Design Lead

GiveCampus is the world's leading fundraising platform for non-profit educational institutions. Trusted by 1,300+ colleges, universities, and K-12 schools, our mission is to help advance the quality, the affordability, and the accessibility of education. We received a seed investment from Y Combinator in 2015 and have pursued a strategy of 'Sustainable Growth' ever since: achieving six consecutive years of profitability and positive cash-flow while more than quadrupling our revenue, our customer base, and our team. In 2022, we raised $50 million to accelerate the next stage of our growth.

Through The GiveCampus Social Mobility Initiative, we've donated $1 million in free fundraising support for programs that help low-income students, first-generation students, and underrepresented minorities. And in 2022 and 2023, we were named to Y Combinator's Top Companies list and the Inc. 5000 list of America's fastest-growing private companies.

While we operate at meaningful scale (we've facilitated more than $6 billion in charitable giving), we’re still small relative to the commercial and social good opportunities in front of us. Every GiveCampus employee has a substantial impact on our trajectory, and we're growing to help schools achieve even greater results.

Our purpose-driven team of 90+ is located across the US: team members work from anywhere they choose. We have a beautiful 12,000sf office in Washington, DC that is available for people to use whenever they want, and we regularly organize team meet-ups, events, and retreats in various locations. We're looking to expand our team with diverse and collaborative doers who believe in our mission and the transformative power of affordable, high-quality education.

Role

At GiveCampus, we design products that tangibly improve the lives of the people who use them: students, alumni, fundraisers, and school leaders. We’re now hiring a Design Lead—our most senior Product Design hire—to help us build a world-class design function while shipping high-quality, high-impact products.

As a player-coach, you’ll be both a hands-on designer responsible for end-to-end work across multiple B2B2C products, and a mentor to other designers across the org. You’ll report to the Head of Product and collaborate deeply with your Product teammates, Engineering, Marketing, Partner Success, and more. This is a pivotal role with significant influence on our product strategy, design culture, and ultimately, the future of education philanthropy.

Successful Outcomes

• Impact: Drive measurable business and user value by defining elegant, effective solutions to complex problems. Elevate the quality of what we ship and drive user adoption, usage, and retention by applying systems thinking, user empathy, and design best practices.

• Implementation: Lead and continuously improve a scalable, lightweight, iterative product design process across squads. Instill strong design practices that increase both product quality and team velocity.
• Design Quality: Set the standard for excellence in UX and UI across the organization. Produce consistently thoughtful, well-crafted designs that solve real problems and inspire others to raise their own craft. Leverage emerging AI tools and systems thinking to move faster without sacrificing quality.
• Coaching & Leadership: Actively coach and level up designers through structured design reviews, mentorship, and thought partnership. Be a trusted source of feedback, growth, and strategic design thinking across the team.
• Foundations: Evolve and expand our design systems, visual language, and component libraries. Ensure consistency, scalability, and efficiency across all products and surfaces.
• Expertise: Be the in-house expert on end-to-end product design—from scrappy concepting and rapid prototyping to user research, information architecture, interaction design, and visual design. 
• User Success: Advocate fiercely for the user. Build deep empathy with our partner schools and their communities, and ensure their voices are represented in every product decision.

Experience

• Leadership: Led end-to-end product design in high-stakes environments—startups, consulting, or high-growth teams—where design had clear, measurable impact. Experience as a design mentor or player-coach strongly preferred.
• Execution: Proven ability to independently own and drive design initiatives from zero to one and from one to scale. Can prioritize ruthlessly, move quickly, and make smart decisions with limited data.
• Coaching & Reviews: Experience mentoring other designers, running structured critiques, and upleveling team design quality. You know how to give feedback that’s direct, actionable, and growth-oriented.
• Design Mastery: 8+ years of experience across product design, UX/UI, interaction design, and user research. Demonstrated craft excellence, with a portfolio that shows both breadth and depth of impact.
• AI-Enhanced Workflow: Experience using AI-powered tools for prototyping, wireframing, or ideation—and excitement about using them to increase both speed and quality. Constantly explores new ways to reduce lift on repetitive work and spend more time on high-leverage problem solving.
• Technical: Strong proficiency with design and prototyping tools—especially Figma. Able to work closely with engineers and PMs to translate high-level concepts into polished, scalable solutions.

Cultural Characteristics

• Dynamic, emerging leader who is better at listening than speaking
• Thrives in ambiguity, creates order in chaos, and consistently thinks two steps ahead
• Hands-on builder excited to go deep into technical requirements, user flows, and data
• Strong collaborator who will naturally work cross-functionally but is also comfortable operating independently
• Intensely curious, always pushing to understand why things are the way they are and how they got that way
• Operates with a sense of urgency, maintains a fast pace, always pushing for faster
• Holds themself and others to high standards; always pursues excellence
• Deep sense of ownership and accountability; low maintenance, low drama
• Runs towards big, ambitious goals rather than away from them
• Passionate about advancing the quality, affordability, and accessibility of education
• Radical empathy for end users