Director, Product Design

About us

At Udemy, we’re on a mission to transform lives through learning. Through our intelligent skills platform and a global community of instructors, we’ve helped nearly 80 million learners and more than 17,000 organizations achieve their goals. Come join us in ensuring everyone, everywhere has access to the skills they need to unlock their potential and create possibilities for themselves and others. Learn more about us on our company page.

Where we work

Udemy is a global company headquartered in San Francisco, with additional U.S. offices in Denver and Austin, and international hubs in Australia, India, Ireland, Mexico, and Türkiye. This is an in-office position, requiring three days a week in the office (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) and flexibility on Mondays and Fridays.

About this role 

As a key member of Udemy's design leadership team, reporting to the VP of Design & Research, you will be responsible for the design of our Instructor Tools and Globalization Design across web and mobile platforms. You will be hands-on and very closely collaborate with your peers and cross functional teams to ensure consistent experiences across teaching and learning, our checkout process and to adapt our UX to regional requirements globally.

Your diverse background will guide the development of products and features utilized by millions of learners and thousands of companies worldwide. In this player-coach role, you will actively visualize and prototype the next generation of Udemy product features while mentoring your team to scale our vision across various screens and devices.

You will champion the needs of learners and instructors dedicated to discovering, refining, and building new professional skills, collaborating on a design vision that solidifies our position as the premier learning product. Your efforts will help customers advance their lives and careers through learning. Leading a design team, you will collaborate closely with product managers, researchers, engineers, marketers, content strategists, and top instructors to prioritize, create, and deliver simple, elegant, and user-friendly features across all platforms. Your keen design sense and leadership experience will elevate the team's work to high-quality, state-of-the-art design. As Udemy's global UX team continues to thrive, you will play an influential role in recruiting and hiring designers for your team and beyond.

Here's What You Will Do

• Provide hands-on design leadership across our Instructor and Globalization design team to maximize impact for instructors, customers and learners globally.

• Collaborate with design peers to drive a coherent, visually appealing, and high-performing UX across all platforms.

• Simplify complex problems by employing advanced UX strategies to create high-performing and polished design solutions.

• Document and operationalize design solutions to enable efficient scaling.

• Contribute to design processes and internal project planning for Udemy’s product design team.

• Partner closely with stakeholders across the company to ensure seamless introduction of new products and features with exceptional user experiences.

• Own and advocate for the design and experience vision of our products.

About your skills

• Strong Communication Skills: You excel in articulating complex technical concepts clearly and concisely to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, fostering a collaborative and transparent work environment.
• Leadership and Mentorship Abilities: You have a track record of inspiring and empowering team members, providing guidance and mentorship to junior engineers, and fostering a culture of continuous learning and growth within the team.
• Adaptability and Learning Agility: You thrive in dynamic environments, quickly adapting to new technologies, methodologies, and challenges. Your eagerness to learn and ability to pivot effectively contribute to the team's success in a rapidly evolving industry.
• Problem-Solving and Critical Thinking: You approach challenges with a logical and analytical mindset, systematically analyzing problems, identifying root causes, and devising innovative solutions that address both short-term needs and long-term objectives.

We're Excited to Have You Because You Have

• 10+ years of experience in UX, product design, and visual design for web and mobile products; experience with other device classes is a plus.

• More than 5 years of experience leading design teams, mentoring, and fostering growth in product design teams.

• Exceptional design taste with a sharp eye for detail in user experiences; fluency in video-based products, mobile, and game design is advantageous.

• Proficiency in state of the art design tools, design for enterprise tools, user research, design processes, design systems, early usability studies, and an iterative approach to product development and deployment.

• A proven track record of guiding teams through product releases featuring user-facing designs from inception to completion.

• Experience in developing UX for AI solutions, subscription services, or e-learning platforms is beneficial.

• Superior communication skills with the ability to facilitate diverse groups of stakeholders and inspire cross-departmental collaboration.

• Success in building and mentoring teams by cultivating a positive team culture and strong working relationships, with enthusiasm to continue this at Udemy.

• A portfolio showcasing projects that demonstrate your problem-solving process and leadership in achieving pixel-perfect design solutions.

• A passion for joining a design team dedicated to transforming lives worldwide through learning.

• Fluency in spoken and written English is required. 

We understand that not everyone will match each of the above qualifications. However, we also realize that everyone has unique experiences that can add value to our company. Even if you think your background might not perfectly align, we'd love to hear from you!

Life at Udemy 

We aspire to be as vibrant and dynamic as the communities we serve, as inquisitive as those who use our platform, and as revolutionary as the future we strive to open for everyone. Here are some of the things we love about life at Udemy:

• We’re invested in creating an inclusive environment that welcomes a diverse range of backgrounds and experiences. From creating employee resource groups, ensuring we’re a Fair Pay Workplace, and building a flexible work culture, our belonging, equity, diversity, and inclusion (BEDI) initiatives always put our people first. We want you to be able to bring your authentic self to work because when we all do, we’re better for it.

• Learning is what we do – inside and out. Our Learning & Development team is second to none, helping ensure your journey is one of continuous progression. You’ll also have unlimited access to Udemy courses, monthly UDays (meeting-free professional development days), and a generous annual professional development stipend.

• Our reason to exist is to revolutionize learning – that calls for taking risks and learning from failures. Whether it’s our hackathons (a company-wide effort to envision new possibilities for our product) or sharing our prototypes, we see experimentation as a crucial step on the path to success.

• We’re committed to creating world-class employee experiences and are proud of the recognition of this by Great Place to Work. 

Of course, the best thing about being part of Udemy is knowing your work makes a difference for people and organizations around the world. You’ve got the skills; why not use them to help others develop theirs?

At Udemy, we value diversity and inclusion and consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, age, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or family status, veteran status, medical condition, or disability. 

Our Benefits Start with U

Our benefits start with you and were built to provide you and your family with the protection and care you need, making it easy to access the right coverage when you need it most. Benefits vary by region, and we encourage applicants to review our US Benefits,  Ireland Benefits & Turkiye Benefits pages to get an understanding of some of the benefits we offer. For details on region-specific benefits, please refer to the information provided during the hiring process. 

Information regarding data privacy is available within the Udemy Careers Privacy Notice.