Ready to change the world? Named a "game-changing" education 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.ThinkCERCA is a Chicago-based education technology startup that helps educators teach critical thinking through argumentative writing.

The education space is in the midst of change, with new standards and assessments rolling out across the nation. It's our job to help customers make sense of this landscape. As such, we're looking for a Lead User Experience Designer who can help us translate complex learning and teaching concepts into our platform for our audience: teachers, administrators, students, and parents.

This role will be responsible for bringing design concepts to life by creating forward-thinking designs for our web-based learning platform. You will be an expert on all things interaction, experience and information architecture for the team. You will work closely with a multi-disciplinary agile R&D team to define, design and test product and digital service features with the goal of creating valuable and delightful experiences for our users. This position will work collaboratively with our Design Researcher and Visual and UX Designers, as well as, the strategy, product, development, and marketing teams to deliver the collective vision.

Responsibilities may include, but are not limited to:

60% - Design execution (primary)

• Identify and frame user-centered problems effectively
• Create low- to high-fidelity sketches to communicate concepts and ideas
• Collaborate with product and engineering teams throughout the agile planning, design and development process to deliver released product that meets design intent
• Participate in and facilitate design research for concepts and prototypes you create 
• Collaborate with your team to ensure product features meet UX quality standards for workflow, interaction design and microcopy

20% - Design Strategy and planning

• Build a deep understanding of the education landscape and learning experience design
• Partner with product & engineering leads help define how initiative strategy impacts your agile team and its projects.
• Draft UX workflows that can guide detailed Agile design and development.
• Ensure design work is conducted using behavioral data focused on user-centered product success metrics.
• Facilitate product and engineering teams in building deep empathy for our users

20% - Leadership

• Demonstrate and promote best practices for working with product owners and agile teams
• Participate in team-wide initiatives to improve design processes and practices

Education, Experience, & Skills Required

• Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, or related disciplines
• Minimum of 5-7 years of experience in UX design
• Solid capability in UX creative and design techniques
• Experience facilitating, summarizing and acting on take-aways from user research
• Understand how to work within an agile development process for the design, development, and delivery of software
• Outstanding verbal and written communication skills
• Ability to travel when needed for design research
• Eager to work at a startup that's having a significant impact in schools throughout America

Behaviors & Abilities Required

• Skillful at influencing colleagues and project direction without direct authority
• Capable of managing ambiguity, change, and uncertainty, focusing on information at hand and making good and timely decisions to effectively keep work moving forward;
• Takes appropriate risks through cost/benefit analysis of various alternatives
• Adaptable to ever-changing needs of a dynamic business with flexibility and willingness to jump into any aspect of work to help the team achieve results
• Enthusiasm for learning new problem spaces, with an ability to deeply immerse in a problem, rapidly develop an understanding, and produce actionable insights.
• Thrives in a highly collaborative, cross-functional environment