Edtech.com's Summary

College Board is hiring a Senior Service Designer, Design CoE. This role involves shaping the end-to-end service experience of the Authentic Work Platform by designing across multiple domains, applying systems thinking, conducting user research, aligning cross-functional teams, and integrating AI responsibly to enhance assessment experiences for millions of users.

Highlights

Design and steward end-to-end service journeys for the Authentic Work Platform lifecycle including onboarding, creation, delivery, scoring, reporting, and support.
Apply systems thinking to improve complex relationships among users, policies, processes, and technical platforms.
Develop and maintain service blueprints, journey maps, ecosystem maps, and information architecture to guide platform strategy and execution.
Plan and conduct generative and evaluative research with diverse user groups, synthesizing insights to inform decisions.
Facilitate cross-team alignment through workshops and evolving design standards, without overriding team ownership.
Design AI-integrated service experiences that balance authenticity, transparency, user control, and policy requirements while considering equity, accessibility, security, and privacy.
Mentor and contribute to the growth of the service design practice at College Board.
Proficient with Figma, Miro, Dovetail, and research synthesis tools; strong communication and storytelling skills.
Requires a bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in relevant fields, significant service design experience, and ability to influence without authority.
Compensation ranges from $112,000 to $154,000, with adjustments based on location and experience.

Senior Service Designer, Design CoE Full Description

College Board - Technology

Location: This is a fully remote role. Candidates who live near CB offices have the option of being fully remote or hybrid (Tuesday and Wednesday in office)

Type: This is a full-time position

About the Team

The User Centered Platforms and Practices team is where product, content, design, and engineering come together to reimagine how work happens at College Board. We are systems thinkers, facilitators, and builders focused on creating the connective tissue—tools, platforms, and practices—that enable teams to deliver high-quality, user-centered products at scale.

You'll partner closely with product, engineering, research, and program teams working on the Authentic Work Platform (AWP)—College Board's next-generation, software-as-a-service platform for creating, delivering, scoring, and reporting authentic student work across K-12, higher education, and professional contexts.

About the Opportunity

College Board is a mission-driven, not-for-profit organization committed to clearing a path for all students to own their future. As generative AI reshapes education, College Board is leading the Future of Assessment—ensuring that student work remains authentic, meaningful, secure, and reflective of the skills needed to thrive in an AI-enabled world.

The Authentic Work Platform (AWP) builds on the trusted Bluebook digital assessment system to support the full lifecycle of authentic work: onboarding institutions, creating tasks and content, delivering secure experiences, scoring and evaluating work (with and without AI), and reporting outcomes back to students, educators, institutions, and providers. The platform supports daily classroom assignments, district and state assessments, and high-stakes exams—at massive scale and with uncompromising standards for trust, reliability, and equity.

As a Senior Service Designer, you will play a critical role in shaping the end-to-end, platform-wide service experience of AWP. This role operates in an active platform transformation, where foundational service decisions made now will shape how millions of users experience assessment over the next decade. This is not a single-product or single-surface role. You will design across domains, programs, and user types—ensuring that AWP feels like one coherent, intuitive platform rather than a collection of disconnected tools.

You will bring deep service design expertise, systems thinking, and strong facilitation skills to complex, ambiguous problem spaces. You will influence without formal authority, helping align designers and teams through shared journeys, principles, and standards, while grounding decisions in user research and operational realities

In this role, you will:

Platform-Level Service Design & Strategy (40%)

Design and steward end-to-end service journeys across the full Authentic Work Platform lifecycle: onboard, create, get ready, deliver, score, report, and support.
Apply systems thinking to map and improve complex relationships across users, programs, policies, processes, and technical platforms.
Develop and maintain service blueprints, journey maps, ecosystem maps, and information architecture artifacts that guide platform strategy and execution.
Help product and technology teams prioritize work by clearly linking user needs, service insights, and platform goals.
Partner with product and technology leadership to shape platform strategy, major service investments, and cross-program design decisions.
Ensure key capabilities and components (e.g., onboarding, help, scoring workflows, reporting patterns) are designed once and reused effectively across domains.

Research, Insight, and Decision Support (25%)

Plan and conduct generative and evaluative research across diverse user groups, including students, educators, administrators, coordinators, and providers.
Synthesize qualitative and quantitative data into clear, actionable insights that inform product, service, and platform decisions.
Translate research findings into compelling narratives and design artifacts that support alignment and decision-making at multiple levels.
Partner with product, data, and research teams to embed user insights consistently into planning, delivery, and iteration.

