Fast Facts

Khan Academy seeks a Director of Design to lead a team focused on creating impactful educational experiences while driving product strategy and user understanding for diverse learners in K-12 education.

Responsibilities: Lead a ~20 person design team to execute product vision, develop design frameworks, and collaborate across functions to drive accelerating learning outcomes.

Skills: Deep experience in technology-based product design, strong leadership, effective communication, user experience research guidance, and data-informed decision making.

Qualifications: Experience creating products for K-12 districts and classrooms, knowledge of educational technology market, and a history of mentoring design teams and fostering growth.

Location: Remote friendly (Continental US + Hawaii + Canada Only)

Compensation: $212863 - $235092 / Annually

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 are at seven different levels of math achievement. 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 understanding of 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 help students with learning gaps catch up to their grade level?
• How do we center schools serving under-resourced communities in our product design and development?
• How do we reach and support more school districts so our learning experience gets used in more classrooms?
• How might AI help us solve learning challenges that have been intractable until now? 
• …and more

The best part? Our work focuses on how we can use technology to solve important problems for learners and teachers: see it featured on 60 Minutes recently.

The heart of this role is building a high functioning team and working collaboratively as part of the product leadership team to drive impact by delivering amazing learning experiences across Khan Academy’s offerings. You will lead a team of product designers, visual designers, and UX researchers who are hard at work designing experiences for/with students, teachers, and school administrators..

Some of the things the team is working on now:

• Building an AI-powered experience that seamlessly fits into the classroom flow of students and teachers
• Designing experiences for district instructional leaders who can drive impact and are often overlooked 
• Reimagining assessments in the world of conversational artificial intelligence

You will play a vital role on our 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.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Reporting to our Chief Learning Officer, help Khan Academy develop our offerings through design leadership.
• Lead the ~20 person design team in operationalizing the product vision and strategic priorities. Together with product management and engineering leadership, own execution of our product roadmap.
• Collaborate with our founder and other product leaders to drive the product strategy and vision which lays out our unique path for engaging teachers and learners and driving accelerated learning; working collaboratively across content, product management, engineering, learning science and research & efficacy. Influence product priorities in ways that are rooted in a deep understanding of the evolving education landscape, tech/AI opportunities, and industry dynamics and policies. You will help operationalize, codify, and scale the pedagogical vision of our CEO / Founder, Salman Khan and Chief Learning Officer, Kristen DiCerbo.  
• Own the design team’s budget, working closely with finance and leadership to forecast needs, manage headcount planning, and making strategic trade-offs to maximize impact while maintaining sustainability.
• Seamlessly shift between high-level visionary strategy and detailed execution, ensuring alignment across all team deliverables.
• Know our customers and products inside and out. Inspire others to a similar depth of knowledge - and to use customer/product insights to guide product decisions. 
• Motivate and grow our world-class design team to deliver best-in-class offerings in service to user growth and accelerated learning outcomes. Level-up design team maturity and set the bar for delivering high-impact, high-quality products rooted in a deep understanding of the business and customer needs. You are responsible for coaching, career planning, career path development, and performance management of this critical function.
• Drive data-informed decisions Lead our User Experience Research team in developing insights from their work and collaborating with our analytics and efficacy teams to provide information to the organization at the time it is useful for driving decisions.
• Provide and develop a culture of feedback where designers are encouraged to iteratively improve on their work.

WHAT YOU BRING

• Deep, relevant experience in technology-based product design, building and shipping joyful user experiences
• Strong leader of people, with proven ability to lead teams, prioritizing mentorship and career growth. Record of helping growing design teams level-up in maturity through deep understanding of our users, operations, and design standards+frameworks
• Able to collaborate, influence, and quickly build trust and respect across the organization
• Exceptional communicator, collaborator, and facilitator who enjoys leading through influence and working across functions and levels to establish and deliver on shared goals
• Strategic thinker who can build frameworks and connect ideas
• Track record of combining customer-focus with mission alignment, engaging in, data-informed decision making that delivers an exceptional customer experience as well mission-driven outcomes
• Demonstrated experience supporting and enabling a user experience research team, guiding the team to integrate qualitative and quantitative insights into the design process
• A positive mindset that is energized by ambiguity and bringing clarity and structure to new opportunities
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with a keen eye for detail
• Motivated by the Khan Academy mission “to provide a free world-class education for anyone, anywhere"
• Proven cross-cultural competency skills demonstrating self-awareness, awareness of other, and the ability to adopt inclusive perspectives, attitudes, and behaviors to drive inclusion and belonging throughout the organization
• Experience creating products for K-12 districts and classrooms, knowledge of the educational technology market, and/or experience working in schools a plus

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 and info you need to move work forward and unblock yourself
• High comfort level working within a strong top-down product vision led by our CEO, Sal Khan
• Able to balance the immediate tactical needs of helping deliver and ship features with scouting ahead for what’s next
• Comfortable with ever-shifting priorities 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

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 $212,863 - $235,092 USD / $287,644 - $317,374 CAD. 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