Sr. Product Designer

About Niche

Niche is the leader in school search. Our mission is to make researching and enrolling in schools easy, transparent, and free. With in-depth profiles on every school and college in America, 140 million reviews and ratings, and powerful search tools, we help millions of people find the right school for them. We also help thousands of schools recruit more best-fit students, by highlighting what makes them great and making it easier to visit and apply.

Niche is all about finding where you belong, and that mission inspires how we operate every day. We want Niche to be a place where people truly enjoy working and can thrive professionally.

About The Role

Every year, millions of families start the school search process. Students wade through a sea of information and decisions to make, and unfortunately access to help hasn’t changed much in decades: it’s not super clear what your options are, and you might not feel confident that a school is right for them, or think you’ll be able to afford it.

Niche is on a mission to make researching and enrolling in schools easy, transparent, and free. Students need support choosing a school and paying for their education, schools want to find students who will thrive on their campus, and families need help supporting their students every step of the way. Niche helps ensure that it’s not just students already confident about college who get enrolled and can afford to attend.

We’re looking for a Senior Product Designer to continuously improve our partner school experiences focused on AI-generated message content and student-level personalized communication across web and mobile. Several of these features are brand new and we need your expertise to refine and enhance them in order to get more students connected with schools who are interested in them specifically, helping the school’s authentic voice shine through and ensuring touch points help nurture students productively toward becoming fully enrolled. You will play a critical role in a growing space, working closely with cross-functional teams on creating seamless, effective experiences that determine the future of personalized school application and enrollment.

This role is ideal for someone who wants to flex across user research, IA and content design, conceptual models, interactions and UI flows. Our Product org is in the process of adopting AI tooling formally in our product development workflows, so come prepared to prototype with Claude Code, experiment with design-to-code-to-design tools like Paper.design, and create/maintain specs, artifacts, and markdown files that guide agents to output effective interaction patterns and surface level UI designs. That being said, we value the foundations of our UX practice and you will still work the design process, show your thinking, participate in critiques and design reviews, etc.

You will report to the Senior Director of Product Design and join a tight-knit, encouraging team of designers and researchers, with support for your growth and opportunities for professional development. We’re excited to learn from you and help you learn from us!

What You Will Do

• Design and iterate on key product features using data, research insights and product thinking to form your vision and bring it to life
• Collaborate with your cross-functional partners, researchers, analysts, and other designers to ship and iterate on design solutions that are strategic, thoughtful, and make a real impact to both customers and business  
• Help raise the bar on the quality and craft of design work using systems thinking and workflows, information architecture and content strategy, product reasoning, wireframing and prototyping
• Communicate persuasively about your solutions and present to stakeholders, with the ability to facilitate productive discussions about feasibility, scope and requirements that moves work forward
• Strengthen our ability to develop hypotheses, experiment, iterate, and learn quickly through design artifacts and structured decision-making – even more important in a moment when ideas are cheap and generating interfaces with AI is trivial

During the First Month:

• Meet and get familiar with your cross-functional team, fellow designers and researchers, and key stakeholders
• Understand the company mission and vision, business model, and current state of the product
• Get familiar with our design tools, Product org documentation, research process and user insights
• Join product team meetings and sprint cycles, starting with assisting other designers on projects in flight and participating in critique

Within 3 Months:

• Fully operating in your role, working through the design process on improvements to live experiences and developing your design strategy aligned to business objectives
• Established a relationship with our Partner design lead and gained an understanding of the greater vision for the overarching Partner experience
• Collaborating closely with teammates, designers and researchers to shape and scope projects, identify dependencies, make confident design decisions backed by evidence
• Delivering solutions to increasingly complex challenges, starting to tackle longer-term evolution of the experience in your surface area

Within 6 Months:

• Leading in your lane on the product team, identifying improvements to the way work gets done and how collaboration happens
• Identifying opportunities and presenting solutions using persuasive storytelling, concept design and prototypes, and a deep understanding of both business objectives and user needs
• Providing constructive and thoughtful feedback to other designers, jamming and collaborating for the greater good
• Contributing to improving Design tooling and processes, helping upskill or cross-train as needed and receiving training in return

Within 12 Months:

• Proven track record driving impact to business objectives through leading design on complex projects
• Strong understanding of all major product areas, recognizing patterns across the platform, and contributing to the Partner design lead’s vision across the suite of Niche products
• Mentor and source of support for junior designers

What We Are Looking For

• You have designed and shipped product features that customers love, for both mobile and desktop, and can articulate what it took to make that happen, from product strategy down to pixel-level decision-making
• You know how to roll data, research insights, business goals, technical constraints, and customer needs together into strongly-crafted solutions (mockups, prototypes, and flows)
• You iterate fast, ensure you gather feedback from both users and stakeholders, and use strategic reasoning to inform your decisions
• You enjoy and take pride in using your design skills to bring clarity and simplicity to both process and product
• You have experience working on cross-functional product teams in an agile environment
• You are a team player, curious about new ideas and excited to learn, comfortable with ambiguity and continuous improvements to process and planning
• Bonus if you have experience with any of these: marketing automation for people who are not power users, generating copy using AI that saves people time while also conveying substance and feeling, educating others on information architecture/content strategy and how those support and inform surface level UI decisions
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Compensation 

Our national target base salary range is $145,600-$170,000, plus participation in our Annual Bonus and Stock Option Program. Base compensation will be commensurate with experience and skills.

At Niche, our Total Rewards Philosophy is centered around creating a workplace environment that attracts, motivates, and retains top talent by providing a comprehensive and competitive rewards package.  This philosophy is built on the principles of performance-based compensation, best-in-class benefits and work-life balance, and employee well-being.

Interview Process

Candidate experience is a top priority for our talent and hiring teams.  We believe in providing a transparent, authentic and comprehensive interview process where you have the opportunity to learn about us while we get to know you and your experience.  The interview process is outlined here:

• Phone Screen with Talent Acquisition Partner - 30 Minutes

• Video Interview with Hiring Manager - 45 Minutes

• Portfolio Presentation - 60 Minutes

• Cross Functional Panel Interview - 45 Minutes

Why Niche?

• We are a fully flexible workforce empowering our employees to choose to work remotely, in our Pittsburgh office or whatever combination suits you
• Full time, salaried position with competitive compensation in a fast-growing company
• Best-in-class 100% paid employee health plan, including vision and dental and supplemental coverage
• Flexible Paid Time Off Policy
• Stipend that allows you to build your work from home office in a style and function that suits your personal preferences
• Parental leave for all employees (12 weeks fully paid) in addition to short term disability for birthing parents
• Meaningful 401(k) with employer match
• Your ideas and work will make an immediate impact on our company and millions of users
• You will join a team that cares about you, our mission, our work - and celebrates our wins together!

Niche will only employ those who are legally authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship now or in the future for this opening.  

We are currently hiring in states where we currently have employees: AZ, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MO, NE, NV, NH, NJ, NY, NC, OH, OK, OR, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, WA, DC, WV.

Candidates only.  No recruiters or agencies, please. Sorry, we do not offer relocation assistance.

Niche is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering an inclusive, innovative environment with the best employees. Therefore, we provide employment opportunities without regard to age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or any other protected status in accordance with applicable law.

All interviews are being held remotely. If there are preparations we can make to help ensure you have a comfortable and positive interview experience, please let us know.