Design & Research
United States US ROLES ONLY
Expected Annual Base Salary Range
US Zone 1 (Bay Area)
$200k - $255k
US Zone 2 (NYC & Seattle)
$175k - $220k
US Zone 3 (Major States)
$164k - $205k
Job Overview
The Design & Research teams play a crucial role in Coursera's success by gathering learner & educator insights and translating them into recommendations that help Coursera achieve a seamless experience across its platform.
As a Principal Designer, you will lead and drive strategic initiatives across the **Learning Content Experience**, which includes 11 pods, with their respective designers. Your work will involve creating simplicity from complexity and influencing everything from micro-interactions to programs, delivering learning interfaces for a multitude of content types. Our goal is to make education accessible to all, and we need exceptional designers like you to realize this vision.
Responsibilities
- Set the long-term product design vision and connect that vision to the company strategy.
- Lead organizational change, scaling practices across distributed teams, and navigating ambiguity at the org level.
- Define and navigate highly ambiguous and complex problem spaces, leveraging insights across customer, business, and operational areas to frame initiatives and advocate for a strategic perspective and vision at all levels of the organization.
- Lead and collaborate with multiple cross-functional teams to deliver high-impact initiatives containing numerous product offerings, from concept to launch, ensuring alignment with business objectives and user needs.
- Drive design excellence by optimizing and refining design standards, practices, and methodologies, connecting brand and product design thinking to create novel and compelling solutions.
- Mentor and coach designers, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement within the design team and across the organization.
- Collaborate with senior stakeholders to align technical strategy with experiential outcomes, proposing novel technical and experiential opportunities to elevate the quality, speed, and scale of products and services.
- Engage key stakeholders to secure buy-in and support for strategies through user-centered storytelling, building cross-functional alliances to expand the design function's reach and influence.
- Contribute to establishing business success metrics that include UX and brand quality, ensuring that design initiatives align with and drive the organization's market position and business goals.
- Exceptional communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence and align stakeholders at all levels of the organization.
Qualifications
Basic Qualifications:
- 10+ years of experience as a UX (User Experience) / Product Designer, with a proven track record of leading strategic org-wide design, systems, and product initiatives across multiple teams.
- Expertise in design and collaboration tools (e.g., Figma, FigJam, and others).
- Mastery of UX design skills, including facilitating design workshops, applying solution frameworks, creating user flows, defining IA, and creating wireframes and prototypes.
- Strong visual design and UI skills, with experience leveraging, building upon, and evolving design systems.
- Demonstrated expertise in designing with a mobile-first lens.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience designing for AI products, influencing all aspects of product development that affect the experience, from prompt engineering to novel interaction patterns.
- Experience designing with emerging technologies, e.g., GenAI, and teaching others how to use them.
- Experience as a course instructor or teaching assistant.
- Experience designing for consumer SaaS products, LMS or enterprise products, or consumer mobile, depending on the topic area of interest.
🎯 Core Skill Areas
🧠 Design & Research Expertise
🧩 Tools & Platforms
🤖 Emerging & AI Design Skills
💼 Leadership & Communication
📄 Resume Match Score
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About Coursera
Coursera was launched in 2012 by Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller with a mission to provide universal access to world-class learning. Today, it is one of the largest online learning platforms in the world, with 191 million registered learners as of September 30, 2025. Coursera partners with over 375 leading universities and industry partners to offer a broad catalogue of content and credentials, including courses, Specializations, Professional Certificates, and degrees.
Coursera’s platform innovations — including generative AI-powered features like Coach, Role Play, and Course Builder, and role-based solutions like Skills Tracks — enable instructors, partners, and companies to deliver scalable, personalized, and verified learning. Institutions worldwide rely on Coursera to upskill and reskill their employees, students, and citizens in high-demand fields such as **GenAI, data science, technology, and business, while learners globally turn to Coursera to master the skills they need to advance their careers. Coursera is a Delaware public benefit corporation and a B Corp.
We’re a global platform aiming to transform lives through learning by offering transformative courses, certificates, and degrees that empower learners worldwide to advance their careers through skill mastery. We’re looking for inventors, innovators, and lifelong learners eager to shape the future of education. If you’re ready to build the global programs and tools that fuel the power of online learning, join Team Coursera.
Commitment to Flexibility and Global Diversity
At Coursera, we are committed to building a globally diverse team and are thrilled to extend employment opportunities to individuals in any country where we have a legal entity. We require candidates to possess eligible working rights and have a compatible timezone overlap with their team to facilitate seamless collaboration.
Coursera has a commitment to enabling flexibility and workspace choices for employees. Our interviews and onboarding are entirely virtual, providing a smooth and efficient experience for our candidates. As an employee, we enable you to select your main way of working, whether it's from home, one of our offices or hubs, or a co-working space near you.
Recommended Courses
If this opportunity interests you, you might like these courses on Coursera:
- • Generative AI for Everyone
- • Google UX Certification
- • Design Thinking for the Greater Good
- • Design Led Strategy
Detailed Compensation Structure
The range(s) listed above is the expected annual base salary for this role, subject to change. Salary is just one component of Coursera’s total rewards package. All regular employees are also eligible for a bonus program and equity in the form of RSU’s.
A number of factors are taken into account when determining pay, which includes: job level, location, training/education, business need, skill set and internal equity. Base pay aligns to your zone and will also reflect your experience and role level. Your recruiter will confirm your zone and the applicable range early in the process; we disclose pay ranges where required.
Current Zone Locations:
Compensation for this role is location-based using four U.S. pay zones:
- US-Z1: Bay Area
- US-Z2: NYC and Seattle Metro
- US-Z3: CA, WA, NY, NJ, CO, CT, DC, GA, IL, MA, MD, OR, RI, TX, VA (other states not listed in Z1/Z2)
- US-Z4: All other U.S. states
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