Senior Product Designer

Over the last 13 years, Ellevation Education has built a thriving business serving the administrators, teachers, and specialists who support English Learners (ELL) at public schools across the US. Today, over 1,800 school districts use our software to manage their EL programs. We are a successful, rapidly growing business with a real mission—helping ELLs achieve their highest aspirations.

We are growing our Product Design organization to support our strategic intent of creating integrated value across our suite of products; Flagship, Strategies, and the soon-to-be-released Assessment. We are developing deeper sophistication in how we weave together the capabilities of these products to deliver compounding value and meet our users’ jobs-to-be-done. This role will sit at the crux of this objective and will have a key voice in these strategic product design conversations.

Design and user experience are at the core of realizing these goals and we are looking for an experienced Senior Product Designer to join our team. This is a hands-on role where you will work with multiple  agile teams of Product Managers, Engineers, and Instructional Designers to help shape the product direction, craft experiments, validate ideas, and iterate to deliver best-in-class user experiences that our customers love. 

You will be responsible for working holistically across the UX stack conducting user research, informing product discovery, and contributing iteratively to delivery in order to drive impact for our business. You will develop a deep understanding of the unique needs of our users in this domain, support the development of hypotheses to test, and leverage our design system -- Backpack -- to drive results. 

To learn more about our products please visit: https://ellevationeducation.com/product-guide

Product Culture

We are organized into small product teams that focus on key problems to solve in the context of their specific domain. We focus on outcomes over output. Our teams are empowered to research, prototype, and gather feedback from users -- both internal and external -- to validate hypotheses. We engage users early and rapidly iterate so that the end result is a high-confidence, high-value product. We aim to foster an environment where we have the runway to experiment and learn from failure while tackling tricky challenges.

Our teams are cross-functional in that they are made up of members of Product (Product Management, Product Design, Education Solutions) and members of Engineering. Product and Engineering work hand-in-hand together—we call ourselves DevPro, and in fact, we rarely meet in isolation.  

We value Product Designers that are able to think like Product Managers in their ability to look at solving problems from multiple angles and considering the merits and tradeoffs of different approaches. As Product Strategy evolves, you will need to effectively communicate about your understanding of problems and how your solution meets the needs of the users and the business. 

We celebrate being accountable to outcomes, which means signing up to pursue that vision by knocking down obstacles that get in the way.  This looks like conducting experiments which throw off learnings, adjusting strategy based on those learnings, and delivering products to end-users that change behavior and drive real value for the business. 

• 1 month - Build a clear picture of the strategic context and challenges facing Ellevation and understand how that applies to the Flagship product domain. Build relationships across the UX team and understand team culture and rituals. Develop rapport with key cross-functional collaborators. Complete company onboarding. 
• 3 months - Continue building trust and shared goals with key collaborators. Be an active member of the UX Team. Contribute to Flagship initiatives through participating in discovery, designing workflows and forming an understanding of how to deliver longer term outcomes. 
• 6 months - Own the design of your product areas, work with your product managers to define short-term and long-term objectives, and continuously learn and deliver results based on those learnings. Leverage the trust you have built to promote design thinking and best practices within your team. Strengthen relationships with other members of R&D team to enable cross-functional work. Begin to develop an understanding of products outside of Flagship and a perspective on the opportunities for closer integration. 
• 12 months - Use the expertise and context you have built over the past year to play a lead role in the overall product strategy and direction. Actively contribute to the development and adoption of Backpack, our design system. Influence and evangelize our design culture, values, processes, and vision to the greater organization.

• You have 5 years of relevant Product Design experience in a B2B SaaS or adjacent environment, and experience with analytics products. 
• You are experimental and curious; you love to test ideas, learn quickly, fail fast, and iterate.
• You have led user research and usability testing with diverse audiences in the field
• You have experience delivering solutions in an Enterprise SaaS environment that create value for key decision makers while also driving adoption for end-users. 
• You are a strong cross-functional partner who drives alignment, weighs tradeoffs, and delivers product solutions in an agile environment.
• You demonstrate commitment to mentoring others and contributing to a culture of design excellence, feedback, and continuous learning. You are a systems thinker who drives consistency and reuse  of patterns and connections across our products, as well as our collaborative processes. And contributes to our evolving design system. 
• You have excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to build alignment with cross-functional teams. 

