Product Design Lead

Founded by Sal Khan, Schoolhouse is a peer-to-peer learning platform that delivers human connection and develops durable skills through online learning to best prepare students to thrive in the age of AI. So far, we’ve reached 200k+ learners from 180+ countries and we plan to grow to millions.

Our vision is to provide an education safety net to ensure that no talent goes undiscovered and that every student feels empowered in our changing world. We do this by bringing high school students together around learning to create an environment where they can develop and showcase academic mastery and durable skills.

At Schoolhouse, learning is academic, civic, and global. Students join tutoring sessions where peers help them reach academic goals through personalized support. They participate in Dialogues to discuss challenging issues and empathize across divides. Above all, students belong to a global community centered around human connection.

We believe this vision is ambitious, so we need a team that can move quickly in the face of ambiguity. We work with sincerity and empathy and believe deeply in the power of human connection. We step in to help each other out, we think big but start small, we uplift each other, and we’re all learners at heart.

Learn more about our vision and our values here:

• Schoolhouse TED Talk

• Teen Helps 52-Year-Old Man Earn His High School Diploma

• Schoolhouse’s Public Roadmap

• What are Schoolhouse's community values?

We’re looking for a Product Design Lead to own design at Schoolhouse. This is a uniquely challenging role with significant ownership and impact. As our designer, you’ll set our design vision, rapidly scope new features and build out details from UX to visuals each week in Figma, and own the full design stack (visual design, UX, branding, and more). You’ll work directly with our engineers, program managers, and (many) students, and you’ll often play the role of a product manager, driving new product features from start to finish.

This role is a great fit if you thrive in a dynamic startup environment, enjoy designing around human systems, love wearing multiple hats, and are excited to help students around the world thrive.

Responsibilities include:

• Lead scoping and end-to-end design of new features for learners and tutors, balancing craft, speed, and impact on our students. Work closely with our engineers to ship features from concept, to wireframes, to production.

• Own visual and graphic design for our brand identity, product marketing, and other external-facing communications.

• Ground your design work in user research and community engagement. Run usability studies, and actively engage our community of high-school aged learners, tutors, and volunteers through live interviews and focus groups to ensure everything we ship remains connected with our students, and centers them in our decisions.

• Maintain and build onto our growing design system, with the goal of creating scalable, reusable systems as our team grows. Audit our existing platform and identify ways to make the design and interface more consistent, intuitive, and delightful.

• Develop an inspiring longer-term product vision for Schoolhouse and bring it to fruition.

If this sounds like you, we'd love for you to apply!

• You’re a design generalist with an eye for visual design, a strong product mindset, and fluency shipping experiences from ideas to high-fidelity mockups (we use Figma).

• You have 4+ years of product design experience, and you have previously been a solo product designer (or one-of-two) for an early-stage startup OR you have personally driven and shipped a large design project end-to-end.

• You communicate clearly — whether you’re collaborating with teammates or crafting intuitive experiences for our high-school aged community.

• You execute very quickly and are biased towards action. You thrive in a fast-paced startup environment: embracing ambiguity and uncertainty, balancing rapid experimentation with scalable solutions, and taking on significant ownership.

• You’re impact oriented. It’s what drives you.

• You are available to work in a US timezone.

Bonus points

• Nice to have: experience in edtech or social impact spaces, and/or experience teaching or tutoring yourself.

• Nice to have: familiarity with frontend web technologies like HTML/CSS - enough to communicate with our engineering team during design hand-off - and comfort using AI tools to design and prototype faster.
  

• Work with an amazing team. We’ve got folks with backgrounds in education, consulting, astrophysics, startups, and more.

• Fully remote with flexible working hours. Meetings are in US Pacific Time mornings.

• Take real time off. We have unlimited PTO & use it. Folks regularly take time off throughout the year.

• Competitive salary and comprehensive benefits. Work-from-home stipend. Professional development budget. Health, dental, vision (for US employees).

• Semesterly retreats and monthly regional meetups

• Make an impact you can see. Check out our community stories page. Watch students help each other learn. See tutors grow into leaders. Your will help real people learn and grow.

Our interview process (about 3 hours total):

• A 30-minute intro call with the hiring manager to learn more about you and understand whether this role is a mutual fit.

• A 45-minute deep-dive where you’ll walk us through 1–2 design projects you’ve shipped end-to-end.

• A 45-minute live co-design session in Figma, where we’ll work through a real Schoolhouse style design problem together.

• Reference calls (run in parallel — a meaningful part of our process).

• A 45 minute panel-style discussion with team members across functions

We’re building an inclusive and equitable platform for learners across the world, and it’s important our core team reflects these principles too. We strongly encourage people from underrepresented groups to apply!