Principal, UX Design
Posted
Summary
Hands-on principal UX design role at a K-12 EdTech company: owns product experience architecture, the design system, accessibility standards, and research/validation while personally delivering complex cross-product designs for student, educator, and administrator workflows. Core tools include Figma and AI-supported design methods.
The Principal, UX Design owns Summit K12’s product-experience architecture, UX standards, design system, and proportionate validation approach. This is a hands-on functional leadership role accountable for coherent, accessible experiences across the product portfolio, personally delivering complex and consequential design work.
The Principal directs UX design practice through standards, judgment, implementation follow-through, and cross-functional partnership, while the UX Design Lead independently owns assigned experiences. The Principal does not require a separate design management layer or routine approvals. Product Managers retain product priorities, requirements, acceptance, and outcomes.
1. Experience Architecture & Standards
- Define coherent navigation, information architecture, interaction patterns, and experience principles across student, educator, administrator, and applicable family workflows.
- Personally design and resolve complex or consequential cross-product experiences using working prototypes and explicit decisions.
- Make recurring UX debt visible and recommend evidence-based improvements to accountable Product leaders.
2. Design System & Accessibility
- Own governance, documentation, versioning, and evolution of shared components, patterns, UX writing conventions, and accessible interaction standards.
- Collaborate with the UX Design Lead on reusable patterns while keeping routine experience decisions close to assigned work.
- Work with Engineering and QA to verify material accessibility and experience expectations in production.
3. Research, Validation & Implementation
- Set lean, risk-proportionate research and usability standards; personally execute consequential validation and interpret user evidence.
- Deliver complete implementation-ready specifications for owned work, including critical states, behaviors, accessibility, and edge cases.
- Resolve systemic implementation-fidelity gaps and ensure relevant post-release signals inform improvements.
4. Functional Leadership, AI & Capacity
- Partner with Product leadership to sequence design demand, make capacity tradeoffs visible, and preserve clear product decision rights.
- Establish approved AI-supported methods for prototypes, research synthesis, documentation, and design checks, with human verification.
- Work directly with PMs, Engineering, Academic, Creative Studio, and customer-facing functions without introducing unnecessary review gates.
Required
- 7+ years in product or UX design, or equivalent demonstrated capability, including complex production workflows.
- Expertise in interaction design, information architecture, research, design systems, accessibility, and prototyping.
- Proven ability to lead through hands-on judgment, clear standards, and cross-functional influence.
- Ability to make defensible tradeoffs and independently deliver complex experience work.
- Practical fluency with Figma or equivalent production design tools.
- Experience using measured usability and product outcomes to guide design priorities.
- Responsible use and validation of AI-enabled design workflows.
Preferred
- K-12 EdTech, learning-platform, assessment, reporting, or complex SaaS experience.
- Experience modernizing legacy platforms and designing for multilingual or varied-accessibility users.
Definition of Success
Portfolio experiences become more coherent, accessible, and effective; complex design work moves through implementation reliably; a reusable design system and practical evidence reduce UX rework.
Summit K12 offers a comprehensive benefits package. Highlights include:
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance with multiple plan options
- Company-paid short-term disability, long-term disability, and life insurance
- 401(k) retirement plan
- Paid Time Off (PTO) program
- 10 paid holidays plus 1 floating holiday annually
- Wellness resources and support programs
Summit K12 is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training.