Cross-Team Alignment & Design Stewardship (20%)

Act as a steward of the platform-wide service experience, helping align designers across teams through shared principles, patterns, and journey frameworks.
Facilitate workshops and working sessions that bring together design, product, engineering, and operational stakeholders.
Contribute to the evolution of shared design standards, service patterns, and ways of working—without dictating solutions or overriding team ownership.
Communicate complex ideas clearly and accessibly, using plain language and inclusive design practices.

Designing for AI, Trust, and Scale (10%)

Design service experiences that responsibly enable, constrain, or integrate AI—balancing authenticity, transparency, user control, and policy requirements.
Consider equity, accessibility, security, privacy, and accommodations as first-class design inputs, especially in high-stakes contexts.
Account for operational realities such as reliability, fault tolerance, and scalability when shaping service concepts and recommendations.

Practice Growth & Contribution (5%)

Contribute to the growth of service design practice at College Board through mentorship, shared tools, templates, and evolving methods.
Stay current on emerging trends in service design, systems thinking, and platform design, bringing fresh perspectives to the team.

What Success Looks Like

Educators, students, and administrators experience AWP as one coherent, intuitive platform across classroom and high-stakes use cases.
Teams reuse shared journeys, patterns, and components rather than reinventing core services.
Platform decisions are visibly grounded in user research and service insights.
Service design recommendations are translated into shipped capabilities and measurable improvements in user experience across multiple programs.
Complex tradeoffs across programs, policies, and technologies are surfaced early and addressed thoughtfully through design.

About You

To qualify for this role, you must have:

A portfolio demonstrating end-to-end service design work for complex systems or platforms.
A bachelor's degree in a related field (e.g., interaction design, HCI, information science, industrial design, computer science, social sciences, graphic design) and/or equivalent professional experience designing for complex service ecosystems.
Significant experience in service design, with a track record of leading end-to-end service projects that connect user needs, business goals, and delivery systems.
Experience applying systems thinking to identify pain points, map complex relationships, and improve processes across touchpoints.
The ability to shape and communicate service strategies through tools like service blueprints, ecosystem maps, and journey maps.
A commitment to designing ethically responsible and inclusive services that consider equity and long-term impact.
Fluency in service design artifacts such as service blueprints, journey maps, ecosystem diagrams, and information architecture.
Experience planning and conducting generative and evaluative research and translating insights into clear design direction.
The ability to influence and align cross-functional teams without formal authority.
Excellent communication and storytelling skills, tailored to technical and non-technical audiences.
Proficiency with tools such as Figma, Miro, Dovetail, and research synthesis tools.
A proactive, self-directed mindset, with the confidence to navigate ambiguity and take ownership of outcomes within cross-functional teams.
Curiosity and a growth mindset—you stay up to date on design trends, tools, and practices, and regularly bring fresh thinking to your team.
The ability to travel at a minimum of 3-5 times a year to College Board offices or on behalf of College Board business (including but not limited to traveling to client/user sites to engage with stakeholders).
A passion for expanding educational and career opportunities and mission-driven work
Authorization to work in the United States for any employer
Curiosity and enthusiasm for emerging technologies, with a willingness to experiment with and adopt new AI-driven solutions and a comfort learning and applying new digital tools independently and proactively.
Clear and concise communication skills, written and verbal
A learner's mindset and a commitment to growth: welcoming diverse perspectives, giving and receiving timely, respectful feedback, and continuously improving through iterative learning and user input.
A drive for impact and excellence: solving complex problems, making data-informed decisions, prioritizing what matters most, and continuously improving through learning, user input, and external benchmarking.
A collaborative and empathetic approach: working across differences, fostering trust, and contributing to a culture of shared success.

About Our Process

Application review will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. This role is expected to accept applications for a minimum of 5 business days.
While the hiring process may vary, it generally includes: resume and application submission, recruiter phone/video screen, hiring manager interview, performance exercise such as live coding, a panel interview, a conversation with leadership and reference checks.

What We Offer

At College Board, we offer more than just a paycheck—we provide a meaningful career, a supportive team, and a comprehensive package designed to help you thrive. We're a self-sustaining nonprofit that believes in fair and competitive compensation, grounded in your qualifications, experience, impact, and the market.

A Thoughtful Approach to Compensation

The hiring range for this role is $112,000 to $154,000.
Your exact salary will depend on your location, experience, and how your background compares to others in similar roles at the College Board.
We aim to make our best offer upfront—rooted in fairness, transparency, and market data.
We adjust salaries by location to ensure fairness, no matter where you live.

You'll have open, transparent conversations about compensation, benefits, and what it's like to work at College Board throughout your hiring process. Check out our careers page for more.

#LI-Remote

#LI-EA1

Original Job Description