Product Designer

Who we are

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 20+ 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 us as a Product Designer embedded in a small, cross-functional team building Timely's next generation of products from the ground up. This is a true 0-to-1 role where you'll partner closely with product managers, engineers, and leadership to shape new experiences for schools. You'll help turn complex, ambiguous problems into thoughtful product solutions while contributing to the growth of design at Timely.

Role & responsibilities:

• Partner with product management to decompose problems, surface and weigh options, and define design solutions.
• Lead design product discovery through customer interviews, workshops, and collaborative ideation.
• Conceptualize and design intuitive user flows and information architecture to support complex 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.
• Support and contribute to our growing design system, ensuring a cohesive platform experience..
• Conduct user interviews and usability testing, asking questions that uncover hidden assumptions and lead to innovative discoveries.
• Prototype and validate ideas quickly before committing to full development cycles.

About your abilities

• Experience: Experience in Product Design or Design Engineering in a B2B SaaS business or adjacent environment. Skills: Strong design thinking, facilitation, and user research skills. Demonstrated expertise using design tools (Figma or other) to craft and communicate solutions... Experience contributing to design systems alongside engineering teams. Understanding of basic front-end development principles. Comfortable using AI throughout your day-to-day design workflow to explore ideas, prototype quickly, and validate solutions. Nice-to-Have: Early-stage startup experience; EdTech experience.

About your mindset

• You thrive in ambiguity and enjoy turning loosely defined problems into thoughtful product solutions.
• You are a strong cross-functional partner who drives alignment, weighs tradeoffs, and delivers practical solutions in an agile environment.
• You are a systems thinker who prioritizes consistency and scalability through the reuse of patterns, creating a cohesive experience across our products.
• You communicate clearly, ask thoughtful questions, and build alignment across teams.
• You have strong opinions backed by evidence, but are comfortable changing course as you learn.

Success milestones:

• 1 month: Build relationships across Product and Engineering. Develop an understanding of Timely's customers, product strategy, and the school scheduling domain. Contribute to early product discovery work. 3 months: Help shape new product direction through research, prototypes, and validated design concepts. Partner closely with Product and Engineering to test and refine solutions. Contribute to the design system. 6 months: Own significant areas of product discovery and design for new product initiatives. Drive work from problem definition through validated solutions. 12 months: Lead the design of major product initiatives. Help shape how product design evolves as Timely's product and design organization continue to grow.

Why join us?

This is a rare opportunity to help shape a new product from the beginning. You'll join a small, fast-moving team where design has an outsized impact on what we build and how we build it. You'll work closely with customers and teammates to solve complex problems while helping grow the design practice at Timely.

If you're someone who thrives on complexity, enjoys building from 0 to 1, and wants to create products that have a direct impact on students and educators, we'd love to hear from you.