Senior Manager, Product Design

About Niche

Niche is the leader in school search. Our mission is to make researching and enrolling in schools easy, transparent, and free. With in-depth profiles on every school and college in America, 140 million reviews and ratings, and powerful search tools, we help millions of people find the right school for them. We also help thousands of schools recruit more best-fit students, by highlighting what makes them great and making it easier to visit and apply.

Niche is all about finding where you belong, and that mission inspires how we operate every day. We want Niche to be a place where people truly enjoy working and can thrive professionally.

About The Role

Every year, millions of families start the school search process. Students wade through a sea of information and decisions to make, and unfortunately access to help hasn’t changed much in decades: it’s not super clear what your options are, and you might not feel confident that a school is right for you, or think you’ll be able to afford it.

Niche is on a mission to make researching and enrolling in schools easy, transparent, and free. Students need support choosing a school and paying for their education, schools want to find students who will thrive on their campus, and families need help supporting their students every step of the way. Niche helps ensure that it’s not just students in-the-know who get enrolled and can afford to attend.

As a Senior Product Design Manager, you’ll lead our designers that are responsible for student lead generation (Core Business) and partner school success (Shared Platform). You will lead design across a complementary and diverse set of features that power the revenue center of the company: traffic growth, new account creation, school discovery, list building, and how leads are both created and sold. These are critical touchpoints that connect students with schools through Niche, and how Niche helps schools achieve their enrollment goals.

You will be part of a vibrant, rigorous and thoughtful Product Design and Research team, while addressing real problems that affect the earning potential of millions of people. We're looking for someone who can lead through complexity, scale design quality and strategy, and elevate how we work as a team. We are in the early stages of an exciting business transformation, with the opportunity for you to truly make an impact.

What You Will Do

• Lead and inspire two teams of product designers working across multiple pods in a fast-paced, high-growth environment
• Shape design strategy both on and off platform, including SEO, lifecycle email, SMS, etc.
• Deeply understand how we package and sell the leads the Core Business pod helps generate, bring internal tools to life with the Shared Platform pod that make our customer-facing teams more effective at generating revenue
• Ensure that our efforts across teams fit together to invent and deliver coherent product experiences, from design system details, to workflows, all the way up to mental models
• Mentor and grow your reports, get hands-on as needed, providing the expertise, direction, and support needed for high performance and major impact
• Establish strong partnerships with Product and Engineering teams, fostering a sense of joint ownership and effective collaboration, and work closely with our partners in GTM
• Contribute to the product strategy and roadmap, working with Engineering and Product partners, and create the design vision for your domain, aligning it with our business strategy, advocating for user outcomes and a world-class user experience
• Bonus if you can travel for in-person collaboration sessions and team building events 2-4 times per year

During the First Month:

• Learn about Niche by meeting with various team members to learn more about our company through our Onboarding meetings
• Meet and get familiar with Product Design and Research, Engineering, Product Management, and GTM partners, understand current practices and collaboration workflows
• Understand the company's business model, how we make money, how student leads are generated and how school partner success is defined and measured
• Get familiar with existing design systems, tools, and processes; conduct initial assessment of design quality standards and team capabilities across the Core Business and Shared Platform pods

Within 3 Months:

• Understand student and school partner user journeys across web, mobile, email, and SMS touchpoints, and how design decisions help drive business impact
• Lead your first major design initiative from strategy to implementation, establishing your design vision and roadmap for both teams
• Begin implementing new design processes and practices that elevate design quality and craft
• Develop strong working relationships with Product and Engineering counterparts, establishing joint ownership and effective collaboration rhythms

Within 6 Months:

• Successfully manage and coordinate design work across multiple concurrent projects while maintaining high quality and strategic alignment
• Help establish design system improvements and cross-platform consistency that makes teams more efficient and user experiences more cohesive
• Shape AI-first product experiences through strategic design leadership, demonstrating measurable impact on user acquisition, activation, and revenue generation
• Lead strategic design initiatives that influence broader product strategy and innovation direction; mentor your reports on design leadership and operational excellence

