Head of Design
About TpT
We are the world's most popular online marketplace for original educational resources. Our strategy of unlocking the wisdom and expertise of the world’s educators has helped us become the go-to place for finding the resources, knowledge, and inspiration educators need to teach at their best. We offer more than 2.7 million free and paid resources, created by educators who understand what works. Our marketplace is growing every day to meet the evolving needs of the PreK-12 classroom. When educators get the resources and support they need, they're best equipped to inspire our next generation of learners.
TpT is a marketplace, but it’s also a community of dedicated, creative educators — those who publish their resources and those who seek out solutions to real problems in their classrooms. We are grateful for their collaboration, their innovation, and their pioneering spirit. Together we support the educator connections that create magic for students everywhere.
We’re Looking for a Head of Design
TpT is growing fast, you’ll help lead us through our next phase of growth. We’re on a path to make proactive moves to elevate design and design thinking at TpT, as we further develop our brand and visual identity. The role is exciting and substantial because you’ll get to walk in the door ready to scale and manage the team of seven talented designers, operationalize the function, introduce new norms, strengthen current practices, and level it all up in a way that is as clarifying as it is inspiring. We’re also adding a new discipline to the team, User Experience Research. We’re expanding the Product Designer role to include crafting and owning our Design System.
You’ll be the senior most design leader in the organization and will work alongside our senior most functional leads. This means you’ll be collaborating with Product, Engineering, Community, Marketing, Data Science, as well as our Business teams to execute against our educator empowerment mission while also meeting a wide range of company goals.
Today, the demands on teachers are as high as they’ve ever been. As our Head of Design, you will be tasked with developing a team (with the right processes, systems, tools, and rituals) to help everyone at TpT create digital products, services, and experiences that deepen the relationships with our educator communities, wherever they are in the world.
What You’ll Do
- Scale the size and health of Design at TpT by attracting, developing, and retaining the best Product Design, Visual Design, and User Experience Research talent
- Scale Design at TpT internally by codifying our design team principles, processes, toolkits, and rituals (and empower all our designers to amplify the messages)
- Scale Design at TpT externally by increasing our thought-leadership and participation in design and tech design communities
- Scale our design systems by leading and enforcing product design best practices with our Engineering and Product counterparts
- Scale our brand by expanding our visual identity to account for current and future growth into new products, services, and audiences
- Inspire beautiful, thoughtful, and purposeful design initiatives by guiding the team to create desirable, usable, and clear interfaces for our educator communities
- Establish and maintain high-quality interactions with our products that build user growth and engagement
- Identify ways to improve the user experience both visually and by measurable user outcomes
- Create the conditions for a rigorous and challenging design environment
- Grow our user research and user testing function so we can continue to validate design decisions, interpret user feedback with critical hypotheses, and make tough decisions
What You’ll Bring
- An actionable collection of learned experiences — earned through years of previous design leadership — that you are eager and able to transfer to our organization
- A curious spirit
- A point of view
- A bias towards action
- Street cred in tech scene
- An unshakable belief in prioritizing the voice of our educators’ wants and needs
- An adaptable leadership style that models equal amounts of democratic and commanding sensibilities
- Road-tested and refined toolkits, methodologies, and frameworks that have track records of measurable results
- A knack for listening, learning, and identifying what is most important amongst a large set of priorities and data points
- Capable of conducting mission-critical technical discussions with Engineering Leads
- Demonstrated experience collaborating with Engineering, Product, and Executives on company-level strategies, planning processes, and product road mapping
- 10+ years of experience in design leadership roles within successful high-growth technology companies (Marketplaces or Community-driven companies are a plus)
- 5+ years of Product Design management experience
- Degree in design, human-computer interaction (HCI), or equivalent Education experience