The Mission

At Subject, we're building the Netflix of Education. Personalized. Localized. Accredited. Backed by Owl Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and industry leaders, and serving 100K+ students, we're building the world's most advanced Learning Intelligence System: studio-quality, standards-aligned learning that is delivered personally and proves outcomes.

The Impact

As Director of Design at Subject, you own the design function across the entire product. You set the bar for craft, define the design language students and teachers experience every day, and build the team that ships it. You sit on the product team, reporting directly to the Head of Product & Design and you are responsible for whether Subject feels like the most beautiful, intuitive learning product in the world. You lead by designing, by setting taste, and by hiring the people who will scale the function with you.

What You'll Own

1) Design Vision and Craft Bar

• Define and defend the visual and interaction language of Subject across student, teacher, and admin surfaces
• Own the design system end-to-end: tokens, components, motion, voice, accessibility
• Set the studio-quality bar that every builders/engineers ships against and personally review the work that goes out the door
• Translate Subject's product vision into a design point of view that competitors cannot copy

2) Team and Function

• Hire, coach, and grow a small, high-density design team of Visual Designers and Game Designer
• Build the rituals that make design a force multiplier: critiques, design reviews, portfolio reviews, weekly ship cadence
• Partner with the Head of Product & Design on org design, levelling, and how design integrates inside Subject's builders' model
• Be the talent magnet: your reputation and network bring elite designers to Subject

3) Cross-functional Leadership

• Sit on the product leaders team and collaborate on roadmap, prioritisation, and strategic bets alongside product, engineering, and AI
• Partner with Video Production and Curriculum on how learning experiences look, feel, and flow

4) AI-Native Design Leadership

• Define what AI-powered learning actually looks and feels like across the product: personalisation, adaptive content, grading, the student copilot
• Build the design patterns and primitives that make Subject's AI feel trustworthy, intelligent, and human
• Use AI tools fluently in your own workflow and push the team to do the same: faster prototyping, richer research, tighter iteration loops
• Help set the frontier on AI-native design in education

Requirements

• 8+ years of product design experience, with at least 2 years leading design at a high-growth consumer or B2B SaaS company
• A portfolio that proves you have personally designed shipped product at the highest craft bar, not just managed the people who did
• Demonstrated ability to build and scale design systems from scratch
• Track record of hiring, growing, and retaining elite designers
• Strong product instincts: you have shaped roadmaps, killed weak ideas, and pushed for the right thing to ship
• Fluent in Figma, motion, prototyping; deep knowledge of accessibility and responsive design
• Clear, concise communicator who can hold a room with the C-Suite, the board, or a partner district superintendent

The Mindset We Need

• Studio-quality bar: you hold craft and outcomes together. Beautiful screens that don't work are not enough, and working screens that look mediocre are not enough either
• Player-coach: you still design, still open Figma, still write critiques. You earn your team's respect by being better at the craft than they are
• Speed with taste: you set a high bar and a fast cadence at the same time
• User obsession: you know your users by name and session. Student engagement data and teacher feedback are your primary inputs
• AI-native operator: you already use Claude Code, Cursor, or equivalent daily. AI is in your workflow, not on your wishlist

The Commitment We're Looking For

• This role requires exceptional dedication because students deserve our absolute best. We need someone who:
• Lives the mission and treats student and district outcomes as real stakes
• Thrives in intensity and takes pride in building something from nothing
• Takes end-to-end ownership of the design function: bar, team, system, output
• Works with presence: Los Angeles office, 5 days/week
• Can commit to 60 hours/week: this is a high-output, high-ownership role and the pace reflects the ambition
• We're not looking for people who tolerate long hours. We're looking for people who find meaning in building something that matters this much.

Compensation
$220,000 to $230,000 plus equity

Benefits: Premium health coverage, gym membership, daily meals, top hardware

Join Us

If you want to define what learning looks and feels like for the next generation of students, and build the design team that ships it, Subject is where you do that work.