Principal Experience ArchitectActive$182K–$204K

Notice to applicants: We have seen a rise in recruitment scams. Please note that outreach from Khan Academy recruiters will only come from the @khanacademy.

What you'll do

• Cross-product experience design: Map and design the journeys that span multiple products and user roles (student, teacher, parent, district admin), identifying where handoffs break down, where mental models conflict, and where consolidation or simplification would meaningfully improve the experience.

• Systems thinking and pattern-setting: Build and maintain the artifacts that make the ecosystem legible to the rest of the org—experience maps, service blueprints, experience architecture diagrams, and design patterns—so that product teams can make locally good decisions that also add up to a coherent whole.

• Strategic advisory and design leadership: Act as a senior voice on the Design Leadership Team, weighing in on major product decisions with an eye toward long-term coherence and scalability. Partner with design managers, PMs and technical architects to ensure architectural decisions are grounded in real user and district needs.

• Governance without gatekeeping: Develop lightweight frameworks, guidelines, and review processes that help embedded product designers align with the broader architecture—coaching and influencing rather than mandating, since you won't own every team's roadmap.

• Hands-on craft when it counts: Roll up your sleeves to prototype, wireframe, or redesign critical cross-cutting flows (e.g., navigation, onboarding, account and role management) when the problem is foundational enough to warrant direct involvement. We are an AI-enabled Design team, so the expectation is that you’d use AI tools such as Claude Cowork to complete work efficiently.

• Deep IA and systems expertise: 12+ years of experience in product design, UX architecture, or UX strategy, with a strong track record in information architecture, ecosystem- and multi-platform interaction modeling, and systems-level design work—ideally across complex, multi-sided platforms.

What they're looking for

• Ecosystems thinking: Demonstrated ability to zoom out from individual features to see how a whole product ecosystem fits together, and to translate that view into clear, actionable structures (maps, models, frameworks) that others can build on.
• Strong craft foundation: Excellent visual, interaction, and structural design skills. You can move fluidly between high-level architecture and detailed execution when needed.
• Cross-functional influence: A track record of guiding designers, PMs, and engineers toward shared, coherent decisions without formal authority over their teams—through clarity, credibility, and collaborative problem-solving.
• Complexity management: Experience designing for environments with multiple user types, roles, and permission structures (enterprise, B2B2C, marketplace, or platform products are all relevant backgrounds).