Job Description

About the Role:

At XQ Institute, we are transforming high school education with design-driven solutions that empower educators, students, and communities. As our Principal Product Designer, you will provide visionary design leadership and strategic direction across our digital product portfolio. In this role, you’ll not only create innovative and intuitive user experiences but also mentor and inspire design teams, drive cross-functional collaboration, and elevate our design practice to set new industry standards. Your work will influence both the immediate product roadmap and long-term strategic initiatives, ensuring our solutions are innovative, scalable, and aligned with our mission of educational transformation.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design Vision & Strategy: Develop and drive the overarching design vision and strategic roadmap for our digital products. Align design initiatives with business objectives and brand identity to create transformative educational tools.
• Leadership & Mentorship: Provide design leadership by mentoring and guiding junior designers and cross-functional teams. Foster a culture of creative problem-solving, continuous improvement, and excellence in design execution.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Act as a key design partner with product managers, engineers, researchers, and executive leadership. Contribute your expertise to strategic planning sessions and ensure design excellence throughout the product development lifecycle.
• Participatory & Inclusive Design: Champion participatory design methodologies by engaging educators, students, and community stakeholders early in the design process. Leverage diverse perspectives to inform and validate innovative design solutions.
• High-Fidelity Design & Prototyping: Oversee the creation of high-fidelity prototypes, detailed user flows, wireframes, and interactive models. Ensure that every design is adaptable, sustainable, and capable of addressing complex, real-world challenges.
• Thought Leadership: Represent design thinking at the executive level by sharing insights on emerging trends, best practices, and innovative methodologies. Drive continuous evolution of our design process and influence organizational strategy.
• Process Innovation: Lead initiatives to refine and enhance design processes, integrating systems thinking and agile methodologies. Ensure that our design practices are both scalable and responsive to changing market needs.
• Impact & Performance: Utilize data-driven insights and user feedback to iterate and optimize design solutions. Measure the impact of design innovations on product performance and overall user satisfaction.
• Cultural Influence and Team Engagement: Shape the organizational culture by promoting values of innovation, inclusivity, and collaboration. Influence the design thinking across the organization and foster an environment that values creative problem-solving and user-focused design.

Qualifications

• Experience: 8+ years in product design with a proven track record of leading design teams and delivering high-impact, visually compelling digital products.
• Design Expertise: Advanced proficiency in visual, interaction, and prototyping tools (e.g., Figma, Adobe Creative Suite, Webflow, Framer). Demonstrated ability to create engaging, user-centric designs across multiple platforms.
• Leadership Skills: Experience in strategic design leadership, mentoring, and influencing cross-functional teams. Strong track record of setting design direction and executing complex projects in fast-paced environments.
• Collaboration & Communication: Exceptional communication skills with the ability to articulate design vision and strategy to diverse audiences, including executive stakeholders and community partners.
• Methodologies: Deep understanding of participatory design, systems thinking, and agile methodologies. Proven ability to integrate user insights into innovative design solutions.
• Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Design, Product Design, Service Design, Industrial Design, HCI, Interaction Design, or a related field.

Nice to haves

• Experience contributing to open-source projects or designing tools that integrate with open-source ecosystems
• Experience working with participatory design methodologies, directly collaborating with communities, educators, and students to co-create solutions.
• Proven ability to create user-centric designs for a global audience, ensuring that products meet the diverse needs of different communities.
• Experience in education technology (EdTech), learning platforms, or digital curriculum tools.
• Familiarity with AI, machine learning, or adaptive learning technologies.

Location

XQ is based in Oakland, CA with offices in Washington DC. This role will be based in Oakland,CA. 5 days onsite.

XQ Mindsets

Ours is a world defined by uncertainty, a society in flux, a state of unprecedented upheavals. While we don’t anticipate any quick fixes, we can anchor ourselves to what we see emerging. That’s why we have established a set of collective XQ Mindsets to ground us. 

• 100% accountability: This doesn't mean you have 100% ownership. It doesn't mean you are responsible for every last thing that needs to be done. It means choosing to take responsibility for our collective success and impact.
• Maker mindset: We build stuff. We won’t always get it right the first time—in fact, we rarely will. But by quickly making and testing our work, we can learn what works and what doesn’t.
• We are the ones we’ve been waiting for: Critique is not enough. It is on us to create the solutions—no matter where we sit in the organization. We are a well-resourced organization filled with brilliant people. No one else is coming to our rescue.
• Opportunity knocks: We are ready, willing, and able to take on anything that is thrown our way. Pivots are a natural part of our approach, so let’s embrace them so that we can experience them joyfully.
• Stand on the shoulders of giants: We honor those who came before us, who aren’t seated at our tables, and build on others’ and our own earlier work with respect and reverence.

Salary 

$200,000 - $250,000/annually with great benefits.

Disclaimer

This job description is provided for informational purposes and does not constitute a contract of employment. XQ reserves the right to modify, amend or revise job duties and responsibilities as business needs dictate.

EEOC

XQ is proud to be an equal-opportunity workplace. At XQ, promoting, celebrating, and supporting diversity is a core value. Individuals are considered without regard to race, gender, age, sexual orientation, sexual expression, religion, color, veteran status, disability, marital status, or ancestry.

Job Tags

Similar Jobs