Khan Academy - Principal Experience Architect

• 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. • Systems thinking and pattern-setting: • 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. • Strategic advisory and design leadership: • 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. • Governance without gatekeeping: • 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. • Hands-on craft when it counts: • 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. • Deep IA and systems expertise: • 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. • Ecosystems thinking: • Strong craft foundation: Excellent visual, interaction, and structural design skills. You can move fluidly between high-level architecture and detailed execution when needed. • Strong craft foundation: • 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. • Cross-functional influence: • Complexity management: Experience designing for environments with multiple user types, roles, and permission structures (enterprise, B2B2C, marketplace, or platform products are all relevant backgrounds). • Complexity management: • Communication and storytelling: Ability to make abstract architectural concepts tangible and compelling to both design peers and non-design executive stakeholders. • Communication and storytelling: • EdTech experience (preferred): Familiarity with K-12 education, school district structures, or other regulated/high-stakes environments is a strong plus, but not required. • Motivated by the Khan Academy mission “to provide a free world-class education for anyone, anywhere." • Proven cross-cultural competency skills demonstrating self-awareness, awareness of other, and the ability to adopt inclusive perspectives, attitudes, and behaviors to drive inclusion and belonging throughout the organization. • NOTE: Submitting a portfolio with your application is required. We're looking for a portfolio that highlights the parts of your background and experience that are relevant to the job description. Applications without a portfolio link or attachment (plus password if required) will not be considered. • QUALITIES WE VALUE IN OURSELVES, AND THOSE WHO JOIN OUR TEAM • Introspective, mature, low-ego, and emotionally intelligent • Growth mindset, willingness to learn and to teach others • Proactively seek out the people and info you need to move work forward and unblock yourself • High comfort level working within a strong top-down product vision led by our CEO, Sal Khan • Able to balance the immediate tactical needs of helping deliver and ship features with scouting ahead for what's next • Comfortable with ever-shifting priorities and ambiguous situations, like you'd experience in a startup • Willing to roll your sleeves up and pitch in when a project goes off-script • Excited about education and engaging learning experiences, deeply curious about how and why people learn