Product Designer

School scheduling is a hard problem, one that technology was meant to solve. Yet for decades, the master schedule has been built by hand, consuming educators’ valuable time while delivering a sub-optimal result for students. We started Timely to build the tool we wish we had when we were in schools. And today, we are changing how schools create high quality schedules for teachers and students. Timely combines groundbreaking AI technology with support from a team of expert school schedulers: saving schedulers’ time, and surfacing opportunities for leaders to unlock staff potential. Timely delivers optimized master schedules that are more efficient, accommodate diverse educator needs, and enable student access to courses and pathways that impact their lives.

Our district and school partners agree: scheduling is a key opportunity for educational innovation, and that Timely is the indispensable partner in addressing the challenge. We’re experiencing exciting growth as a company, while doubling down on our mission and people-centered approach to leveraging powerful technology. We serve districts and charter school organizations across 15+ states, growing (and renewing) at rates that lead the education technology industry. This growth has been driven by our strong product-market fit, deep understanding of education, and commitment to customer success.

This is where you come in…

About this role

Join as our first Product Designer: a colleague who will help define and build product design standards, processes, and culture. You'll work directly with product managers, engineers, and leadership, blending hands-on execution with a longer range design vision to shape our product experience.

Role & responsibilities:

• Conceptualize and design intuitive user flows and information architecture to support complex educational and administrative workflows

• Create wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity designs for our web applications

• Collaborate with engineering to design feasible solutions that take into account technical constraints

• Establish a scalable design system, including component libraries, and interaction patterns

• Conduct user interviews and usability testing. Ask the right questions that uncover hidden assumptions and lead to innovative discoveries

• Partner with product management to decompose problems, surface and weigh options, and define design solutions

• Prototype and test rapidly to validate ideas before committing to full development cycles

• Bring insights from design research, tools, and trends to help the team innovate and align on modern product experiences

About your abilities

• Experience: 5-7 years of UX/Product Design experience in a B2B SaaS business or adjacent environment, with demonstrated growth in complexity and responsibility.

• Skills: Demonstrated expertise in Figma. Applied experience with AI-guided design tools. Success building design systems alongside engineering teams. Proficient with user research methodologies.

• Nice-to-Have: Early-stage startup experience (first/second design hire); EdTech experience; understanding of front-end development principles.

About your mindset

• You relish connecting the details to the big picture, and vice versa. You look to connect your day-to-day designs to Timely’s strategic product goals. We value designers who think like product managers.

• You are a strong cross-functional partner who drives alignment, weighs tradeoffs, and delivers product solutions in an agile environment.

• You are a systems thinker who drives consistency through the reuse of patterns to create a cohesive experience across our products.

• You have excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to build alignment with cross-functional teams and leadership.

Success milestones:

• 1 month: Gain a clear understanding of Timely’s strategic and market context and how it applies to our unique scheduling application. Build relationships within the product development squad and across cross-functional partners. Contribute localized design improvements to in-progress product development work.

• 3 months: Develop a deep understanding of the school scheduling domain and associated user workflows. Build a comprehensive understanding of the Timely product—what it enables and where it falls short for users. Partner with Product to deliver options and designs for key initiatives. Contribute to legacy design systems.

• 6 months: Leverage the trust you’ve built to take ownership of design decisions within the scheduling app. Expand your understanding of design needs across all Timely products.

• 12 months: Lead the design of major product initiatives, including new products. Implement scalable design processes.

Why join us?

This is a rare opportunity to join a company at an inflection point where design can have outsized impact. You'll have the autonomy to shape not just what we build, but how we think about design as an organization. You'll work with a team that values both craft and speed, and you'll have direct access to users and stakeholders to validate your work.

If you're someone who thrives on complexity, loves to dig deep into problems, and wants to build something with a direct impact on students and educators, we'd love to hear from you.