Senior Motion Designer (Contract)

Khan Academy; United States; Remote; USD 80,000 - 100,000; Part time

Job summary

Khan Academy seeks an experienced Motion Designer to create engaging animations that enhance learning experiences. This contract role involves collaborating with design and engineering teams to establish a unique motion language for diverse users. Ideal candidates will have a strong background in motion design, particularly with Rive, and a passion for education.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience working on Motion for digital surfaces.
• Strong preference for designers with experience in Rive.

Responsibilities

• Establish motion language for Khan Academy.
• Collaborate with Product Designers and Visual Designers.
• Work with Engineers to define Rive projects.

Skills

Curiosity

Strong communication skills

Excellent taste

Bias toward action

Tools

Rive

Job description

ABOUT KHAN ACADEMY

Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission to deliver a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere. Our proven learning platform offers free, high-quality supplemental learning content and practice that cover Pre-K - 12th grade and early college core academic subjects, focusing on math and science. We have over 181 million registered learners globally and are committed to improving learning outcomes for students worldwide, focusing on learners in historically under-resourced communities.

OUR COMMUNITY

Our students, teachers, and parents come from all walks of life, and so do we.Our team includes people from academia, traditional/non-traditional education, big tech companies, and tiny startups. We hire great people from diverse backgrounds and experiences because it makes our company stronger.We value diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging as necessary to achieve our mission and impact the communities we serve.We know that transforming education starts in-house with learning about ourselves and our colleagues. We strive to be world-class in investing in our people and commit to developing you as a professional.

THE ROLE

Imagine being a teacher in Sarasota, Florida, with a classroom full of 6th graders who haven’t had a normal year of school or learning since before the COVID pandemic. It’s the reality of so many educators and students who use Khan Academy – and our team is uniquely positioned to help them when they need it most.

We have no end of fascinating challenges that can only be solved with a deep understanding of our users, diligent product & UX thinking, and a strong drive to make a positive impact. Some questions we’re working on answering right now are:

• How do we support teachers who are dealing with the impact that the pandemic had on learning?
• How do we help students with learning gaps catch up to their grade level?
• How do we center schools serving historically under-resourced communities in our product design and development?
• How do we reach more school districts, so our learning experience gets used in more classrooms?
• …and more

The best part? Our work really matters: catch Sal talking to CNBC about low math and reading test scores.

We’re looking for an experienced Motion Designer who has helped to define the motion language and systems that speak to and support brands. In addition to motion fundamentals and excellent taste, it is important that you have expertise architecting extensible and performant animation systems within Rive that support dynamic and flexible character animations that can react to user input or system data. An understanding of performance is important, as these animations will need to perform on many millions of devices, sometimes quite old, in classrooms all around the world.

This is a contract role for ~20 hours/week for ~6 months, with an hourly rate between $80-100/hr.

Some of the things you will work on:

• Establishing motion language for Khan Academy (really breaking new ground!) that can make experiences shine for the multiple personas who use our platform.
• Collaborating with Product Designers and Visual Designers to explore areas of the classroom experience that would be most improved with tasteful motion–either by supporting an experience’s intuitiveness or amplifying a moment of success!
• Working with Engineers to define how Rive projects will consume data to influence and customize interactions (e.g. make a character jump, or smile, or swap accessories it’s wearing).
• Create in-app animations across multiple products .
• Documenting principles and process to leave a lasting mark on our fundamentals, including timing, style, and interactions!

You will play a vital role on an inclusive, small but mighty design team, helping us fulfill the mission of the organization: to provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere. We genuinely care about people and value compassion in our everyday interactions. You’ll be able to be yourself, feel valued, supported, learn and grow, no matter how experienced you are.

If you’re looking for the opportunity to shape the future of learning and ship high-quality products that solve real problems for learners and educators, please don’t hesitate to apply — we’d love to hear from you.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Work closely with our front-end engineering infrastructure team to define how visual and motion design impact the user experience
• Participate in the creation and maintenance of custom motion elements
• Communicate motion updates across design and engineering teams
• Document and establish proper motion design usage and approach for the product design team
• Work closely with our visual designer to determine when motion is critical to the user experience
• Participate in Design team critiques and team rituals
• Regularly tell the story of your work and why it matters, how it aligns to company objectives, how it drives meaningful engagement and learning

WE’RE LOOKING FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE

• Curiosity and a desire to learn! (Learning isn’t just for the students)
• 4+ years of experience working on Motion for digital surfaces

Please provide a portfolio of work that makes you proud!

