Manager, Product Design

Discovery Education is looking for a Manager, Product Design to lead a team of designers in delivering intuitive, elegant, and functional experiences for our award-winning suite of blended learning K-12 products. In addition to leading a team of 1-3 direct reports, this is a very hands-on design role as well. You will work directly with our researchers, product managers, and engineers to collaboratively ensure success in delivering engaging, effective, and easy-to-navigate educational experiences for students, educators, and administrators. A keen aesthetic sensibility with attention to detail, combined with a user-centered methodology, is critical for success.

In this role, you will have the ability to drive innovation by partnering with internal stakeholders across multiple workstreams — From concepting new features and defining overall strategy, to conducting usability testing to inform iterative product improvements.

This role will sit in our Charlotte HQs with a hybrid schedule.

What You Will Do

• Work closely with product management and engineering leads to define strategic initiatives, roadmaps, and resource needs for your working team based on upcoming initiatives.
• Have a deep understanding of the technology and features in your product and have working knowledge of its integration with the larger DE platform.
• Identify strategic research and testing initiatives within your working team and coordinate directly with product management and UXR to organize research initiatives.
• Consistently advocate for, and reinforce the value of UX, while working closely with cross-functional team members to leverage our design process.
• Help source talent, interview, and review product design candidates to hire a world-class team.
• Be a key player in driving the vision of the product forward via constant collaboration with product leads and involvement in key strategy discussions.
• Provide leadership/mentorship to your team via 1:1s, design reviews, skill development, etc. — Explain career paths and help identify opportunities for growth / Define plans for achieving measurable goals.
• Improve the happiness and productivity of your team while contributing to, and helping grow our DE design team culture as a whole.
• Work with product management to identify and prioritize initiatives that ladder up to higher-level product team and company-level OKRs.
• Lead and facilitate cross-functional collaboration efforts via workshops and/or design sprints to uncover opportunities and solve for key initiatives.
• Work with product management and data teams to track the performance of new feature releases to better inform opportunities for continued iteration.
• Present design solutions to internal stakeholders in ways that deepen their understanding of how the design solves the user problem.

Requirements

• 6­+ years of product design experience designing for SaaS enterprise applications and/or educational products in an Agile development environment.
• 3+ years in a design leadership role managing direct reports.

• Exceptional leadership ability – You have a true passion for design with an appetite to continually inspire and challenge yourself and others, always a constant advocate for the user.

• Experience driving organizational change with cross-functional stakeholders.

• You are dedicated to continuous improvement and innovation, and consistently initiate discussions around potential areas of investment and new feature development.

• Ability to lead and mentor a team of 1-3 junior to mid-level Product Designers.

• Possess an understanding of the various product development methodologies (JTBD, Business mapping/Lean Canvas, etc.) and know when/how to integrate them into the design process.

• You appreciate the challenge of turning complex problems into simple and engaging experiences, while understanding the importance of designing for accessibility.

• You are a driven self-starter and collaborative design professional who can involve multiple cross-disciplinary team members to get to the best solution.

• Excellent communication, presentation, and interpersonal skills with the ability to clearly articulate solutions within the problem space.

• You are a team player with a positive outlook and an entrepreneurial spirit.
• Legal right to work in the United States.

Benefits

• Flexible PTO.
• Paid holidays include Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve.
• Generous parental leave.
• Annual education and professional development dollars.
• Major medical, vision, and dental (multiple choices).
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