Director of Product Design

Ellevation•Boston, MA

21h•Hybrid

About The Position

Ellevation Education is seeking a Director of Product Design to lead its design function and help achieve its goal of being the premier and most impactful ELD solution. This role reports to the Chief Product & Technology Officer and is part of the R&D Leadership team, functioning as an equal partner with Product and Engineering. The position is crucial in evolving Ellevation's offerings from point solutions to an integrated ELD platform, focusing on defining the user experience. The Director will manage a team of four product designers (with two open roles) supporting four product domains. The primary challenge is to unify compliance, instruction, and assessment tools into cohesive workflows that enhance classroom and district impact. This requires a strategic design leader capable of scaling design craft and influencing peers across R&D. The ideal candidate will have a strong ability to recruit, lead people, and possess hands-on judgment to set high standards. This includes nurturing talent, building belonging, and delivering results through others. The company utilizes a product culture organized into small, durable product teams that develop solutions in specific domains. These teams are cross-functional, with Product, Design, and Engineering working closely together. The focus is on outcomes, involving users early, validating hypotheses through research and prototyping, and iterating rapidly. Consistency across solutions is a critical goal. AI tools like Claude Cowork and Claude Code are expected to be integral to designers' workflows for rapid idea exploration, variation generation, concept stress-testing, and faster problem-to-prototype transitions. The role values strategic thinking, the ability to analyze problems from multiple angles, weigh tradeoffs, and articulate how solutions meet user and business needs. Accountability to outcomes, conducting experiments, adjusting strategy based on learnings, and delivering impactful products are highly valued.

Requirements

8+ years managing Product Designers.
Track record of building resilient teams, growing talent, and developing leaders.
Clear communicator who can articulate design decisions to non-design audiences and earn trust by framing trade-offs.
Ability to raise the bar on craft, give honest feedback, pair with designers on hard problems, and set a clear standard for what good looks like.
Bias to action: tests ideas in the world, iterates on what ships, doesn't get stuck debating.
AI-fluent: has a developed perspective on AI in the design craft, builds LLM-assisted workflows, and teaches others to do the same.
Designs with empathy for users unlike themselves and brings diverse perspectives into the process.

Nice To Haves

Enterprise SaaS builder background, with experience delivering for both key decision-makers and end-users.
Personally goes to the source on user research and brings the team along.
Thinks in systems and creates coherent experiences across workflows rather than isolated features.
Loves to win with great people.
Builds influence across functions, shares credit broadly, brings out the best in others.

Responsibilities

Lead the Product Design function at Ellevation.
Manage and mentor a team of product designers, fostering talent development and leadership.
Build and scale the design team through hiring and effective rituals.
Ensure designers actively participate in upstream shaping and not just downstream delivery.
Partner with the Principal Product Designer to set and achieve craft, systems, and AI fluency goals for the team.
Collaborate with R&D Leadership to calibrate performance and resource allocation across Product, Engineering, and Design.
Grow influence across the organization.
Define and implement healthy collaboration patterns with Product and Engineering leadership from shaping through delivery.
Drive adoption of Backpack as a competitive advantage.
Develop rapport with direct reports, R&D leadership peers, and key commercial stakeholders.
Understand the company's operating rhythm, team rituals, and planning cadence.
Spend time with customers to understand their use of Ellevation products.
Develop a deep understanding of the feedback loops within the product.
Understand Ellevation's approach to recruiting and begin sourcing for open roles.
Establish high-trust relationships with other R&D and functional leaders.
Assess the current state of Backpack and the craft bar across the team.
Raise the bar on design craft, provide honest feedback, and pair with designers on challenging problems.
Test ideas in the world, iterate on shipped products, and avoid getting stuck in debates.
Build LLM-assisted workflows and teach others to do the same.
Design with empathy for users unlike themselves and incorporate diverse perspectives into the design process.
Create coherent experiences across workflows rather than isolated features.
Build influence across functions, share credit, and bring out the best in others.