• Strong preference for designers who have experience working in Rive and the ability to architect a complex Rive system
• Strong communication skills (written and verbal)
• Excellent taste and also the ability to find compromise with business and technical needs.
• Bias toward action–we’re DOING something great here, not just thinking about it!

Qualities we value in ourselves, and those who join our team:

• Introspective, mature, low-ego, and emotionally intelligent
• Growth mindset, willingness to learn and to teach others
• Proactively seek out the people/information you need to move work forward and unblock yourself
• High comfort level working within a strong top-down product and pedagogical vision led by our CEO, Sal Khan, and our Chief Learning Officer, Kristen DiCerbo, PhD
• Able to balance the immediate tactical needs of helping deliver and ship features with scouting ahead for what’s next
• Comfortable with frequent change and ambiguous situations, like you’d experience in a startup
• Willing to roll your sleeves up and pitch in when a project goes off-script
• Excited about education and engaging learning experiences, deeply curious about how and why people learn

NOTE: Submitting a portfolio with your application is required.

We're looking for a portfolio that highlights the parts of your background and experience that are relevant to the job description.

Applications without a portfolio link or attachment (plus password if required) will not be considered.

MORE ABOUT US

The Design Team is a diverse and close-knit group, spanning many disciplines, who are excited about designing for the complexities of education. We are driven by our dedication to learners, our craft, and nurturing our unique, low-ego, and playful culture. We listen carefully, think deeply, and move quickly, to help millions of learners all over the world.

• Sal’s TED talk from 2011
• Sal’s TED talk from 2015
• Sal's TED talk from 2023
• Our team: http://www.khanacademy.org/about/the-team

OUR COMPANY VALUES

Live & breathe learners

We deeply understand and empathize with our users. We leverage user insights, research, and experience to build content, products, services, and experiences that our users trust and love. Our success is defined by the success of our learners and educators.

Take a stand

As a company, we have conviction in our aspirational point of view of how education will evolve. The work we do is in service to moving towards that point of view. However, we also listen, learn and flex in the face of new data, and commit to evolving this point of view as the industry and our users evolve.

Embrace diverse perspectives

We are a diverse community. We seek out and embrace a diversity of voices, perspectives and life experiences leading to stronger, more inclusive teams and better outcomes. As individuals, we are committed to bringing up tough topics and leaning into different points of view with curiosity. We actively listen, learn and collaborate to gain a shared understanding. When a decision is made, we commit to moving forward as a united team.

Work responsibly and sustainably

We understand that achieving our audacious mission is a marathon, so we set realistic timelines and we focus on delivery that also links to the bigger picture. As a non-profit, we are supported by the generosity of donors as well as strategic partners, and understand our responsibility to our finite resources. We spend every dollar as though it were our own. We are responsible for the impact we have on the world and to each other. We ensure our team and company stay healthy and financially sustainable.

Bring out the joy

We are committed to making learning a joyful process. This informs what we build for our users and the culture we co-create with our teammates, partners and donors.

Cultivate learning mindset

We believe in the power of growth for learners and for ourselves. We constantly learn and teach to improve our offerings, ourselves, and our organization. We learn from our mistakes and aren’t afraid to fail. We don't let past failures or successes stop us from taking future bold action and achieving our goals.

Deliver wow

We insist on high standards and deliver delightful, effective end-to-end experiences that our users can rely on. We choose to focus on fewer things — each of which aligns to our ambitious vision — so we can deliver high-quality experiences that accelerate positive measurable learning with our strategic partners.

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, or Veteran status. We value diversity, equity, and inclusion, and we encourage candidates from historically underrepresented groups to apply.

As part of this commitment, Khan Academy will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations for the hiring process. If reasonable accommodation is needed, please contact [e-mail]