Principal UX Designer

Zearn•New York, NY

4d•$150,000 - $180,000•Remote

About The Position

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.

Requirements

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.

Responsibilities

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.
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.
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.
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.