Principal UX Designer

The Purpose of Zearn

Zearn is the nonprofit educational organization whose mission is to inspire all kids to love learning math. Everything we do is driven by our belief that every kid is a math kid.

Our top-rated learning platform is designed to catch kids up and move them forward in grade-level math. And it works. Large-scale efficacy research shows students who use Zearn make significant gains in math proficiency, including the students who start multiple grade levels behind.

As a nonprofit, all of our work is driven by what is best for kids. At the same time, we operate as an intense and fast-moving technology company, inclusively solving hard problems that will impact current and future generations. The problems we solve require expertise in teaching, learning science, software development, design, video production, and countless other disciplines. As an organization that is always stretching to get to the next level of impact, every single person owns mission critical work.

If you’re ready to join our Team of problem solvers, and own work that will drive us to achieve impact at scale, we are looking for you.

Learn more about us at https://about.zearn.org/. 

The purpose of the Principal UX Designer at Zearn is to lead the strategic design for our Educator app onboarding experience, directly impacting how thousands of teachers successfully adopt Zearn to help all students learn and love math. Through expert end-to-end design leadership, deep research expertise, and an ability to simplify complex systems, this role transforms ambiguous challenges into clear, intuitive experiences that meet educators where they are in their journey. This is achieved by:

Owning the end-to-end design strategy for high-leverage educator onboarding and engagement experiences.

• Deliver complete, high-impact UX projects from initial research and strategy through final implementation, with a particular focus on reimagining the educator onboarding experience to drive understanding, adoption, and sustained engagement.
• Partner with Product Management leaders to clarify requirements from ambiguous business needs, translating market challenges and educator pain points into clear design solutions.
• Work closely with Design Directors, Product Managers, and Engineers to identify the best product solutions and ensure they are executed at the highest quality possible, maintaining an unwavering bar for design excellence.
• Turn complexity into simplicity by distilling educational content, data insights, and multifaceted platform capabilities into intuitive UI and user flows, reducing cognitive load and accelerating understanding.

Discovering and defining the most critical problems that promote educator success through rigorous, strategic research.

• Navigate ambiguous problem spaces by conducting strategic user research that uncovers the core challenges educators face when first encountering Zearn and throughout their ongoing usage.
• Conduct user research, usability testing, and competitive analysis that deeply informs decisions about product direction, feature prioritization, and experience design.
• Synthesize research findings into clear insights and actionable recommendations that align cross-functional teams around user needs and business goals.
• Create relationships across the company to develop and maintain current understanding of how Zearn is being used by educators, what drives successful adoption, and what challenges the company faces as it grows and expands.

Driving design excellence and elevating the organization's overall design craft and strategic thinking.

• Influence other team members in the process of executing on day-to-day projects, maintaining a high bar for quality.
• Dedicate yourself to creating a shared vision of the best design solutions among all team members, including a willingness to rethink solutions based on input from a variety of stakeholders.
• Identify and deliver continuous improvements to internal processes and systems that enable faster, better design work.
• Help maintain, expand, and advocate usage of our design system, templates, and libraries, ensuring consistency across the educator experience.

Executing with speed and flexibility to maintain momentum and deliver exceptional quality in a fast-paced environment.

• Demonstrate rapid execution on design concepts  and prototypes, moving quickly from concept to testable design.
• Pivot flexibly between big-picture systems thinking and best-in-class UI design, understanding how individual onboarding decisions affect long-term engagement, retention, and overall platform success.
• Take a flexible approach to design projects, strategically selecting the right deliverables, including sketches, wireframes, user flows, interactive prototypes, and journey maps, to discover and communicate solutions efficiently.
• Work on multiple complex project workflows simultaneously while maintaining the highest quality bar and meeting aggressive timelines.