• This is a primarily remote position, but we are looking for candidates based close to our Boston office or open to traveling.

Are you passionate about growth and eager to learn? Do you possess a drive to excel and make a difference? Ellevation values diversity, creativity, and a hunger for new perspectives. While our job postings outline preferred qualifications, we believe that talent comes in various forms. If you're motivated, adaptable, and ready to contribute, we encourage you to apply. We welcome candidates from all backgrounds and experiences, recognizing that unique skills and fresh outlooks are invaluable assets to our team. Don't let a checklist of requirements deter you – take the leap, and let's explore the possibilities together!

About Us:

At Ellevation, we develop world-class software to help educators serve the fastest growing population of K-12 students: English Learners (ELs). Ellevation helps school districts transform their Multilingual Learner programs and ensure all students can achieve their highest aspirations. Our product suite includes a best-in-class data and instructional planning platform, resources to build teacher capacity, and student-facing programs to teach academic language.

We are a fast-growing, mission-driven technology company partnering with over 1,500 school districts and more than 2 million current and former English Learners. Over the next five years, we plan to double the number of ELs we serve and drive measurable outcomes for students. Ellevation merged with Curriculum Associates in 2021 to accelerate impact for Multilingual Learners. Our company continues to operate independently and is well-capitalized to support our ambitious social and financial objectives.

Why Ellevation?

In addition to our great benefits and competitive salaries, here are some things that make us unique:

+ Mission-driven organization where team members are empowered to make a significant impact

+ Opportunities to join Employee Resource Groups and support building a culture of belonging 

+ Professional development and growth opportunities

+ Company and team offsites in various cities across the United States

+ Collaborative workspace in the heart of Boston - a stone's throw from many central T stops (Downtown Crossing, Government Center, and Aquarium). Free snacks, beverages, and local organic fruit provided

+ Remote and in-person engagement opportunities, including happy hours, themed events, and competitions 

+ Remote and in-person wellness programming to support team’s mental and physical wellbeing

Learn more about our team in our Culture Deck.

Here at Ellevation, we champion diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging. We strive to build a team that reflects the diverse communities we serve. We are committed to creating an inclusive workplace that promotes and values a range of ideas and opinions. 

We believe in building a culture where productivity can flourish, one that is empathetic, respectful, and inclusive. We are proud to have been recognized in prior years as “Best Tech Workplace for Diversity” by the Timmy Awards for investing in training around inclusive behaviors, microaggressions, unconscious bias, and fostering a culture of continuous learning and feedback across the company. We are encouraged by our progress, but there’s more work to be done.

Benefits – Benefits eligible employees (and qualifying dependents) are covered by medical, dental, vision, and basic life insurance. Employees can enroll in our company's 401(k) retirement plan and receive an employer match up to 50% on the first 7% of your contribution, with pre-tax and Roth options. Employees have access to flexible paid time off for vacations, sick and disability policy, additional 10 paid company holidays, 2 floating holidays and a winter office closure between Christmas and New Year's. In addition, we provide a generous parental leave benefit, back-up childcare or eldercare, and a variety of other perks to support the health and well-being of our employees.

Additional Information: Ellevation operates under Curriculum Associates, LLC, an Equal Opportunity Employer. Curriculum Associates, LLC will not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, creed, religion, sex, national origin, age, marital status, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, genetic information, or any other category protected by law. Curriculum Associates, LLC will grant employment, without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, national origin, age, marital status, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, genetic information, or any other category protected by law. Such action shall include, but not be limited to, the following: employment, upgrading, demotion, transfer, recruitment or recruitment advertising, layoff or termination, rates of pay or other forms of compensation.

Our company uses E-Verify to confirm the employment eligibility of all newly hired employees. To learn more about E-Verify, including your rights and responsibilities, please visit www.uscis.gov/e-verify. 

Information that you provide when applying for employment with Curriculum Associates, LLC may be subject to the California Privacy Rights Act. Click here for more information about our data-collection practices and your rights related to that data.

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