ThinkCERCA is an education technology startup that helps educators teach critical thinking through argumentative writing. Named a "game-changing" education t tool by Bill Gates, our product is proven to help students achieve two years of academic growth per year. We're on a mission to make these results a reality for all students across the country

To help us get there, we’re looking for a “live-in-the-wild” Director of Product Design to drive a team towards a vision of our application that is as delightful in its user experience as it as optimized for teacher and student results. This position will work with the entire organization, including the CEO, who is a former educator, to define and execute against a strategic UI/UX roadmap that will produce the best literacy platform and partnership offering in the industry.

We require an experienced designer and manager of designers to partner with the technology and product team on our educational platform. Someone who is passionate about developing design strategies based off of the insights of real users and research and has the design skills to turn these insights into a beautifully designed product. We’ll look to you to drive strong designs and turn challenging workflows into simple, usable, and elegant experiences.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage UI/UX and visual designers to create preliminary design concepts and work with development to implement and iterate.   
• Develop and drive product design vision based on business objectives, competitive landscape, and resource constraints.
• Work collaboratively with stakeholders to develop this strategy into an achievable UI roadmap.
• Become the “who, why and what” of ThinkCERCA customers through research, data analysis, user experience analysis and testing, competitive research, surveys, school visits and other tools.
• Critically evaluate information gathered from multiple sources, reconcile conflicts, decompose high-level information into details, abstract up from low-level information to a general understanding, and distinguish user requests from the underlying true needs.
• Collaborate with developers and subject matter experts to establish the technical vision and analyze tradeoffs between usability and performance needs.
• Run beta and pilot programs with early-stage products and samples
• Act as a leader within the company and work with your peers across the company to execute the overall company vision
• Successfully engage in multiple initiatives simultaneously

Required Skills & Experience

• Track record of success in fast-paced entrepreneurial organizations.
• Collaborative approaches to drive effective solutions.  
• Strong influencing skills – able to manage without authority and to influence those who are not direct reports across all levels of the organization internal and external to ThinkCERCA
• User-focused instincts for product design and development
• Innovative problem-solver who can find ambiguous problems and turn them into clear solutions.
• Proven leader who can drive results in collaborative, cross-functional environments with little instruction or oversight.
• Clear communicator (both written and oral) comfortable in front of all team members.
• Demonstrated ability to work with large quantities of information and to deliver data driven solutions
• Minimum 5 years of experience as a senior designer in consumer marketing or consumer technology companies.
• People focused design-mentality with an ability to make strategy come to life
• Ability to provide samples of work that show creative UX solutions, strong visual user-centered experience design and solid user flows
• Resource and team management experience
• Knowledge of education and/or education technology, highly desired
• Demonstrated success defining and launching game-changing products