The Next Problems for this Role to Solve

• How can we design an onboarding experience that helps teachers master Zearn's instructional approach within their very limited prep time?
• What journey will move a new educator from their first sign-in to consistently driving 3 or more student lessons every week?
• How do we simplify the way we show complex student data so teachers can take action without feeling overwhelmed?
• What is the fastest way to identify and fix the real-world barriers that stop teachers from using Zearn regularly?
• How do we build a single, elegant experience that works for an individual teacher while also meeting the heavy requirements of a full school district?

The Skills and Behaviors You'll Use

• Mastery of end-to-end Design Leadership: You own major initiatives from research through implementation, orchestrating all aspects of the design process to deliver transformational user experiences and set the standard for the team.
• Strategic Research and Insight Generation: You conduct comprehensive user research, usability testing, and competitive analysis that uncovers deep insights, then translate those findings into strategic design decisions and product recommendations that influence the entire product roadmap.
• The Craft of Simplifying Complexity: You excel at taking complex systems, sophisticated content, and ambiguous requirements, gaining a deep understanding, and distilling them into elegant, intuitive experiences that users can immediately understand and act upon.
• Rapid, High-Quality Execution and Systems Thinking: You move quickly from concept to prototype without sacrificing quality, maintaining an exceptional bar for craft, while meeting aggressive timelines in a fast-paced environment.
• Expertise in Onboarding and Engagement: You understand the unique challenges of onboarding design, reducing time-to-value, building confidence, and creating habit formation, and have experience designing customer journeys that drive sustained engagement.
• Cross-functional Influence and Alignment: You build strong relationships across Product, Engineering, and Leadership, creating alignment through clear communication, compelling storytelling, and collaborative problem-solving that brings others along on the strategic journey.

Potential Markers of these Skills

• 10+ years as a professional UX Designer with demonstrated progression to senior individual contributor roles.
• A portfolio demonstrating exceptional quality and experience leading major end-to-end UX/Product design initiatives, ideally including examples of onboarding or engagement-focused projects.
• A proven track record of conducting user research, usability testing, and competitive analysis that directly informed and changed strategic product decisions.
• Experience designing for educators, complex enterprise users, or other audiences who need to understand sophisticated systems quickly.
• Demonstrated ability to navigate ambiguous problem spaces and turn complexity into simple, intuitive user experiences.
• Evidence of influencing a design team's craft and process, such as contributing to or advocating for a design system, templates, or libraries.
• Advanced prototyping skills enabling rapid iteration and high-fidelity demonstrations.
• Highly refined active listening skills, in addition to excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Deep passion for educational technology and math, with a commitment to helping all students succeed.

HOW WE WORK

• We aim to create a numeracy movement. This is no easy feat, and no one of us can solve this on our own. Given that, Zearn is a transparent, collaborative, and open-to-feedback culture.
• The Product and Design teams work in close collaboration with Academic, Engineering, and Partnerships teams to ensure our platform serves educators and students effectively. For the onboarding project specifically, close collaboration with the Academic and Partnerships teams will be essential to understanding educator needs and implementation realities.
• As a result, our work is often collaborative in nature:
• We own our deliverables in close collaboration with cross-functional partners
• We share early thinking and drafts often, maintaining transparency throughout the design process
• We often must support other parts of Zearn through collaborative influence, building consensus around design decisions that impact multiple teams
  
  

LOCATION 

This role is remote and can be performed in any of the following states/locations:  

CA, CT, FL, IL, LA, MA, MD, NC, NJ, NY, OH, OR, PA, TN, TX, VA, WA, WI and Washington D.C.  

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS

The compensation range for this role is $150,000 - $180,000 per year.

We offer a competitive benefits package, including comprehensive medical, dental and vision plans, short- and long-term disability, life insurance, 401K matching, parental leave, a generous Holiday policy and a flexible PTO policy. We also offer a collegial and passionate culture and the potential to positively impact the lives of millions of children.

TO APPLY: https://apply.workable.com/j/7CBF1D0377

Zearn is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.