Ellevation Education · 11 hours ago
Principal Product Designer
Boston, MA
Full-time
Hybrid
Lead/Staff
$160K/yr - $220K/yr
10+ years expEllevation is a fast-growing, mission-driven technology company focused on helping educators serve English Learners (ELs). They are seeking an experienced Principal Product Designer to lead UX strategy and enhance their design systems, collaborating closely with product and engineering teams to create cohesive user experiences.
E-LearningEducationLanguage LearningSoftware
Responsibilities
Build a clear picture of the strategic context facing Ellevation and what role design plays
Audit Backpack's current state and identify gaps
Build relationships with Design team as well as Product and Engineering leadership
Understand team rituals, skill levels, and workflow patterns across designers
Own the roadmap for Backpack's evolution
Ship improvements that address high-priority gaps
Establish yourself as the go-to for cross-team UX decisions
Begin identifying opportunities to raise craft and improve design workflows across the team
Backpack is actively enabling integrated experiences—teams are using it to ship faster and more consistently
You're shaping UX strategy for initiatives that span multiple teams
You're mentoring designers and elevating the quality bar through feedback and process improvements
You've materially improved how design works at Ellevation
Backpack is a competitive advantage
You're a trusted voice in R&D strategy conversations, and the team's craft and AI fluency have measurably improved under your influence
Qualification
Required
10+ years of demonstrated success as a cross-functional designer in a B2B SaaS or adjacent environment
You've owned or significantly shaped a design system and understand the tradeoffs between flexibility and consistency
You're comfortable working autonomously, setting your own direction, and influencing without authority
You're AI-fluent—using LLM-assisted prototyping to accelerate ideation and validation, freeing you to focus on strategy and systems thinking
You're accountable to outcomes, not just output. You run experiments, learn from what ships, and measure success by whether the product changes behavior
You've led user research and usability testing in the field, and you don't design from assumptions
You seek feedback and confront hard truths. Craft is a practice, not a credential—you iterate with users, engineers, and data
You bring diverse perspectives into your process and design with empathy for users unlike yourself
You think in systems, creating coherent experiences across workflows rather than isolated features
You elevate others through feedback, pairing, and raising the bar on what good looks like
Preferred
Boston-area preferred
New England-area employees will be expected to travel to Boston for 2 days a month 10x a year
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.
Company
Ellevation Education
Ellevation is the only web-based software platform specifically designed for EL educators and the English learners they serve.
51-200 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Ellevation Education has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2020 (2)
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageTotal Funding
$37.45MKey Investors
Reach CapitalEmerson Collective
2021-07-30Acquired
2020-03-25Series Unknown· $15.2M
2018-01-10Series B· $10M
Leadership Team
Jordan Meranus
Co-Founder
Recent News
Company data provided by crunchbase