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About Step Up Tutoring

Step Up Tutoring is on a mission to drive student success by providing free online tutoring and mentorship for elementary school students from under-resourced communities. Our unique value is in fostering the caring human relationship that forms between a student and their volunteer tutor during their 90 minutes of focused attention each week. We believe this connection is the key to unlocking learning gains, building confidence, and cultivating habits of success.

Since its founding in 2020 in partnership with Los Angeles Unified School District, Step Up has delivered over 250,000 hours of 1:1 tutoring to nearly 10,000 students, working across 25+ districts and with 40+ colleges and universities. We are pioneering AI-powered tutor assistance tools, working with Stanford University and Ai2/Allen Institute for AI. Step Up is backed by leading education funders including NewSchools Venture Fund, The Eli & Edythe Broad Foundation, Arrow Impact, Karsh Family Foundation and more.

The Opportunity: Human-Centered, AI-Assisted Tutoring

We are at a pivotal moment in our journey. Our existing platform has helped us prove our model and serve almost 10,000 students. We are now ready to build a next-generation product and program that will accelerate our scale, reach, and innovation to 10x our impact and reach to serve more than 100,000 students. The world is full of AI tutors and adaptive learning platforms; we are not trying to be another one. Instead, we are asking a more profound question:

"What can happen in a trusted 1:1 live online tutoring/mentoring relationship with context from school systems that can't happen anywhere else—and how can AI amplify this irreplaceable human connection?"

We are looking for a visionary, design-obsessed Product Director to help answer this question and lead the charge. You will be the sage voice of the customer and the champion of a seamless, joyful user experience for our students, volunteer tutors, families, and staff. This is a rare opportunity to rebuild a product from the ground up, define a category-leading vision, and build and guide a team that will change the landscape of educational mentorship. As the platform and technical team grow, this role will evolve into leading the full product and engineering organization, working closely with the Director of Engineering to scale both the technology and the team.

What You’ll Do

Own the Product Vision & Strategy

• Define and evangelize the long-term vision for Step Up’s tutoring platform and translate it into a clear product roadmap. 
• Work with leadership to ensure product strategy advances Step Up’s mission, improves learning outcomes, and supports national scale.

Lead the Next-Generation Platform

• Own the rebuild and evolution of Step Up’s tutoring platform, ensuring it delivers both an exceptional user experience and the reliability required to support thousands of tutoring sessions. 
• Partner with engineering leadership to define architecture, priorities, and delivery milestones

Champion Exceptional User Experience

• Set a high bar for product design and usability across all user experiences.
• Translate complex user needs into simple, intuitive product solutions.
• Deeply understand the needs of students, tutors, families, and staff through continuous user research and feedback

Drive Responsible AI Innovation

• Lead the integration of AI into the tutoring experience in ways that strengthen the tutor–student relationship.
• Focus on tools that reduce tutor friction, provide meaningful insights, and improve learning outcomes while maintaining strong standards for safety and ethics.
• Ensure AI systems meet high standards for safety and ethical use.

Lead Product and Engineering Teams 

• Effectively lead Step Up’s product and design teams. Build a strong product culture centered on user insight, thoughtful design, and mission-driven delivery.
• Oversee both product and engineering organization, including management of the Staff Engineer. 
• Serve as a technical visionary who bridges mission-driven goals and engineering execution, possessing the technical fluency to drive high-stakes trade-offs alongside the engineering team.

Deliver Product Impact

• Define success metrics for product initiatives and drive measurable improvements in student learning, tutor experience, and operational efficiency.
• Maintain a prioritized product roadmap and ensure the product and engineering teams deliver with predictable cadence and transparency. 

What Success Looks Like (First 6–18 Months)

• A clear next-generation product vision and roadmap is defined and adopted across the organization.
• Product and engineering teams operate as a cohesive, high-performing organization.
• Key elements of the new tutoring platform and AI-assisted learning experience launch successfully.
• Product delivery becomes predictable and transparent, with strong alignment across teams.
• The platform becomes more reliable, scalable, and easier for tutors and staff to use.
• Product improvements demonstrably improve student engagement, tutor effectiveness, and operational efficiency.

Who You Are: The Ideal Candidate Profile

• A Product Leader with a Designer’s Soul: You have 4+ years of experience in product leadership, but your heart is in design. You have either a formal background in UX design or are a PM known for exceptional product taste, deep user empathy, and a portfolio that demonstrates beautiful, user-centric products.
• An AI-Native Product Builder: You don't just understand AI buzzwords; you have proven, hands-on experience shipping products with significant AI/ML features. You can point to specific products you've built that leverage AI to create novel user experiences, and you are adept at working with technical teams to translate cutting-edge capabilities into tangible, ethical, and effective product solutions.
• Strong Technical Collaborator: You have a track record of driving strong collaboration across product, design, and engineering teams. 
• 0 to 1 Product Builder: You have hands-on experience building products from 0-to-1. You are an entrepreneurial problem solver, are not afraid of making mistakes, and think boldly to try unconventional approaches. You can make decisions without perfect data, can move work forward with tight resources, and are willing to take on both player and coach roles. You might be creating products in your spare time. 
• Strategic and Vision-Oriented: You think beyond the next feature and articulate a compelling, long-term vision that achieves the organization’s goals and that inspires your team and stakeholders. You have experience facilitating strategic workshops or design sprints.
• An Empathetic Leader and Team Builder: You have experience hiring, managing, and mentoring designers, engineers, and/or PMs. You lead with humility and are passionate about creating a collaborative and empowering team culture.
• A Strong Collaborator: You excel at building strong relationships with technical counterparts, bridging the gap between user needs and engineering realities to ship the right product.
• Mission-Driven: You are deeply motivated by the opportunity to use your skills to create educational equity and foster human connection. You believe in our core philosophy of amplifying, not automating, the human relationship at the heart of our work.

Bonus Points If You Have:

• Experience in K-12 EdTech. If not EdTech, you have worked in a combination of B2C and B2B/B2B2C (i.e., a two-sided marketplace)
• A point of view on the ethical and practical application of AI in user-facing products.
• Experience working in a non-profit or mission-driven startup environment.

Why You’ll Love Working at Step Up Tutoring

• Foundational impact: This isn’t just an optimization role—you’ll help build the new technical backbone for national scale.
• Leadership Opportunity: You will work directly with the senior leaders to shape strategy and execution. This role has a clear path to Chief Product Officer, overseeing product, design and engineering. 
• Collaboration with leading education organizations: Collaborate with organizations working on the forefront of application of AI to improve education, including Stanford Accelerator for Learning, Ai2/Allen Institute for AI, NewSchools Venture Fund, and LeanLab Education, as well as some of the largest school districts in the country including Los Angeles Unified and 40+ others. 
• Critical mission: You will go to work every day knowing your efforts are directly creating educational opportunities and driving impact for students in need.
• Passionate & experienced team: Join a dedicated group of staff, Board members, and volunteers who are all committed to the mission. Team members have experience in leading EdTech organizations, including Khan Academy and Kyron Learning. 

Salary & Benefits

• Compensation: $160,000-$215,000, depending on experience. Opportunity for performance-based bonus and additional incentive pay. 
• Benefits for Full-Time Employees: Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage (company covers 80% of base plan for individuals, 50% for dependents); 401k retirement plan, Flexible PTO; Professional Development; work-from-home stipend.