Product Design Strategist

Paper is reimagining how schools support students so that every learner can reach their full potential. This role involves approximately 60% product design and 40% product strategy, focusing on designing engaging interfaces for educational tools and managing product outcomes.

Responsibilities:

• Design the experiences that move metrics
• Craft beautiful, engaging interfaces for elementary and middle school students, making complex educational concepts feel accessible and fun
• Define what gets built and why
• Shape product strategy by connecting user needs, business goals, and technical constraints into coherent solutions, then make the tough calls about feature prioritization and scope
• Manage the details that matter
• Keep track of schedules, dependencies, and unresolved decisions while bringing developers the complete picture - edge cases, error states, and precise interaction documentation
• Bridge business strategy and user experience
• Understand Paper's business context before tackling design problems, connecting educational outcomes, student engagement metrics, and business impact to create solutions that satisfy all stakeholders

Requirements:

• Strong portfolio demonstrating illustration skills and visual design that connects with younger audiences (elementary through middle school)
• Experience designing consumer products, gaming experiences, educational tools, or youth-focused apps where engagement and retention actually matter
• Comfort with modern design tools (Figma, etc.) and excitement about new workflows that amplify creative output
• An eye for detail and an instinct for what makes interfaces feel engaging
• Deep curiosity about game mechanics, habit formation, behavioral psychology, and what makes students come back tomorrow
• Ability to balance qualitative insights with quantitative data to make product decisions - and the judgment to know which should lead
• Track record of not just designing features but defining them, scoping them, and managing them through to measurable impact
• Comfort writing specs, setting priorities, and having the difficult conversations about what not to build
• You spend your first conversation with any stakeholder asking questions about goals, constraints, and context before jumping to solutions
• You see how your work fits into the bigger picture of customer experience, growth, and business opportunities
• You can articulate design decisions in terms of business strategy, not just user needs or aesthetic preferences
• You understand that exceptional design work is dead in the water without the acute management skills to carry it from idea to delivered solution
• Comfort with ambiguity and excitement about defining your role as you grow into it
• Willingness to experiment with new workflows and share what you learn with the team
• Belief that the best solutions come from people who understand both the 'what' and the 'how'
• Have designed for K-8 audiences, consumer gaming, or apps where daily engagement is the metric that matters
• Have evidence of shipping features that demonstrably changed user behavior or business metrics
• Have been told they 'think too much like a PM' or 'ask too many questions about the business'
• Care deeply about educational equity and access