Senior Product Designer in North East

About Us

Pocket Prep is a leading mobile and web-based learning platform offering efficient and affordable study solutions for professional certifications. We believe that education should be within everyone's reach. Professional certification exams are often a stressful and expensive barrier to career advancement — Pocket Prep strives to prepare our members to pass with confidence.

Design at Pocket Prep

Our design team is focused on improving our products to bring more value to our users while supporting the needs of the business. We believe good design is built on listening and caring — about our users, our craft, and each other. We treat design as a facilitator and collaborator, not a gatekeeper. We embrace a spirit of improvement, welcome feedback generously, and believe that being clear is being kind. We're grounded by our design process — it's not a rigid checklist, but a guide that keeps us thoughtful and makes sure important steps don't get skipped.

About the Role

We're looking for a product design generalist who is confident across the full product design process and brings excellent collaboration and communication skills to every project. You know how to listen well, align a team around a shared direction, and deliver design work that is both thoughtful and high-quality. Our designers are leaders — not managers, but people who take ownership, advocate for the user, and shape the direction of the product. This role is an opportunity to grow with our design team and make a meaningful impact on a product used by hundreds of thousands of learners. You’ll work across both defined initiatives and more open-ended discovery work within a product squad — a Product Manager, Designer, and Engineer collaborating closely to understand problems and drive toward business outcomes.

What You Will Do

• Lead product design for defined initiatives end-to-end — collaborating with the product team to shape and scope work through to dev handoff, dev support, and release.
• Work within a product squad — a Product Manager, Designer, and Engineer collaborating closely to understand the problem space, explore solutions, and drive toward outcomes that bring value to users and the business.
• Lead, participate in, and share user research, including interviews, usability testing, and survey data, to ground design decisions in real user needs.
• Consult product analytics (Amplitude) regularly to understand how users interact with our product, inform design decisions, and assess the impact of design changes post-launch.
• Create wireframes and hi-fidelity designs in Figma, contributing to and maintaining our design library for consistency and quality across the product.
• Advocate for design across the company by promoting best practices and communicating the value of design in how you conduct and share your work.
• Be a shaper of our design team, contributing to a collaborative team culture and supporting the growth of designers at every level.
• Participate in design jams by sharing work in progress and giving feedback to the design team.

About You

Required:

• 5+ years of product design experience.
• Experience designing for mobile apps and/or web platforms (iOS, Android, web).
• Strong technical knowledge of devices, development constraints, and common product development pitfalls.
• Proficiency with Figma.
• A portfolio that showcases senior-level work — projects where you were the design lead, with clear goals, evidence of collaboration and process, and outcomes tied to business goals and metrics.
• Strong communication skills and comfort presenting work.

Preferred:

• Experience with user research methods.
• Experience building and maintaining design systems.
• Familiarity with Continuous Discovery and the Product Trio model.
• Located in Durham, NC or the Triangle area.

You also bring:

• Excitement for the workforce education space.
• Comfort with ambiguity and a collaborative approach to resolving it.
• A strategic, systems-thinking mindset.
• Alignment with our design values.
• A collaborative spirit — you're energized by working with others and believe we can create better experiences together.

You're excited about our culture:

• Embrace a spirit of improvement and welcome feedback.
• Choose curiosity instead of judgment.
• Share your opinions and perspectives, and kindly disagree when you see things differently.
• Love for continued learning, individually and as a team.

Benefits

• Stability: We’re 10+ years old, 100% profitable without investor backing, and we continue to have year-over-year growth.
• Work/Life Balance: Freedom to live your life while building something awesome in the education space. Flexible PTO and a 3-week company-wide holiday break from mid-December through New Year.
• Competitive Compensation: Generous profit-sharing program and base pay. This role will pay $[TBD range] based on experience.
• 401k matching: 100% company match up to 6% per paycheck.
• Professional Development Budget: Yearly funds for conferences, workshops, or resources to help you grow professionally.
• 100% Healthcare: We cover all of our employees’ healthcare premiums because we are invested in your well-being. We also cover 80% of dependents.
• Paid Parental Leave: Paid time off to welcome a new baby.
• Disability Coverage: Short term and long term disability plans offered.
• Life Insurance: Optional life insurance plans offered.
• Remote Flexibility: You can work where and when you are most effective. We have an office in the American Tobacco Campus in downtown Durham. We’re supportive of remote work options.
• Give Back: We are active participants in our communities through volunteer partnerships with local nonprofits. We offer VTO (volunteer time off) for independent engagement with your community.