Senior Designer, New Products

Engineering, full-time

San Francisco (relocation assistance provided)

Salary range: $140,000 - $190,000 + Equity

At Ello, our mission is to maximize the potential of all children. Our first product, Read with Ello, is an AI reading teacher that listens to children read out loud. Ello uses speech recognition to help them when they get stuck, makes up stories using generative AI, and inspires a love for reading.

We’re now building on the success of Read with Ello and putting together the pieces of the world’s first complete AI teacher for all children. Together, we believe we can close the primary school education gap worldwide.

Ello has been recognized on Fortune’s “Change the World” and Time’s 2024 Best Inventions lists. We are well-funded, backed by world-class investors, and ready to recruit new talent to help us achieve our vision.

Who you’ll be joining

Ello is a rapidly growing, series A-stage startup focused on revolutionizing the way children learn and interact with technology. You will work directly with Ello’s co-founder & CTO, Catalin Voss, on new product initiatives alongside a small team (<10 people) of engineers and PMs in San Francisco. You’ll also play a key role as part of Ello’s core design team (1 design lead & 2 contractors) and collaborate on the broader evolution of Ello’s brand.

About the role

We’re seeking a versatile Senior Designer to join a new product initiative on our journey to build the world’s first real AI tutor for kids ages 4-9. You’ll spend a big chunk of your effort working on character & interaction design, illustrations, UI/UX design, and web assets for a new product, and you will also contribute to the broader core Ello brand. As an ideal candidate, you’ll consider yourself very much a full-stack designer, comfortable across all aspects of the design process, and thrive on a small team. You have the ability to work across various design mediums spanning illustration, mobile UI/UX, brand, web, and more. You very much seek to be part of the product development process end-to-end and bring ideas to the table. You’re excited about working in-person in San Francisco and attending playtests to see the impact of your work day-to-day. You thrive in a strong feedback culture and are accustomed to the process of design critiques. You are adaptable – you can lead the way and PM your own work, but you can also collaborate closely with project leads on existing efforts. Most importantly, you are excited about making an impact on early education at scale and have a clear reason for wanting to design for children.

A portfolio submission is required for the application. While competitive candidates will likely have a proven track record in producing polished, high-quality work with real-world product impact, we are very open to opportunistic submissions – we love to see beautiful work.

Responsibilities

• Lead the end-to-end design of new products, handling everything from illustration and graphic design to UI/UX and web and print product design

• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to create cohesive, user-centered designs that appeal to children

• Drive the product creation process by working hands-on from initial concept to playtest to final polished design and handoff

• Work in a fast-paced, iterative design environment; rapidly prototype ideas, test them out, and refine or discard

• Produce pixel-perfect Figma files and work closely with engineering for seamless implementation

Required Experience

• Broad design expertise across a variety of mediums, including illustration, UI/UX, graphic design, and product design

• Experience working on character-centric experiences involving illustration and animation (e.g. in a game context)

• Demonstrated experience designing for children, or a strong story behind your interest in designing for children’s products

• Demonstrated track record of innovation and creativity in contributing to the product development process

• Proficiency in both low- and high-fidelity prototyping, and comfort with fastiteration cycles

• Experience thriving in a dynamic, fast-paced work environment and adapting to project changes on the fly

Nice to have experience

• Previous experience with designing children’s products and an understanding of creating engaging visuals for young audiences.

• Comfortable drawing in multiple mediums for ideation & iteration (e.g. line-drawing & vector art alike.

We look for candidates who

• Have something to teach us

• Have immense attention to detail

• Want to do work they are proud of to ship products they are proud of

• Have an urge to make a real impact on child development at scale

• Take initiative and full ownership of their work

• Prefer open and direct communication grounded in empathy to beating around the bush

• Exemplify integrity in their actions, decisions, and communication

• Want to build meaningful relationships at work

Here are some reasons to be a part of our team

• Immerse yourself in a collaborative environment surrounded by an A+ team.

• Dive deep into the rapidly evolving world of educational AI products

• Experience the joy of turning your designs into engaging and educational experiences for children worldwide.

• Work in tandem with curriculum experts, product teams, and the world’s best engineers to harness the full power of AI to reimagine education

About Ello

Ello is a public benefit corporation on a mission to maximize the potential of all children. We’re currently around 45 people, headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in São Paulo, Brazil; Nairobi, Kenya; and New York.

Our team has deep expertise in artificial intelligence, K-12 education, and child development across institutions such as Stanford, Berkeley, Google, Apple, and more. We were part of Y Combinator’s W20 batch and are funded by world-class investors including Goodwater Capital, Homebrew, Reed Hastings, Common Sense Growth, Ravensburger, Project A Ventures, Reach Capital, Khosla Ventures, WndrCo, Visible Ventures, and K9 Ventures.

We’re a small, collaborative team that takes each other’s voices very seriously. Because our mission is to support all children, it is critical that our team is representative of the communities we work in; we place significant emphasis on ensuring diversity in our team and inclusion in our culture.

We feel enormously privileged to be one of the few companies that has the opportunity to take a shot at truly revolutionizing education with AI at this inflection point in technology. We don’t take it for granted, so we work quite hard to turn that vision into reality with urgency. We want to create an environment in which we can all be our best selves, use our strengths to take Ello forward, and develop our own skills. We want to have fun while working hard to do impactful things that we’re proud of – and we believe it’s possible to do both.

At Ello, we view diversity as a moral imperative and a competitive advantage. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, skin color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We plan and structure our interviews to directly assess skills and experience. If you need any accommodations throughout the interview process, please reach out to jackie@ello.com.