Product Design Manager

Product Design Manager

College Board - Technology

Location: This is a fully remote role. Candidates who live near CB offices have the option of being fully remote or hybrid (Tuesday and Wednesday in office).

Type: This is a full-time position

About the Team

College Board is taking a mission-first approach to generative AI, envisioning a future where humans drive responsible generative AI transformation within education. As the technology evolves, we're accelerating experimentation and building staff capacity with purpose and care. Our aim is simple: deliver outsized value through ethical, real-world applications that serve students, educators, and members.

This manager's team will support both the Item Cloud and Generative AI Studio teams. Item Cloud consists of six sub-teams that have created three different platforms for authoring test questions. These applications are in various stages of maturity and present different design challenges. The user bases for these applications are mostly internal, presenting our designers with the opportunity to form deep relationships with their user bases.

The GenAI Studio is College Board's internal innovation engine. Launched in 2024, the Studio exists to accelerate experimentation and unlock the transformative potential of GenAI in service of our mission. The Studio operates at the forefront of the GenAI landscape: enabling a culture of experimentation, building cutting-edge tools, and embedding human-centered AI innovation and literacy throughout our ecosystem. Join us in turning bold ideas into real impact for millions of students.

About the Opportunity

As the Product Design Manager, you will lead and inspire a team of product designers at various levels (Product Designer, Senior Product Designer, and Lead Product Designer). You will be responsible for overseeing the design strategy, ensuring the delivery of high-quality design solutions, and fostering a collaborative and innovative design culture. Your role will involve strategic thinking, team leadership, cross-functional collaboration, and hands-on design work.

In this role, you will:

Team Leadership and Management (40%)

• Leadership: Provide direction, mentorship, and support to the product design team, fostering growth and development.

• Set vision and priorities for the team, track and mange progress to goals, and provide coaching and support to ensure team members meet and exceed goals, remain engaged, and contribute meaningfully to our mission

• Cultivate an inclusive and high achieving culture that enables all team members to live out College Board's Operating Principles.

• Bring proven leadership experience and consistently embody College Board's Manager Expectations in your work.

• Team Building: Participate in hiring and onboarding activities to grow a diverse and collaborative design team.

• Performance Management: Conduct regular performance reviews, set goals, and provide feedback to team members.

• Design Culture: Champion design excellence and contribute to the evolution of design standards and practices.

Design Strategy and Execution (30%)

• Strategic Planning: Lead the development and execution of design strategies that align with business goals and user needs.

• Systems Thinking: Ensure consistency and scalability across the design team through the thoughtful application and contribution to design systems.

• Research Leadership: Oversee generative, formative, and evaluative research efforts to shape product vision and direction.

• Design Quality: Elevate the quality of design across teams and products, ensuring adherence to accessibility standards and inclusive design practices.

• Artifact Governance: Ensure that design and research artifacts (such as personas, journey maps, wireframes, prototypes) are created and stored in a consistent manner and reflect high quality standards that you help steward.

Cross-Functional Collaboration (20%)

• Collaboration: Serve as the design lead on cross-functional teams, aligning product, engineering, and research efforts.

• Influence: Influence roadmap decisions by connecting user needs with business goals and organizational mission.

• Communication: Present research, concepts, and design work clearly and persuasively to peers and stakeholders.

Growth and Development (10%)

• Thought Leadership: Contribute to the evolution of design standards, practices, and design system components.

• Continuous Learning: Stay current with tools, trends, and design practices, and share knowledge with the team.

• Community Engagement: Support design culture through critiques, lunch & learns, and internal community-building.

About You

You bring a user-focused and organizationally aware mindset; you are inquisitive and possess tremendous learning agility; you constantly seek useful information that can shape products for the good of the user; and you build strong, productive relationships while leading your product design team and stakeholders to produce value for our users. The greater the complexity you face, the greater initiative and leadership you assume. You are adept at exercising your influence to get things done across the organization.

To qualify for this role, you must have:

• Experience: 10+ years of experience in product design, with 3+ years in a leadership or management role.

• A strategic and inclusive leadership style: you set clear priorities, build effective team structures, plan for future needs, and foster a culture of belonging.

• A proven ability to drive performance and growth: you set high expectations, deliver real-time, evidence-based feedback, and coach team members to take smart risks, stretch their skills, and achieve meaningful impact.

• Skills: Mastery of user-centered design, systems thinking, design strategy, and problem framing.

• Research: Strong skills in research planning, synthesis, and facilitation, with the ability to turn insights into strategic direction.

• Design: Excellent visual and interaction design skills, with fluency in tools like Figma, Miro, and Dovetail.

• Collaboration: Ability to navigate technical conversations and collaborate effectively with engineers and other stakeholders.

• Clear and Concise Communication: Excellent storytelling and communication skills, with the ability to influence across disciplines and levels. Both verbal and written.

• Passion: A commitment to inclusive, ethical, and accessible design, and a passion for educational equity.

• Growth Mindset: Self-motivated, curious, and always looking to improve your craft and impact.

• The ability to travel 4-6 times a year to College Board offices or on behalf of College Board business

All roles at College Board require:

• A passion for expanding educational and career opportunities and mission-driven work

• Authorization to work in the United States for any employer

• Curiosity and enthusiasm for emerging technologies, with a willingness to experiment with and adopt new AI-driven solutions and a comfort learning and applying new digital tools independently and proactively.

• A learner's mindset and a commitment to growth: welcoming diverse perspectives, giving and receiving timely, respectful feedback, and continuously improving through iterative learning and user input.

• A drive for impact and excellence: solving complex problems, making data-informed decisions, prioritizing what matters most, and continuously improving through learning, user input, and external benchmarking.

• A collaborative and empathetic approach: working across differences, fostering trust, and contributing to a culture of shared success.

About Our Process

• Application review will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. This role is expected to accept applications for a minimum of 5 business days.

• While the hiring process may vary, it generally includes: resume and application submission, recruiter phone/video screen, hiring manager interview, interview exercise, a panel interview, a potential conversation with leadership and reference checks.

What We Offer

At College Board, we offer more than just a paycheck-we provide a meaningful career, a supportive team, and a comprehensive package designed to help you thrive. We're a self-sustaining nonprofit that believes in fair and competitive compensation, grounded in your qualifications, experience, impact, and the market.

A Thoughtful Approach to Compensation

• The hiring range for this role is $113,000-$148,000.

• Your exact salary will depend on your location, experience, and how your background compares to others in similar roles at the College Board.

• We aim to make our best offer upfront-rooted in fairness, transparency, and market data.

• We adjust salaries by location to ensure fairness, no matter where you live.

You'll have open, transparent conversations about compensation, benefits, and what it's like to work at College Board throughout your hiring process. Check out our careers page for more.

#LI-LinkedIn

#LI-Remote

#LI-MR1