UX Program Manager, Design Operations and Accessibility

Overview:

About PowerSchool

At PowerSchool, we power education for students around the world. As the global leader in cloud-based K-12 software, we support the full education ecosystem—from the central office to the classroom to the home. Joining PowerSchool means being part of a mission-driven team that is transforming K-12 education by helping schools operate more effectively and deliver better outcomes for educators, students, and families.

Team Overview

Our Product team leads the direction, coordination, output, quality, and enhancements to PowerSchool's product portfolio. This dynamic, multi-functional team ensures the effective rollout of new products across the platform, packages and positions products to appeal to consumers, and helps set the future direction and pace of innovation in our organization.

Responsibilities:

• Key ResponsibilitiesUX Program Manager / Design Operations. (THIS IS NOT A UX DESIGN ROLE)
  
  Design Operations
  • Description
    The Design & Research Operations Manager builds, scales, and manages the infrastructure, tools, and processes powering our UX organization. Spanning Value-Driven Design Operations, Research Operations, and Accessibility Program Coordination, this role eliminates workflow friction and ensures our cross-functional teams deliver high-quality, impact-driven experiences efficiently.
    This is a role for an entrepreneurial, high-agency operator—someone who thrives in ambiguity, establishes order out of chaos, and excels at cross-departmental problem-solving. You will move the UX organization from tracking output to proving outcome by linking core design deliverables directly to engineering velocity, reduced rework, and business goals.
    
    Cross-Functional Execution & Problem Solving
    • Cross-Departmental Alignment: Partner across UX, Product, Engineering, QA, Legal, Customer Success, Finance, and external vendors to clarify ownership, align priorities, and move initiatives from request to completion.
    • Navigate Ambiguity: Investigate open-ended, complex problems, connect the right stakeholders, and build practical operational workflows from scratch without a defined playbook.
    • Proactive Ownership: Identify downstream dependencies early, remove operational blockers, and confidently escalate strategic risks when needed.
    
    
    Key Responsibilities
    1. Value-Driven Design Operations (30%)
    • Business Goal & Metric Mapping: Establish frameworks to connect UX deliverables (user journeys, components, repositories) to business outcomes, tracking metrics like reduction in development rework, faster time-to-market, and product adoption.
    • Handoff Optimization & Velocity: Optimize standardized workflows and design-to-code handoff processes between UX and Engineering (using Jira Product Discovery and our Design System) specifically aimed at reducing engineering sprint leakage.
    • Capacity Planning & ROI: Track core UX operational metrics (throughput, velocity, resource capacity) to provide leadership with data-driven insights for headcount justification and tool stack ROI audits.
    • Tooling & Knowledge Architecture: Administer core team tools (Figma, Miro, Jira Product Discovery), manage license allocation efficiency, and curate the UX team’s Confluence knowledge base to ensure guidelines are current and discoverable.
    2. Accessibility Program Coordination & Workflow Management (40%)
    • Absolute Pipeline Visibility: Build and maintain project trackers, dashboards, and roadmaps so that cross-functional partners always know the exact status, risks, and timelines of any product accessibility initiative.
    • Intake & Inbox Governance: Serve as the primary entry point for public and internal accessibility inquiries, triaging requests, routing them to the correct product teams, and managing response times against established SLAs using approved scripts.
    • Audit & Vendor Logistics: Manage logistics, scheduling, prioritization, and budgeting for third-party accessibility audit vendors; organize and maintain our internal ACR/VPAT library across ~50–70 products.
    • Remediation Tracking: Partner with Product and Engineering to ensure audit flaws are translated into trackable Jira tickets, maintaining a clear master roadmap of accessibility fixes.
    • Program Team Facilitation: Facilitate the cross-functional Accessibility Program Team (UX, QA, Legal, Engineering); drive meeting agendas, document decisions, and relentlessly track action items.
    3. Research Operations & Insights (30%)
    • Recruitment Logistics: Drive end-to-end participant recruitment, screening, and panel scheduling for highly specialized users (e.g., district administrators, teachers, specialized roles).
    • Repository & Legal Governance: Maintain the centralized research participant database and insights repository, ensuring research data is compliant with privacy, legal, and regulatory standards (NDAs, consent forms, PII handling).
    • Enablement & Finance: Curate self-serve research templates and methodology guides for non-researchers; manage participant incentive distribution structures and reconcile software vendor expenses.
    
    
    

Qualifications:

Qualifications

• 2+ years of hands-on operational or program management experience within a fast-paced SaaS product organization.
• Business & Metrics Acumen: Proven experience establishing UX measurement frameworks (e.g., HEART framework, OKRs, or KPI mapping) that tie design and research investments to business performance or engineering efficiency.
• Cross-Functional Fluency: Proven ability to align, influence, and chase down updates from diverse stakeholders to move complex initiatives forward.
• High Autonomy: Entrepreneurial mindset with a demonstrated track record of building scalable corporate processes and tracking frameworks out of thin air.
• Tooling Ecosystem: Deep, hands-on administrative familiarity with Jira, Confluence.
• Communication: Exceptional written and verbal communication skills; comfortable facilitating cross-functional alignment meetings and synthesizing complex operational data into clean, clear documentation.
• Familiarity with Salesforce, SharePoint, or advanced Jira Product Discovery workflows.

• • Experience with VPAT/ACR processes, accessibility audits, or vendor management.
  • Background in participant recruitment, research repositories, or insights management.
  • Familiarity with Salesforce, SharePoint, Slack administration, or knowledge base tooling.

 

EEO Commitment:

EEO Commitment

PowerSchool is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. PowerSchool is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status. Our inclusive culture empowers PowerSchoolers to deliver the best results for our customers. We not only celebrate the diversity of our workforce, we celebrate the diverse ways we work. If you have a disability and need an accommodation regarding our recruiting process, please let us know by emailing [email protected].