarterly performance reviews.
Cultivate a growth mindset (another one of our values) by contributing to design best practices for organizational needs such as career ladders, design critique, integrating our brand into the product, and more.
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 as an individual contributor on an in-house product design team, and at least 1 year of experience as a people manager of product/UX designers.
You have a wealth of experience with developing and improving design process, with a keen sense of where we are struggling and proactively applying your expertise to streamline how our team ships world-class design solutions.
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, modeling what it looks like to deliver effective feedback to strengthen design work, as well as soliciting feedback at every step of the process.
You are strong across interaction design, prototyping, and information architecture, with some experience in user research, visual design, co-designing, and facilitating design sprints.
You have experience designing mobile and web consumer products at scale. Bonus: you also have experience designing for ages 8 to 18, for e-learning/edtech products, or with complex user flows and data visualizations.
You have exceptional verbal and written communication skills for technical and non-technical partners, internally and externally.
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 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, and emotionally intelligent, with excellent communication skills.
Invested in your own growth and the growth of our team.
Proactively seek out the people/information you need to move work forward and unblock yourself.
High comfort level working within a strong product and pedagogical vision.
Able to balance the immediate tactical needs of helping deliver and ship features with scouting ahead for what’s next.
Willing to roll your sleeves up and pitch in when a project goes off-script.
Passionate about education and designing engaging learning experiences, deeply curious about how and why people learn.

NOTE: Submitting a portfolio with your application is required. We're looking for a portfolio that highlights your background designing digital product experiences with outstanding quality, clearly defines your role and impact, includes both visuals and explanations, and provides enough context that someone can browse through it and grasp the problem and solution you developed, without having questions about how you did it. Click here for a description of how you can prepare for the portfolio review component of our interview process.

PERKS AND BENEFITS

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

Competitive salaries
Ample paid time off as needed – we are about getting things done, not face time
Generous parental leave
A fun, high-caliber team that trusts you and gives you the freedom to be brilliant
The ability 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
Affinity groups where Parents, Black, Hispanic/Latino, Women and Gender Minorities, and LGBTQIA+ identified folks come together
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.

For this position, our hiring salary range is $146k-$224k USD. This is determined by several factors including experience and skills, regular job market evaluations, and location. In an effort to maintain competitive market rates, these ranges reflect the minimum and maximum targets across all locations.For more information, your recruiter can share more about the salary range for your desired location.

MORE ABOUT US

The Design Team is a diverse and close-knit group, spanning many disciplines, who are passionate about designing for the complexities of education. We are driven by our dedication to learners, our craft, and nurturing our unique, low-ego, playful, and rigorous culture. We listen carefully, think deeply, and move quickly, to help millions of learners all over the world. Join us.

Sal’s TED talk from 2011
Sal’s TED talk from 2015
Our full 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.