[Remote] Sr. Product Manager, Product Design & User Research, Sophia Learning

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Strategic Education, Inc. is hiring a Sr. Product Manager, Product Design & User Research, Sophia Learning to define and lead the product vision for Sophia Learning’s online learning platform. The role owns product outcomes and experience direction, leads user research and design, and advances AI-enabled, scalable product experiences in partnership with executives and technical teams.

Responsibilities

• Define and lead the multi-year product strategy for the user experience of Sophia’s online learning platform, ensuring alignment with business goals and executive priorities
• Establish and lead a continuous discovery and user research practice (interviews, usability testing, surveys, journey mapping) that keeps Sophia close to its learners and institutional partners, synthesizing research, behavioral data, and market signals into problem statements, personas, and prioritized opportunities
• Guide the organization’s AI product vision and roadmap, collaborating with engineering, data science, and product leaders to align AI initiatives across multiple product areas
• Lead initiatives to embed machine learning, natural language processing, and generative AI models into core Sophia Learning applications, driving automation and intelligent user experiences
• Serve as a strategic advisor to executive leadership, translating research insights and technical opportunities into business value and influencing portfolio-level decisions
• Establish design best practices and design review mechanisms that ensure consistent quality across the product
• Own end-to-end experiences across learner, partner, and administrative workflows, translating user needs and business goals into flows, wireframes, and high-fidelity designs and partnering with Engineering to ensure design intent reaches production with a high bar for quality and accessibility (e.g., WCAG 2.1 AA)
• Oversee the design and delivery of a scalable, governed design system that centralizes design assets, establishing design standards, documentation, and accessibility models that make the system AI-ready for agentic development
• Partner with Engineering, Data/Analytics, and AI teams to implement UX success metrics and an experimentation framework that supports predictive analytics, personalization, and automation
• Mentor and coach other Product Managers, elevating design thinking, product strategy, and customer-centric thinking across the team, including research methods and rapid prototyping with the design system and agentic development tools
• Represent Sophia Learning as an industry thought leader, contributing to the company’s credibility in AI for online learning, ethical AI, and data-driven learning experiences

Skills

• Deep expertise in product design, user research, AI-driven product strategy, and large-scale platform systems
• Proven ability to lead research and translate customer insight into product direction, influencing what gets built, not only how it looks
• Equally comfortable defining requirements, prioritizing a backlog, and owning delivery as personally producing wireframes, high-fidelity designs, and prototypes
• Strong understanding of modern design and prototyping tools, component-based design systems, accessibility standards, and component lifecycle management, including structuring design systems for agentic development and AI coding tools
• Proven ability to bridge technical depth and executive influence, communicating complex technical concepts with clarity and confidence, and turning research findings into decisions
• Demonstrated success leading cross-functional AI initiatives that span design, data engineering, product, and data science
• Skilled in defining AI governance frameworks and human-centered AI design principles, ensuring responsible, compliant use of data and models
• Exceptional leadership and mentoring skills; able to develop product talent and foster a culture of innovation, accountability, and technical and design excellence
• Thought leadership in AI design strategy, personalization, and data ethics, with a focus on driving measurable impact for customers
• 6+ years of product design and/or product management experience in SaaS, data platform, or AI-driven product environments, including hands-on design work (user flows, wireframes, high-fidelity UI) and ownership of product outcomes for complex, cross-functional product areas
• Working familiarity with cloud data ecosystems (GCP, AWS, or Azure) and modern data and AI tools, sufficient to partner credibly with data science and engineering teams on feasibility, sequencing, and trade-offs
• Demonstrated success collaborating with executive stakeholders and technical leaders to deliver transformative business outcomes required
• Bachelor's degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Cognitive Science, Learning Science, or a related field, or equivalent work experience
• Must be authorized to work in the United States. Visa sponsorship is not available for this position
• EdTech experience
• Proven track record leading product design initiatives, including customer-facing AI initiatives, from concept through implementation
• Experience with behavioral analytics and experimentation tools
• Experience establishing or scaling a research or continuous discovery practice, including research that changed a roadmap decision
• Master's preferred
• Generative AI Solution Development
• Product strategy or continuous discovery coursework (e.g., Reforge, Pragmatic Institute, Continuous Discovery Habits)
• Accessibility certification (e.g., IAAP CPACC)

Benefits

• For employees scheduled 30 hours or more per week: medical, dental, vision, life and disability plans
• For employees scheduled 30 hours or more per week: well-being incentives
• For employees scheduled 30 hours or more per week: parental leave
• For employees scheduled 30 hours or more per week: paid time off
• For employees scheduled 30 hours or more per week: certain paid holidays
• For employees scheduled 30 hours or more per week: tax saving accounts (FSA, HSA)
• For employees scheduled 30 hours or more per week: 401(k) retirement benefit
• For employees scheduled 30 hours or more per week: Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• For employees scheduled 30 hours or more per week: tuition assistance
• For employees scheduled 30 hours or more per week: entertainment and retail discounts
• Overtime pay for non-exempt employees, if applicable

Company Overview