Staff Product Designer

Coursera is looking for a Staff Product Designer to lead the design strategy and execution of a major product area as Coursera and Udemy bring their learning platforms together.

This is a highly senior individual-contributor role combining product strategy, hands-on design, systems thinking, research and cross-functional leadership. You'll work across Product, Engineering, Research and Data Science to turn complex problems into scalable experiences used by millions of learners and customers.

AI is also a significant part of the position. Coursera expects designers at this level to use AI throughout their own design practice — from research synthesis and ideation to rapid prototyping and iteration — while understanding when human judgment should take priority.

Lead design at product and platform level

You'll take ownership of a major area of the product, helping establish both its long-term design direction and the quality of the experiences delivered along the way.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Defining design vision and strategy for a major product area
• Leading projects from early discovery through delivery
• Turning ambiguous problems into clear product opportunities
• Designing new functionality within existing systems
• Establishing new patterns as products and user behaviours evolve
• Working closely with Product Managers and Engineers
• Partnering with Research and Data Science
• Combining qualitative and quantitative insights
• Contributing to and evolving design systems
• Communicating design rationale to senior stakeholders
• Mentoring designers across multiple teams
• Raising the overall bar for design craft and storytelling

You'll need to balance strategic thinking with the ability to remain close to the actual product experience.

AI fluency is a core requirement

Coursera specifically expects working fluency with AI tools as part of the design process.

That could include using AI for:

• Research synthesis
• Concept exploration
• Ideation
• Rapid prototyping
• Content drafting
• Iteration and experimentation

Importantly, Coursera isn't simply looking for someone who uses AI because it's available. You'll need the judgment to understand where AI genuinely improves the process and where it risks replacing thinking that should remain human-led.

Experience designing AI-powered or agentic products — including prompt-based interactions and human-AI collaboration — is also considered a strong advantage.

Want to build deeper AI product design expertise?

Designlab's AI Product Design Certification is designed for experienced designers who want to develop practical capabilities across AI-powered UX workflows, rapid prototyping and the design of AI-enabled products.

Explore the AI Product Design Certification Affiliate link

What Coursera is looking for

This is a Staff-level position requiring 10+ years of experience in UX or Product Design.

Candidates should be able to demonstrate end-to-end ownership of complex products or significant product areas.

Core experience includes:

• Product and UX design
• Product strategy
• User research
• Workshop facilitation
• Research synthesis
• User flows
• Information architecture
• Wireframing and prototyping
• Interaction design
• Visual design
• Design systems
• Responsive and mobile-first design
• Figma and FigJam
• AI-assisted design workflows
• Cross-functional leadership
• Design mentorship

A strong portfolio should demonstrate not only excellent execution but also how your decisions influenced product direction and measurable outcomes.

Experience that could help you stand out

Coursera is particularly interested in candidates with experience designing:

• AI-driven products
• Agentic experiences
• Prompt-based interactions
• Human-AI collaboration
• Consumer SaaS products
• Enterprise platforms
• EdTech products

Experience using AI to fundamentally change how you design, rather than simply adding AI functionality to products, is especially relevant.

That might include building AI-assisted prototypes or lightweight internal tools to test ideas and learn faster.

Designing at scale

You'll be working on experiences serving a very large and diverse audience.

That requires understanding how individual design decisions interact with existing systems and how new patterns can scale across different products, customers and use cases.

You'll partner with research and data teams to ensure decisions aren't based purely on intuition, combining user evidence, behavioural data and business context to determine product direction.

Leadership without leaving the craft

Although this is a Staff position, the role remains deeply connected to hands-on design.

You'll be expected to influence senior stakeholders and mentor other designers while continuing to contribute directly to product strategy, interaction models, prototypes and final experiences.

It's a role for a designer who can move comfortably between strategic product questions and detailed design decisions.

Portfolio

Your portfolio should demonstrate senior-level ownership of complex product problems, ideally showing how you:

• Created clarity from ambiguity
• Influenced product strategy
• Used research and data to make decisions
• Designed scalable systems and experiences
• Collaborated across multiple disciplines
• Led work from discovery through delivery
• Influenced other designers and senior stakeholders

Examples involving AI products, large-scale platforms, SaaS, enterprise products or EdTech would be particularly relevant.