Principal Product Designer

Principal Product Designer 
EF Education First, Shanghai, China

EF EdTech is looking for an experienced Principal Product Designer to join our design team in Shanghai, ready to lead design for our biggest projects and teams. You will be working closely with a larger, agile, cross-functional team of product designers, developers, academics and product owners. Your focus will be ownership and accountability for the design quality, shaping our longer-term product vision with our VP Product and play a key role in with our strategically valuable products and brands. This position is located in our newly renovated Shanghai office, named one of the “World’s Coolest” by Inc. We are open to relocation for the right candidate.

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• Starts with “Why?”, not afraid of failure and is a life-long learner.
• Has an excellent user-centred approach to problem-solving, using story-telling and persuasive methods to connect the entire product vision and strategy to tactical solutions and day to day outcomes.
• Has deep experience utilising, and collaboratively conducting, user research.
• Demonstrable experience designing for multiple platforms, with proven expertise with mobile design. A master of your craft, you not only improve the products you work on but actively influence and mentor those around you.
• An outstanding team player who is humble, articulate, communicative and open – confident in sharing ideas and decisions across a cross-functional product and design teams.
• Is driven, motivated and inspired by close interaction with development, academic and product people.
• Exceptional written and oral communication skills, in addition to confident and persuasive presentation skills honed to stakeholders of all types.
• Has a good understanding of the Chinese market for learners and prospective customers, knowing how to create compelling and authentic designed experiences.

Role requirements

• You have incredible experience as an individual contributor, with expertise working in a product design team and a great story to tell about the products you’ve worked on alongside a portfolio you’re proud of. We’ve found this generally comes with 10+ years experience as a designer.
• You have an exceptional, almost intuitive, understanding of what makes an experience good or bad and expert knowledge of the end-to-end product design process.
• You think through user problems to find realistic, practical, innovative solutions and partner with product and developers to ship them.
• You understand the technical limitations and liberties behind your decisions and can confidently, and articulately, communicate your ideas.
• You believe function begets form, but form instils function. You have a highly refined visual aesthetic as well as a deep understanding of composition, balance, symmetry, and white space.
• You're a self-starter who actively seeks to make the experiences you design both visually appealing and easy to use.
• You love to contribute to the definition of a product’s design language and experience.
• Chinese language proficiency is not required, though of course helpful for you, but experience with bilingual research and design is important.
• Experienced and comfortable working with people and teams in different locations and time zones, remotely or in person.

What we offer

• The opportunity to have a positive, and genuine, impact on people’s lives on a global scale – shipping products that transform our customer’s lives and grow the business.
• Work with an amazing team of designers, engineers, academics and product people in a supportive and ambitious culture.
• We continue to invest in flexible ways to work supported by our beautiful, multi-national office based in Shanghai with great onsite facilities and considered designed social spaces.
• As a global company with premium offices worldwide, you will have a network of locales to exchange between as you grow with the company.
• A wide array of employee benefits and support in place.
• Regular social activities.

About EF Education First & EF EdTech

EF Education First, founded in 1965, is the world’s largest private education company with a mission to open the world through education.

EF EdTech is our product development organisation, consisting of a diverse collective of 200+ innovators – from academia, design, hardware, product, research, content and engineering.

Together, we work at the forefront of technology to reimagine education and solve some of the most challenging problems that exist today. From playful smart speakers that immerse our students in English to innovative machine-learning algorithms that power our AI language coaches.

We are on a mission to personalise learning, build global connections and ignite a passion for language and culture.


Something really important

We are keen to ensure we design experiences that work well for everyone, so we particularly encourage applications by people from underrepresented demographics and minority groups to help us do this.

If the role sounds like a good fit, but you feel that you don’t tick every box, we would still like to hear from you as we understand great designers and teams of people have different backgrounds and experiences. We appreciate that applying takes a lot of effort, and we really value the time you invest.