Head of Design (San Francisco)

Design | Full-Time
Location: San Francisco (relocation assistance provided)

At Ello, our mission is simple and urgent: maximize the potential of every child, everywhere.

Were building the worlds first AI teacher to close that gap: one that listens, speaks, adapts, and inspires, just like the best human educators.

Our first product, Read with Ello, is already helping tens of thousands of kids each week learn to read. It listens as they read aloud, offers support when they stumble, and generates magical, personalized stories using generative AI. It worksand kids love it.

Now, were scaling that success into something even bigger: a complete AI teacher for all children. Were building a real-time learning platformone that combines language, speech, and memory to power personalized, interactive education for kids worldwide. Were moving fast: we ship weekly, test directly with kids and families, and push the boundaries of what AI can do in education.

With the resources of the world's top investors and the heart of a public benefit corporation, were here to revolutionize how children learn globally. Featured on TIMEs Best Inventions and Fortunes Change the World, Ello is a small, mission-driven team taking on one of the most important challenges of our time: to democratize education.

About the role

Were looking for a Head of Design to lead Ellos creative vision and scale our design practice across product, marketing, and content. Youll shape how our AI tutor looks, feels, and behavesguiding a growing team and ensuring design excellence at every level. With engineering velocity moving faster than ever, your role is critical: we need a design culture that not only keeps up with rapid iteration, but actively fuels it. Youll help us build a design culture that can match the ambition of Ellos vision for innovation and growth, raising the bar for product quality, design maturity, and cross-functional collaboration

This is a high-impact, high-ownership role that blends creative vision, operational excellence, and people leadership. You will work directly with Ellos Co-Founder & CTO, Catalin Voss, and collaborate closely with our other Co-Founders, CEO Tom Sayer and CXO Elizabeth Adams. In this role, youll serve as both a creative compass and a strategic leaderhelping us imagine, define, and build magical learning experiences for kids around the world.

Were looking for an experienced creative leader who thrives at the intersection of imagination and execution. Youve shipped beautiful, high-impact products and built teams and systems that made that possible. Youre excited about working in person in San Francisco. Youre hands-on when needed. And you care deeply about creating joyful, meaningful experiences for kids.

Responsibilities

Company-Wide Creative Direction & Design Culture

• Define and maintain the creative direction and principles across Ellos product and marketing ecosystem

• Uphold a high-quality visual bar and ensure consistency across illustration, animation, and interface design

• Lead team critiques and feedback loops to foster continuous improvement

• Build and strengthen Ellos design culture, including training, upskilling, and mentoring team members outside of the design team (e.g. engineering and marketing )

• Champion design excellence across the company and help instill design thinking cross-functionally

Design Leadership across Product and Marketing

• Collaborate closely with our Product and Engineering leadership to shape product direction and user experience

• Collaborate closely with our Marketing leadership to shape our go-to-market and lifecycle marketing

• Champion a deep understanding of our userstheir needs, motivations, and challengesand ensure every experience we design is intuitive, purposeful, and grounded in real customer insight.

Project & Art Production Management

• Own creative timelines and milestone planning

• Coordinate assets across illustration, animation, and UI design workflows

• Manage and refine the art and asset production pipeline for scalability and efficiency

• Optimize the systems and processes to support smoother creative execution

• Serve as the connective tissue between creative, engineering, product, and marketing teams

• Lead clear, proactive communication across disciplines to reduce ambiguity

• Facilitate sprint planning, retros, and updates with clarity

• Anticipate and flag timeline risks, resourcing gaps, or potential blockers

• Manage contract illustrators, animators, and other vendors as needed to ensure high-quality deliverables

• Draft and oversee briefs, scopes of work, and delivery requirements for contract work

Required Experience

• 7+ years of experience in creative production, preferably across mobile apps, games, or interactive experiences

• Demonstrated ability to lead a team through multiple product cycles, from concept to delivery

• A practiced leader of visual storytelling with a strong portfolio in illustration, animation, and UI

• Comfortable managing and mentoring creative teams while being hands-on when needed

• Experienced in coordinating cross-functional teams, including artists, animators, PMs, engineers, and marketers

• Deeply organized and proactive with excellent project management skills

• Exceptional written and visual communicator with high emotional intelligence and collaborative energy

• Experience using tools for design workflows & collaboration (e.g., Figma, Linear, Drive, Notion)

Nice-to-haves:

• Experience in edtech, mobile gaming, publishing, or animation

• Prior success in building and scaling creative pipelines

A note on immigration

We dont shy away from sponsoring US visas and green card petitions. Our CTO and CEO have each gone through their own immigration journeys and are familiar with the challenges. We have successfully secured O-1 visas, H-1B transfers, etc. for Ello employees and retain top immigration counsel.

About Ello

Ello is a public benefit corporation on a mission to maximize the potential of all children. Were currently around 45 people, headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in So Paulo, Brazil; Nairobi, Kenya; and New York.

Our team has deep expertise in artificial intelligence, K-12 education, and child development across institutions such as Stanford, Berkeley, Google, Apple, and more. We were part of Y Combinators W20 batch and are funded by world-class investors including Goodwater Capital, Homebrew, Reed Hastings, Common Sense Growth, Ravensburger, Project A Ventures, Reach Capital, Khosla Ventures, WndrCo, Visible Ventures, and K9 Ventures.

Were a small, collaborative team that takes each others voices very seriously. Because our mission is to support all children, it is critical that our team is representative of the communities we work in; we place significant emphasis on ensuring diversity in our team and inclusion in our culture.

We feel enormously privileged to be one of the few companies that has the opportunity to take a shot at truly revolutionizing education with AI at this inflection point in technology. We dont take it for granted, so we work quite hard to turn that vision into reality with urgency. We want to create an environment in which we can all be our best selves, use our strengths to take Ello forward, and develop our own skills. We want to have fun while working hard to do impactful things that were proud of and we believe its possible to do both.

At Ello, we view diversity as a moral imperative and a competitive advantage. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, skin color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We plan and structure our interviews to directly assess skills and experience. If you need any accommodations throughout the interview process, please reach out to [email protected]