About this role
The Principal, UX Design owns Summit K12’s product-experience architecture, UX standards, design system, and proportionate validation approach. This is a hands-on functional leadership role accountable for coherent, accessible experiences across the product portfolio, personally delivering complex and consequential design work. The Principal directs UX design practice through standards, judgment, implementation follow-through, and cross-functional partnership, while the UX Design Lead independently owns assigned experiences. The Principal does not require a separate design management layer or routine approvals. Product Managers retain product priorities, requirements, acceptance, and outcomes.
- 1. Experience Architecture & Standards Define coherent navigation, information architecture, interaction patterns, and experience principles across student, educator, administrator, and applicable family workflows. Personally design and resolve complex or consequential cross-product experiences using working prototypes and explicit decisions. Make recurring UX debt visible and recommend evidence-based improvements to accountable Product leaders.
- 2. Design System & Accessibility Own governance, documentation, versioning, and evolution of shared components, patterns, UX writing conventions, and accessible interaction standards. Collaborate with the UX Design Lead on reusable patterns while keeping routine experience decisions close to assigned work. Work with Engineering and QA to verify material accessibility and experience expectations in production.
- 3. Research, Validation & Implementation Set lean, risk-proportionate research and usability standards; personally execute consequential validation and interpret user evidence. Deliver complete implementation-ready specifications for owned work, including critical states, behaviors, accessibility, and edge cases. Resolve systemic implementation-fidelity gaps and ensure relevant post-release signals inform improvements.
- 4. Functional Leadership, AI & Capacity Partner with Product leadership to sequence design demand, make capacity tradeoffs visible, and preserve clear product decision rights.
Establish approved AI-supported methods for prototypes, research synthesis, documentation, and design checks, with human verification. Work directly with PMs, Engineering, Academic, Creative Studio, and customer-facing functions without introducing unnecessary review gates.