Contract Designer

AERDF; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 207,000 - 276,000; Part time

Job summary

AugmentED is seeking a Product Designer to own the design vision and execution for experimental AI-powered learning tools co-created with high school teachers and academic researchers. You will work with a cross-disciplinary team to design tea​cher- and student-facing tools in a data-heavy space, focusing on usability and research-question validation.

This is a remote, part-time role (~20 hours/week) with an hourly rate of $150–$200 and potential renewal through 2026–2027.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of design experience shipping early-stage products to real users.
• Design experience on a research-adjacent or data-intensive user-facing application.
• Expertise creating flows, wireframes, and interaction designs for functional prototypes
• Experience testing for usability and validating a scientific or academic research question or hypothesis
• Strong communication skills, especially with both technical and non-technical colleagues, and translating between disciplines.
• Nice-to-haves: education experience, understanding of learning science research, past mission-driven or social impact work.

Responsibilities

• Own the design vision and execution for experimental AI-powered learning tools.
• Design flows, wireframes, and interaction designs for functional prototypes; collaborate with researchers and teachers.
• Facilitate co-design sessions and translate research needs into usable interfaces.

Skills

Design experience

Data visualization

Communication

Facilitation

Prototype design

AI/ML awareness

Job description

Product Designer - Contract - 20hrs/wk - Remote

AugmentED is looking for a Product Designer to own the design vision and execution for experimental AI-powered learning tools being co-created with high school teachers and academic researchers. You'll work primarily with a co-design team made up of 3-4 teachers, a learning science researcher, an engineer, and a data scientist. Together you'll design and build teacher- and student-facing tools that investigate the role of AI in the classroom. The goal is to build an evidence base for a way to build AI-powered ed tech in a way that is grounded in learning science theories while addressing the classroom challenges identified by teachers.

The role requires comfort with ambiguity, strong facilitation skills, and the ability to understand and work closely with researchers and teachers as well as with engineering and product. The problem space is very data heavy, so experience with data visualization and with designing AI or ML-enabled features with a lot of uncertainty are both important.

What We’re Looking For

• 7+ years of design experience shipping early-stage products to real users.
• Design experience on a research-adjacent or data-intensive user-facing application.
• Expertise creating flows, wireframes, and interaction designs for functional prototypes
• Experience testing for both 1) usability and 2) validating a scientific or academic research question or hypothesis, and an understanding of the difference.
• Strong communication skills, especially with both technical and non-technical colleagues, and translating between disciplines..
• Nice-to-haves: education experience, understanding of learning science research, past mission-driven or social impact work.
• Timeline : Sep 1 through Dec 1
• Hours : ~20 hours/week, fully remote (team distributed across the U.S.)
• Rate : $150-200/hr, depending on experience
• Renewal : Strong potential to extend through the rest of 2026 and through Spring 2027

About AugmentED

Founded in January 2025, AugmentED partners with expert educators, researchers, and engineers to reimagine education for the AI era. Our mission is to fuse the strengths of AI and human educators to improve learning outcomes, especially for underserved elementary and high school students. We believe the best way to do this is by bringing expert educators, engineers, and researchers together to co-design and test new models of teaching and learning and AI-powered tools that make these new approaches possible.

Grounded in the belief that human teachers and AI each offer unique strengths, we work to blend the best of both to make education more engaging, personalized, and relevant to the modern world. As a field-building initiative, we aim not only to develop new education approaches, AI-powered tools, and research insights, but also to codify and scale our processes that enable educators, researchers, and engineers to drive innovation collaboratively.

About AERDF

The Advanced Education Research and Development Fund (AERDF) is a national nonprofit that unlocks scientific breakthroughs, new inventions, and cutting-edge research to solve the most pressing teaching and learning challenges in PreK–12 education. Through our Advanced Inclusive Research and Development (R&D) model, we unite educators, caregivers, learners, scientists, and technologists to discover research-backed solutions that push the limits of what’s believed to be possible in education.We build the infrastructure, partnerships, and momentum needed to move discoveries from idea to impact, so every student can thrive in a rapidly changing world. Learn more at www.aerdf.org

• Impact: Be at the forefront of transforming education with AI.
• Leadership: Help build our technical vision, strategy, and team from the ground up.
• Collaboration: Work alongside leading research scientists, educators, and engineers.
• Growth: Thrive in a dynamic, mission-driven environment with opportunities for personal and professional development.