Product Designer

About Understood

Understood is a nonprofit focused on shaping the world for difference. We raise awareness of the challenges and strengths of people who learn and think differently. Our resources help people navigate challenges, gain confidence, and find support and community so they can thrive.

Having a shared commitment to our values is a key factor in any hire we make. We have five core values:

Come be part of an organization with an entrepreneurial spirit that’s helping to shape the world for difference. Together, we can build a world where everyone can reach their full potential.

To learn more about Understood, please visit: www.understood.org.

To advance Understood’s mission and further our impact, we’re hiring a Staff Product Designer, reporting to the Director, Product Design.

The ideal candidate is a systems thinker and experienced product designer who can turn complex customer needs and subject matter expertise into clear, useful digital experiences. You’re deeply curious about people and how they understand, learn, decide, and act. You can design experiences for different users and needs while identifying the patterns and systems that allow those experiences to scale.

You’re energized by ambiguity, committed to inclusive and accessible design, and actively exploring how AI is changing the practice of product design.

This is a hybrid role that requires a minimum of three (3) days a week in our NYC office, with a focus on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. We are a Mac-based environment, and team members are provided a Mac laptop for their work.

• Make sense of complexity: Synthesize research, user behavior, subject matter expertise, and business needs into clear product opportunities and use those insights to make decisions within your projects and work streams.
• Design the right UX: Design digital experiences that respond to different users, needs, subject areas, and content types.
• Design for cognitive diversity: Consider the different ways people notice, understand, decide, act, and recover, and create experiences that reduce unnecessary cognitive demands while preserving user agency.
• Think in systems: See connections across different experiences and determine what should be unique, reused, standardized, or systematized to create consistent, scalable experiences .
• Explore and build: Move from early concepts through detailed interaction design to launch, using prototypes to learn, test ideas, and create clarity.
• Use AI to expand the practice: Apply AI throughout your product design process to increase quality, speed, and the range of solutions you can explore, and share what you learn with other designers and partners.
• Drive clarity and alignment: Use facilitation, systems, and storytelling to move your projects and cross-functional partners from ambiguity to decisions.
• Raise the bar: Strengthen design quality. Bring strong product judgment and craft to your work, identify reusable patterns and approaches, and share your expertise with other designers and partners.
• Lead through influence: Partner across teams to frame complex problems and navigate tradeoffs, while owning design decisions within your projects and work streams.

In this role, you bring deep product design expertise and the ability to own projects and work streams end-to-end.

We don’t expect a perfect match across every category. What matters is relevant experience, genuine interest in the work, and a mindset for growth.

Leadership and people

• Experience: 7+ years of experience in product design or similar roles, with experience owning complex projects or work streams end-to-end.
• Stakeholder and…