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. We’re building a new type of learning institution that provides high-quality instructional and practice resources that empower learners and the teachers who support them. Whether they’re studying metaphors, mitosis, Marbury v. Madison, or multivariable calculus, we want to offer students (and teachers) the resources to realize that they can learn anything.
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
We are looking for a Senior Design Manager who can help lead part of our product design team. You will oversee multiple products that may include our student, teacher, or school district experiences, content platform, generalized testing platform, our design system, or other areas, knowing that our org and needs may at times be fluid.
Your responsibilities will include the following:
- Oversee a team (or multiple teams) of more complex bodies of work as a seasoned manager / leader. You will be managing a small group of IC designers, providing project feedback, career guidance and mentorship, and creating opportunities for your team to do their best work.
- Support the product experiences that your team(s) contribute to. You will partner with your peers in product management, engineering, content etc. to define a shared strategy and roadmap. While you may be expected to be hands-on if needed, you largely own and take responsibility for your areas of the product and help deliver “wow”.
- Participate in hiring for the Design team. As part of Design leadership, you will help determine what roles and responsibilities are needed and help source, interview, and onboard new talented teammates to help us deliver on our mission.
WHAT YOU BRING
Being a Senior Design Manager at Khan Academy means you have a track record of:
- Managing and leading design strategy for complex initiatives, and growing the designers working on them
- Leading through ambiguity, exercising strong soft skills to build alignment with management peers and senior leadership around a vision and approach
- Demonstrating fluency across the design process — from problem definition to high fidelity design — with deep passion and expertise in at least 2-3 of these areas:
- Interaction design and information architecture
- Visual design
- Accessibility and inclusive design
- Qualitative and quantitative research
- Service design processes and frameworks
- Design thinking and workshop facilitation
- Design program management
- Using systems-level thinking to identify product experience opportunities that create impact across the organization
- Developing a deep understanding of current product surface area and design systems/patterns, and capable of guiding your design team to use these in practice
- Partnering with design leadership peers to help shape design team management
- Incorporating advancements in the field of product design to level up the skills and practices of our team
Qualities we value in design leaders:
- Introspective, mature, and have excellent communication skills
- Invested in growing and mentoring other designers as well as collaborating with your peers and other disciplines, such as engineering and product management
- 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
- Passionate about education and designing engaging learning experiences, deeply curious about how and why people learn
- Experience in educational technology (edtech) or experience teaching is a plus
PERKS AND BENEFITS
We may be a non-profit, but we reward our talented team extremely well!
- Competitive salaries and annual bonuses
- 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 and 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
THE TEAM
We are a diverse and close-knit group of Designers, 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.
Want to know more about us?
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.
