Principal, UX Design

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.

Key Responsibilities

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.

1. 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.

1. 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.

1. 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.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

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.

Benefits

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

Originally posted on Himalayas