Workforce Edge Lead Product Designer

The Lead Product Designer for Workforce Edge serves as the user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) leader for the platform, responsible for setting design direction and transforming core product experiences into a clear, scalable, and modern Career Mobility ecosystem. This role guides the entire product lifecycle from initial research and concept validation to final UI specification and implementation quality.

As the first dedicated designer, this role will build the foundational Workforce Edge Design System, ensuring visual and interaction consistency across all touchpoints (web, mobile). The Lead Product Designer is a strategic partner to the Product and Engineering leadership, translating complex benefit policies and technical architecture into elegant, intuitive interfaces that drive enrollment and user success.

Operating as a strategic leader, this role advocates for user needs, elevates design standards, and ensures product delivery results in measurable improvements to usability and satisfaction. In addition to direct design ownership, this role provides leadership across the product organization by mentoring designers and non-designers, reviewing design work, and establishing standards that elevate design quality and consistency across the platform.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

Product Experience & UX Ownership

• Own the end-to-end user experience across key Workforce Edge workflows, including eligibility, marketplace browsing, requests, approvals, and administration.
• Own complex, cross-domain user experiences that span multiple products, workflows, and user types, requiring coordination across Product, Engineering, and business stakeholders.
• Define and evolve experience-level strategy for Workforce Edge, ensuring individual design decisions align with long-term product and platform direction.
• Lead the redesign of legacy, text-heavy interfaces into modern, intuitive, and accessible experiences.
• Lead and execute user interviews, usability testing, and journey mapping to identify pain points and opportunities in the current platform (e.g., policy comprehension, program selection).
• Translate strategic goals into testable prototypes and concepts, facilitating validation with users and stakeholders to reduce product risk.
• Ensure all experiences are responsive and mobile-friendly, with explicit ownership of mobile usability and task completion for the majority of Workforce Edge users.
• Lead the evolution of the platform toward a mobile-first experience where appropriate, without compromising desktop workflows.
   

Design Execution & Collaboration

• Partner with Product Managers or other stakeholders to understand user needs, business goals, and constraints, and translate them into clear user flows, wireframes, and high-fidelity designs.
• Collaborate closely with Engineering throughout implementation to ensure design intent is accurately translated into production.
• Participate in discovery and solution exploration, presenting multiple design approaches and tradeoffs rather than a single prescribed solution.

Design Systems & Standards

• Establish, govern, and evolve a design system that defines reusable components, patterns, typography, spacing, and interaction states across both desktop and mobile experiences.
• Create design documentation and usage guidelines that support consistent implementation by Engineering.
• Improve design efficiency and consistency by reducing one-off patterns and ad hoc UI decisions.

Usability, Accessibility & Quality

• Advocate for user-centered design principles, accessibility standards, and clear visual hierarchy, with attention to readability and usability on smaller screens.
• Identify usability issues through feedback, observation, and iteration, and propose improvements grounded in user impact.
• Ensure experiences balance clarity, simplicity, and functional depth appropriate for enterprise users.

Organizational Impact

• Serve as the primary design partner to Product and Engineering leadership.
• Elevate design thinking across the organization by modeling strong UX practices and clear communication.
• Contribute to the long-term evolution of the Workforce Edge product experience as the platform scales.
• Coach, mentor, and review the work of other designers or contributors involved in UX work, providing structured feedback on research quality, interaction design, and usability outcomes.
• Establish design best practices and review mechanisms to ensure consistent quality across new features, refactors, and incremental enhancements.

Job Skills:

• Strong expertise in product design, UX/UI design, and interaction design within SaaS or platform products.
• Proven ability to translate complex workflows into intuitive, user-friendly experiences.
• Experience designing responsive and mobile-friendly web applications.
• Proficiency with modern design tools (Figma) and design system creation.
• Ability to interpret qualitative research and quantitative analytics to inform design decisions and measure the impact of UX changes (e.g., conversion rates, support deflection).
• Strong understanding of design collaboration with engineering teams and component-based development.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to articulate design decisions and tradeoffs to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to work independently, manage ambiguity, and own design outcomes end to end.
• Strong attention to detail, visual hierarchy, and usability.
• Demonstrated ability to operate at a platform or ecosystem level, balancing near-term design execution with long-term experience strategy.
• Proven experience influencing senior stakeholders and guiding product and engineering decisions through design leadership rather than formal authority.

Work Experience:

• 7-8+ years of progressive experience as a Product Designer or UX/UI Designer, including ownership of complex, cross-functional product areas.
• Successful track record leading major product redesigns or feature launches that resulted in measurable improvements in user engagement, task completion, or operational efficiency.
• Prior experience as the first or sole designer in a growing organization is highly desirable.
• Experience designing complex user interfaces across different user types.

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Science, or a related field.

Other:

• Must be able to travel occasionally should a business need arise. For most roles travel would not be common. Travel may involve plane, car or metro. In accordance with ADA policies, reasonable accommodations regarding travel limitations can be provided. Travel will be more common for roles such as Account Executives (25 - 50%), senior leaders (10 – 20%) or Capella Core Faculty (5 – 10%). 
• Ability to work onsite in Corporate or Campus location (in a typical office environment) may be required based on role. If so, this would include being mobile within the office, including movement from floor-to-floor using elevators or stairs.
• If offsite or hybrid role, must have access to work in setting which enables meeting all requirements of the role (including privacy, reliable internet access, phone, ability to video conference, etc.) at a remote location.
• Faculty and Federal Work Study roles require access to work in setting which enables meeting all requirements of the role (including computer, privacy, reliable internet access, phone, ability to video conference, etc.) at a remote location.
• This role may require lifting, however reasonable accommodations will be provided in accordance with our ADA policies.
• Must be able to meet critical thinking and problem solving aspects aligned to job duties, as well as effectively communicating with co-workers.
• Must be able to work more than 40 hours per week when business needs warrant. Accommodations related to schedule may be considered. 
• Able to access information using a computer.
• Other essential functions and marginal job functions are subject to modification.

SEI offers a comprehensive package of benefits to employees scheduled 30 hours or more per week. In addition to medical, dental, vision, life and disability plans, SEI employees may take advantage of well-being incentives, parental leave, paid time off, certain paid holidays, tax saving accounts (FSA, HSA), 401(k) retirement benefit, Employee Stock Purchase Plan, tuition assistance as well as entertainment and retail discounts. Non-exempt employees are eligible for overtime pay, if applicable.

Careers - Our Benefits, Strategic Education, Inc

SEI is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering an inclusive and collaborative culture where individuals can grow their careers and contribute fully. We strive to attract talent with broad experiences, skills and perspectives. We welcome applications from all. While it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top end of the pay range at SEI, we offer a competitive salary.  The actual base pay offered to the successful candidate may vary depending on multiple factors including, but not limited to, job-related knowledge/skills, experience, business needs, geographical location, and internal pay equity. Our Talent Acquisition Team is ready to discuss your interest in joining SEI. The expected salary range for this position is below.

$116,300.00 - $174,500.00 - Salary

If you require reasonable accommodations to complete our application process, please contact our Human Resources Department at Careers@strategiced.com.