Who We Are
Bridge International Academies is the world’s largest and fastest-growing Ed-Tech organisation. With investors such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. With more than 500 academies and 120,000 pupils in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Liberia, and India. We leverage experts, data, and technology in order to standardize and scale every aspect of quality education delivery, from how and where academies are built to how teachers are selected and trained, and how lessons are delivered and monitored for improvement.
The Bridge Offer
With plans to enrol ten million students ten years from now, Bridge International Academies offers a tremendous opportunity to grow with one of the world’s most exciting, ambitious, and socially conscious companies, with leadership roles available across a number of competencies and geographies in Africa and Asia.
Technology at Bridge
Technology plays a critical role at Bridge in enabling us to provide education at massive scale and low cost – it’s one of the key elements that gives us the ability to deliver what no one else can. Tech spans several key functions, from the hardware and software that our academies use to run all aspects of teaching and management, including mobile payments, to the systems that enable our country headquarters to manage massive local operations, to the data backbone that informs all of our strategic and tactical decision making.
An example of some of our technology is how we use it to teach: our lesson plans are published to the internet in the US, then transferred to servers in each country where we operate. Every day each of our 5,000 teachers across the world downloads their lesson plans for the day from the mobile internet via their Teacher Tablets. These tablets are also used to track pupil attendance and test results throughout the year.
About the Role
We are looking for a full time Digital Product Designer to join our new London-based cross functional software development team, which is building the software that powers and improves our competitive advantage globally. The London team has a special focus on the parts of the system that are more customer facing, dynamic, and strategically important.
You will join an elite team of top tier software developers, overseen by a CTO passionate about delivering high-quality products – we will be building the technology that will take Bridge to the next level. More specifically, this role will be part of a Product team dedicated to defining and directing the work of our development teams. The product team includes a Director of Product Management and two Product Designers, one of them being this role. It’s a great opportunity to grow and learn, while working on developing software with a mission that few, if any, can compete with. We believe in innovation, fast feedback, and high impact.
Historically, user centred design has been underserved functions at Bridge. Accordingly, you will need to have the experience necessary to design and develop the practice without a lot of guidance, while simultaneously digging in and rolling up your sleeves to have direct impact across a number of initiatives. Product is a big tent, encompassing many different types of skills – for this role, the ability to perform user research and interaction design are of paramount importance. Moreover, many of our users are not technically sophisticated and use our technology in challenging situations, so you should be able to step outside of stock solutions and really get to know a user base that few pay attention to.
How We Work
Above all else, we’re looking for ambition, organisation, drive, intellect, problem solving, and respect for others. You will be part of the London high-speed team, which emphasises collaboration across all aspects of delivery. We don’t have a lot of managers or decision making hierarchy – we have people passionate about getting their hands dirty and delivering the hotness.
Projects you could work on
- New features for all our current Android apps
- Dashboards to facilitate data driven decisions
- Payment processes. We want to simplify the way our parents pay for our services
- Many internal products. We have a mission to serve 10 million pupils and for that we need to have very powerful and well designed internal tools
What You Should Have
- You have an impressive interaction design portfolio demonstrating the way you work and think.
- You love making visuals, but you what drives you is delivering great experiences and solving problems
- You have a broad understanding of the product process (not just wireframes or visual mockups)
- You have an ability to plan, prepare and conduct research, workshops, requirements gathering and user testing sessions
- At least 2 years’ experience of design working on business-critical digital products.
- You follow trends, but you understand that good design is built on principles and trade-offs
- You have a detailed knowledge with a wide range of UX research methods and techniques
- You have a passion for Bridge’s vision of democratising the right for all children to succeed
- You are good at presenting and defending your work with confidence, especially with business stakeholders
Bonus Skills:
- Front-end engineering (HTML, CSS, JavaScript)
- Animation
You’re also
- A detailed doer – You have a track record of getting things done. You’re organized and responsive. You take ownership of every idea you touch and execute it to a fine level of detail, setting targets, engaging others, and doing whatever it takes to get the job done. You can multi-task dozens of such projects at once and never lose sight of the details. Likely, you have some experience in a start-up or other rapid-growth company.
- A networking mastermind – You excel at meeting new people and turning them into advocates. You communicate in a clear, conscientious, and effective way in both written and oral speech. You can influence strangers in the course of a single conversation. Allies and colleagues will go to bat for your ideas.
- A creative problem-solver – Growing any business from scratch comes with massive and constant challenges. On top of that, Bridge works in volatile, low-resource communities and runs on fees averaging just $6 a month per pupil. You need to be flexible and ready to get everything done effectively, quickly, and affordably with the materials at hand. Every dollar you spend is a dollar our customers, who live on less than $2 a day, will have to pay for.
- A customer advocate – Our customers – these families living on less than $2 a day per person – never leave your mind. You know them, get them, have shared a meal with them (or would be happy to in the future). You would never shrink back from shaking a parent’s hand or picking up a crying child, no matter what the person was wearing or looked like. Every decision you make considers their customer benefit, experience, and value.
- A life-long learner – You believe you can always do better. You welcome constructive criticism and provide it freely to others. You know you only get better tomorrow when others point out where you’ve missed things or failed today.