UX Product Designer (Solutions Lead)

Transcend•New York City, NY

5d•Remote

About The Position

Transcend is a national nonprofit that helps communities reimagine and redesign schools so every young person can thrive in a rapidly changing world. Across the country, communities are recognizing that classrooms built for the industrial age aren’t preparing learners for what’s next. Instead, schools must be designed for continuous evolution: relevant, resilient, and ready for the future. For more than a decade, Transcend has partnered with school and system leaders to build the capacity for bold, lasting change—change led by the people who live it every day. We’ve worked with nearly 500 schools and 200 districts serving over 225,000 students in 35 states. Together, we’ve seen what’s possible when communities lead redesign with proven methods, insight, and support. From that work, we develop and share tools, research, and models that help schools everywhere make the leap to extraordinary learning—for every child, in every community. For more information, visit our website or follow us on LinkedIn . Transcend’s Products Team Transcend’s Products Team compiles and stewards a robust set of resources and tools that power our partnerships with school communities. This includes: Tools & resources that support the content of innovative school design, from primers on cultivating agency in early learning to the implementation supports that enable an evidence-based model to be adopted or adapted into a school. Tools & resources that support the process of innovative school design, from guidance and templates for annual planning to tools for launching a design team to curated examples of strong outputs at each step of the journey. Technology-enabled tools that enable more effective and accessible engagement with content and process supports for innovative school design. Experimenting with AI-enabled tools that make our tools, resources, and processes more effective, accessible, and improve the user experience. We believe products and technology have the potential to significantly amplify the impact of our work by increasing access to our resources and empowering our partners with innovative tools. The Opportunity We’re hiring a UX Product Designer (Solution Lead) to be the lead (and inaugural!) designer on our Products Team. This is a hybrid role for someone who thrives at identifying, solving for and managing unaddressed user needs and loves tackling them end to end at the intersection of solution design, user experience (UX), user interface (UI), and product thinking. In this role, you will help formulate and manage solutions and shape the overall experience and detailed interface for a suite of largely technology-enabled tools, all while translating real-world school design workflows into intuitive digital and non-digital products. You will work closely with product leadership, engineering contractors, cross-functional partners, key stakeholders and users to take products from early concepts and prototypes through discovery, iteration, and launch. In doing so, you’ll balance big-picture systems thinking, design, and meticulous attention to interaction detail—making sure our tools feel intuitive, clear, coherent, and delightful for educators and community members doing complex design work.

Requirements

You’ve led end-to-end product design and product management, from early research and discovery through concepting, prototyping, iteration, and launch—often in complex or ambiguous problem spaces.
You translate real-world services, processes, and workflows into intuitive, elegant digital tools and platforms that make people’s lives easier.
You define the strategic approach to a problem while crafting every interaction and detail with care—balancing big-picture thinking with thoughtful execution.
You collaborate closely with engineers and product leaders in iterative cycles, continuously improving products through shared learning and feedback.
You thrive in cross-functional settings, bringing structure to uncertainty and momentum to ideas that are still taking shape.
You’ve incorporated AI into your workflows in a way that supports strong execution.
You design with users at the center—thinking holistically about flow, navigation, and information architecture to create intuitive and meaningful experiences.
You can take an ambiguous, high level concept or approach and flesh it out in ways that bring it to life; transforming it into clear, concrete, and tangible solutions.
You bring strong visual design craft and information architecture skills —using layout, intuitive labeling, typography, hierarchy, workflow and accessibility principles to create polished, engaging interfaces.
You blend UX, product strategy, and product management, breaking down complex problems, mapping logic, and defining requirements that prioritize user value and impact in ways that drive product-market fit.
You conduct user research and field discovery, identifying patterns and translating insights into clear, actionable design direction.
You translate customer workflows into user journeys, wireframes, and interaction models.
You develop wireframes and present them to stakeholders for walkthroughs and validation.
You can work closely with Product & Engineering teams to identify, capture, and document requirements directly from customers and stakeholders.
Incorporate user feedback rapidly into refined UX designs aligned with our strategy and roadmap.
You’re fluent with modern design and collaboration tools like Figma, Miro, and prototyping software to model, test, and communicate your work.
You’re a strong writer and storyteller, able to explain design rationale clearly and bring others along through compelling visuals and narratives.
You manage multiple workstreams and timelines with ease, bringing order, focus, and follow-through to dynamic, fast-moving environments.
A commitment to Transcend’s mission of transforming education, with a passion for creating innovative school models that generate unprecedented results for all students.
Eagerness to embrace and live into Transcend’s core values in how you show up and work.
You lead with a service-oriented mindset, designing with communities rather than for them and holding user voices at the core.
You’re curious and proactive, rolling up your sleeves to figure things out, navigate ambiguity, and move ideas into action.
You are persistent in your pursuit of solutions, don’t easily give up and keep at it until you find a way to address the need at hand.
You value iteration over perfection, testing, learning, and refining to reach clarity and impact on the other side of complexity.
You’re comfortable zooming between big-picture systems thinking and detailed execution, knowing when to step back and when to dive deep.
You’re energized by collaboration, working across disciplines and with diverse partners to build shared success.
You bring calm and clarity amid uncertainty, staying grounded and focused even when the path forward isn’t fully mapped.
You’re energized by the potential of AI-enabled work—curious, open, and excited to experiment with new tools and techniques as the space evolves.