Within 12 Months:

• Establish yourself as a design authority with teams proactively seeking your strategic guidance on user-centered decisions and complex design challenges
• Drive significant improvements in student engagement and stickiness, lead generation quality, conversion rates, and school partner success through design-led initiatives
• Play a critical role in building a robust design culture with measurable improvements in design quality, team performance, and cross-functional collaboration
• Develop and execute design strategies that directly support Niche's mission of making school search more accessible, transparent, and equitable for millions of families while achieving business growth targets

What We Are Looking For

• 10+ years experience in product design, with 3+ years of successfully building and managing design teams; great opportunity for a solid leader and operator who wants to learn how to help an entire org navigate
• Experience shaping AI-first products, including but not limited to LLM-powered features
• Proven ability to connect design strategy to business impact, especially in content design, search/discovery, or user acquisition and activation
• Experience partnering successfully with Product Management, Engineering, and Marketing/Brand; launches go well because you shepherd them across the finish line
• Able to uphold a high standard of complex design quality and craftsmanship in your team’s work; you sweat the details, the UX writing, and the brand guidelines
• Able to think in systems, lead designers to transform consumer experiences and orchestrate across multiple surfaces, from mobile apps to web, email, and beyond
• Deep curiosity about motivations and barriers to people pursuing education, particularly higher ed; prior experience in education or edtech is helpful but not required; we’ve found that leaders with strong design skills in technically complex areas can bring fresh perspectives to create great experiences for our users
• Bonus if you have experience with multi-sided marketplaces, or SaaS products that are heavy on content and data 
• Bonus if you’ve launched products for Gen Z/Alpha and understand how young people use the internet

Compensation 

Our national target base salary range is $148,560-$185,700, plus participation in our Annual Bonus and Stock Option Program. Base compensation will be commensurate with experience and skills.

At Niche, our Total Rewards Philosophy is centered around creating a workplace environment that attracts, motivates, and retains top talent by providing a comprehensive and competitive rewards package.  This philosophy is built on the principles of performance-based compensation, best-in-class benefits and work-life balance, and employee well-being.

Interview Process

Candidate experience is a top priority for our talent and hiring teams.  We believe in providing a transparent, authentic and comprehensive interview process where you have the opportunity to learn about us while we get to know you and your experience.  The interview process is outlined here:

• Phone Screen with Talent Acquisition Partner - 30 Minutes

• Video Interview with Hiring Manager - 45 Minutes

• Case Study Presentation - 60 Minutes

• Functional Panel (Product Design)- 30 Minutes 

• Cross Functional Panel (PM + Eng.) - 30 Minutes

Why Niche?

• We are a fully flexible workforce empowering our employees to choose to work remotely, in our Pittsburgh office or whatever combination suits you
• Full time, salaried position with competitive compensation in a fast-growing company
• Best-in-class 100% paid employee health plan, including vision and dental and supplemental coverage
• Flexible Paid Time Off Policy
• Stipend that allows you to build your work from home office in a style and function that suits your personal preferences
• Parental leave for all employees (12 weeks fully paid) in addition to short term disability for birthing parents
• Meaningful 401(k) with employer match
• Your ideas and work will make an immediate impact on our company and millions of users
• You will join a team that cares about you, our mission, our work - and celebrates our wins together!

Niche will only employ those who are legally authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship now or in the future for this opening.  

We are currently hiring in states where we currently have employees: AZ, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MO, NE, NV, NH, NJ, NY, NC, OH, OK, OR, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, WA, DC, WV.

Candidates only.  No recruiters or agencies, please. Sorry, we do not offer relocation assistance.

Niche is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering an inclusive, innovative environment with the best employees. Therefore, we provide employment opportunities without regard to age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or any other protected status in accordance with applicable law.

All interviews are being held remotely. If there are preparations we can make to help ensure you have a comfortable and positive interview experience, please let us know.