Principal, UX Design

Summit K12•Austin, TX

About The Position

The Principal, UX Design owns Summit K12’s product-experience architecture, UX standards, design system, and proportionate validation approach. This hands-on functional leadership role is accountable for coherent, accessible experiences across the product portfolio and personally delivers complex and consequential design work. The Principal directs UX design practice through standards, judgment, implementation follow-through, and cross-functional partnership, while the UX Design Lead independently owns assigned experiences. The role does not require a separate design management layer or routine approvals. Product Managers retain responsibility for product priorities, requirements, acceptance, and outcomes. The Principal defines experience architecture and standards across student, educator, administrator, and applicable family workflows; governs and evolves shared design-system components and accessibility standards; sets lean, risk-proportionate research and usability practices; and ensures implementation-ready design specifications and post-release signals inform improvements. The role also partners with Product leadership on design demand and capacity tradeoffs, establishes approved AI-supported design methods with human verification, and works directly with cross-functional partners without unnecessary review gates.

Requirements

7+ years in product or UX design, or equivalent demonstrated capability, including complex production workflows.
Expertise in interaction design, information architecture, research, design systems, accessibility, and prototyping.
Proven ability to lead through hands-on judgment, clear standards, and cross-functional influence.
Ability to make defensible tradeoffs and independently deliver complex experience work.
Practical fluency with Figma or equivalent production design tools.
Experience using measured usability and product outcomes to guide design priorities.
Responsible use and validation of AI-enabled design workflows.

Nice To Haves

K-12 EdTech, learning-platform, assessment, reporting, or complex SaaS experience.
Experience modernizing legacy platforms and designing for multilingual or varied-accessibility users.

Responsibilities

Define coherent navigation, information architecture, interaction patterns, and experience principles across student, educator, administrator, and applicable family workflows.
Personally design and resolve complex or consequential cross-product experiences using working prototypes and explicit decisions.
Make recurring UX debt visible and recommend evidence-based improvements to accountable Product leaders.
Own governance, documentation, versioning, and evolution of shared components, patterns, UX writing conventions, and accessible interaction standards.
Collaborate with the UX Design Lead on reusable patterns while keeping routine experience decisions close to assigned work.
Work with Engineering and QA to verify material accessibility and experience expectations in production.
Set lean, risk-proportionate research and usability standards; personally execute consequential validation and interpret user evidence.
Deliver complete implementation-ready specifications for owned work, including critical states, behaviors, accessibility, and edge cases.
Resolve systemic implementation-fidelity gaps and ensure relevant post-release signals inform improvements.
Partner with Product leadership to sequence design demand, make capacity tradeoffs visible, and preserve clear product decision rights.
Establish approved AI-supported methods for prototypes, research synthesis, documentation, and design checks, with human verification.
Work directly with PMs, Engineering, Academic, Creative Studio, and customer-facing functions without introducing unnecessary review gates.