Job Overview

Coursera is on a mission to make world-class, skills-first learning accessible to everyone. The Skills & Credentials team powers how global learners discover, track, and validate their skills across the platform — shaping pathways from individual learning activities to meaningful career outcomes.

We’re seeking a Staff Product Designer to lead complex, platform-level initiatives within this team. This is not a feature execution role — it is a platform and systems role responsible for shaping the foundational infrastructure behind Coursera’s Skills and Mastery taxonomies, Learner Object, Career Graph, and credentialing architecture.

This role requires someone who can navigate ambiguity, bring structure to complexity, influence cross-functional partners, and translate technical and educational concepts into simple, elegant, and actionable user experiences..

What you’ll do

• Own the evolution and governance of the core taxonomies (Skills, Career, Mastery), ensuring consistency across content, roles, measurement systems, and credentials.
• Define the structural logic of the Career Graph, including metadata, tagging models, and frameworks.
• Lead the design of skill measurement systems (Skill Scores, Mastery) and credentials (Certificates, Badges), connecting assessment logic to meaningful learner outcomes.
• Translate complex, ambiguous problem spaces into coherent information architectures, interaction models, and scalable system patterns that other teams can build upon.
• Partner deeply with Product, Engineering, Research, SMEs, and Data Science to ensure solutions are technically feasible, privacy-conscious, and strategically aligned.
• Use research, analytics, and experimentation to inform decisions, validate assumptions, and measure impact — including learner engagement, skill attainment, and credential adoption.
• Influence product and platform direction by advocating for structured, coherent, human-centered systems.
• Mentor designers and elevate craft excellence, systems thinking, and rigorous design practices.

What success looks like

• Leads strategic design initiatives spanning multiple teams and product areas.
• Demonstrates deep systems thinking, connecting flows, information architecture, and components into cohesive, scalable experiences.
• Defines foundational systems that other teams build upon, including the Career Graph, taxonomies, Learner Object, and credentialing architecture.
• Delivers end-to-end design ownership, from problem framing through iteration, validation, and measurable outcomes.
• Partners effectively across functions to influence product direction and align decisions with user needs and platform strategy.
• Maintains a high bar for craft across interaction, visual, responsive, and accessible design.
• Clearly communicates rationale, trade-offs, and impact to stakeholders at all levels.
• Strengthens design culture by mentoring peers and raising the bar for collaboration, feedback, craft, and storytelling.

Basic Qualifications

• 7–9+ years of experience in UX or Product Design, with a portfolio demonstrating complex, end-to-end solutions, platform thinking, and measurable impact.
• Strong systems thinking and technical fluency — comfortable designing across platform architectures, data models, object relationships, and engineering constraints.
• Deep expertise in information architecture and interaction design, with the ability to produce rigorous artifacts (journey maps, service blueprints, domain models, data flows, taxonomies, content models) that align cross-functional teams.
• Ability to define structure before screens — shaping foundational logic, metadata models, and scalable design patterns.
• High bar for craft across interaction, visual, responsive, and accessible design.
• Experience using research, analytics, and experimentation to prioritize trade-offs, validate decisions, and measure impact.
• Demonstrated ability to influence cross-functional stakeholders, drive alignment, and lead through ambiguity in complex, system-oriented problem spaces.
• Excellent communication and storytelling skills, with experience mentoring and elevating the craft of others.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing AI-driven or ML-informed platforms.
• Experience in EdTech, enterprise SaaS, or complex consumer platforms.
• Experience defining cross-product frameworks, taxonomies, or object models.
• Passion for learning, career development, and skill-based outcomes.

Compensation

Coursera offers competitive pay and fair compensation practices across all regions. Job titles may span multiple career levels, and the targeted hiring base salary range for this role in Canada is $140,000 - $175,000. Actual compensation will depend on factors such as experience, education, transferable skills, business needs, and location. This range may be adjusted over time and may include eligibility for variable pay, equity, and comprehensive benefits.

Keep Learning

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

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