Associate Product Designer

About Niche

Niche is the leader in school search. Our mission is to make researching and enrolling in schools easy, transparent, and free. With in-depth profiles on every school and college in America, 140 million reviews and ratings, and powerful search tools, we help millions of people find the right school for them. We also help thousands of schools recruit more best-fit students, by highlighting what makes them great and making it easier to visit and apply.

Niche is all about finding where you belong, and that mission inspires how we operate every day. We want Niche to be a place where people truly enjoy working and can thrive professionally.

About The Role

Every year, millions of families start the school search process. Students wade through a sea of information and decisions to make, and unfortunately access to help hasn’t changed much in decades: it’s not super clear what your options are, and you might not feel confident that a school is right for them, or think you’ll be able to afford it.

Niche is on a mission to make researching and enrolling in schools easy, transparent, and free. Students need support choosing a school and paying for their education, schools want to find students who will thrive on their campus, and families need help supporting their students every step of the way. Niche helps ensure that it’s not just students already confident about college who get enrolled and can afford to attend.

As an Associate Product Designer at Niche, you will work closely with senior designers and cross-functional teammates to create and deliver user flows, interfaces and prototypes that address user needs and drive meaningful impact to product goals. As a member of the Enroll pod, you will support the creation of intuitive, thoughtful experiences for two main user types (students and partners) in the mid-to-bottom funnel. Your solutions will help guide and nurture students through enrollment, and ensure college partners are able to engage with them effectively through to their first day of class. 

This role is ideal for someone early in their design career who is eager to grow, learn, and master their design process from solution definition to launch and iteration.

What You Will Do

• Evaluate the current state user experience and work cross-functionally with Product, Data, and Engineering to identify UX/UI issues preventing users from getting the most value out of Niche, propose and implement improvements
• Support senior designers on larger projects by creating user flows, wireframes, and high-fidelity prototypes that address clear user and business needs
• Assist others with lightweight evaluative/usability research to test solutions, analysis results and apply the findings to your designs
• Create clear design specs and collaborate with engineers to support smooth handoff and implementation
• Leverage qualitative and quantitative data to understand what’s working/not working, iterate on shipped experiences, and improve performance
• Participate in design critiques, team rituals, cross-functional meetings
• Support documentation and maintenance of design patterns, in partnership with senior designers and design system contributors

During the First Month:

• Learn about Niche by meeting with various team members to learn more about our company through our Onboarding meetings
• Meet and get familiar with your cross-functional team, the designers you’re supporting, and key stakeholders
• Understand the company mission and vision, business model, and current state of the product
• Get familiar with our design tools, knowledge base, and research insights with help from other designers
• Join product team meetings and sprint cycles, starting with shadowing senior designers on projects in flight and stepping in to help under their direction

Within 3 Months:

• Fully operating in your role, assisting senior designers in your surface area with defining the solution space for well-understood problems, through to shipping
• Assisting with evaluative research (testing your own solutions)
• Starting to tackle new projects with support from senior designers
• Giving and receiving constructive and thoughtful feedback in design reviews and critiques

Within 6 Months:

• Comfortable identifying and advocating for improvements, both for the user experience in your area, as well as the way team work gets done and how collaboration happens
• Becoming proficient in your design process, solving defined problems with a deep understanding of business objectives, user needs, and technical constraints

Within 12 Months:

• Growing autonomy with defining and developing solutions independently, with reviews and oversight from senior designers
• Strong understanding of products across Niche, recognizing patterns and starting to contribute to design strategy in your surface area
• Building skills necessary for a potential future promotion to Career level

What We Are Looking For

• At least 1 year of professional experience in a product/UX design role, where you have designed solutions and worked with Engineering to deliver them live to production
• All applicants must submit a portfolio of product experiences that showcase user flows, interface design, prototypes, polish and shipping. Please include examples of how you organized your designs and docs, such as Figma file hierarchies, documenting and prioritizing feedback, handoff processes, etc
• Great taste and keen eye for craft and quality, sweating the details and using your knowledge of industry patterns and trends  to deliver visually appealing solutions with great usability
• Familiar with Figma, design systems, and other modern design tools – no prior experience with generative AI is required
• Curious and eager to understand user behavior, mental models, and product constraints
• Able to balance user needs, business goals, and technical constraints
• Proactively collaborate to overcome challenges, seek assistance to unblock yourself
• Comfortable iterating quickly with feedback from users, PMs, engineers, key stakeholders
• Resilience and flexibility that helps you adapt to a fast-paced work environment, frequent changes, and considerable ambiguity 
• Bonus if you have experience with visual design for digital products, design systems and component libraries, and/or analyzing and interpreting data

Compensation 

Our national target base salary range is $94,000-$115,000, plus participation in our Annual Bonus and Stock Option Program. Base compensation will be commensurate with experience and skills.

At Niche, our Total Rewards Philosophy is centered around creating a workplace environment that attracts, motivates, and retains top talent by providing a comprehensive and competitive rewards package.  This philosophy is built on the principles of performance-based compensation, best-in-class benefits and work-life balance, and employee well-being.

Interview Process

Candidate experience is a top priority for our talent and hiring teams.  We believe in providing a transparent, authentic and comprehensive interview process where you have the opportunity to learn about us while we get to know you and your experience.  The interview process is outlined here:

• Phone Screen with Talent Acquisition Partner - 30 Minutes

• Video Interview with Hiring Manager - 45 Minutes

• Portfolio Presentation - 60 Minutes 

• Panel/Team Interview - 45 Minutes

Why Niche?

• We are a fully flexible workforce empowering our employees to choose to work remotely, in our Pittsburgh office or whatever combination suits you
• Full time, salaried position with competitive compensation in a fast-growing company
• Best-in-class 100% paid employee health plan, including vision and dental and supplemental coverage
• Flexible Paid Time Off Policy
• Stipend that allows you to build your work from home office in a style and function that suits your personal preferences
• Parental leave for all employees (12 weeks fully paid) in addition to short term disability for birthing parents
• Meaningful 401(k) with employer match
• Your ideas and work will make an immediate impact on our company and millions of users
• You will join a team that cares about you, our mission, our work - and celebrates our wins together!

Niche will only employ those who are legally authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship now or in the future for this opening.  

We are currently hiring in states where we currently have employees: AZ, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MO, NE, NV, NH, NJ, NY, NC, OH, OK, OR, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, WA, DC, WV.

Candidates only.  No recruiters or agencies, please. Sorry, we do not offer relocation assistance.

Niche is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering an inclusive, innovative environment with the best employees. Therefore, we provide employment opportunities without regard to age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or any other protected status in accordance with applicable law.

All interviews are being held remotely. If there are preparations we can make to help ensure you have a comfortable and positive interview experience, please let us know.