Who We Are
Bridge believes every child has the right to high quality education and works in partnership with governments, communities, parents and teachers to deliver education to over 100,000 children in underserved communities across Africa and Asia.
Bridge leverages in-depth teacher training and support, advanced lesson plans and wireless technology to provide pupils with a meaningful and life-changing education.
Globally, there is an education crisis. Around 263 million children and young people are not in school and the number of primary school aged children not in school is increasing. Bridge is committed to helping tackle this through a data driven, evidence based approach that delivers strong schools and a great education for all.
The Bridge Approach
Education is in crisis in many countries around the world. It is estimated that 264 million children and young people are out of school, and 330 million children are in school but not learning. In addition, an extra 69 million teachers are needed to achieve the 2030 UN education goals.
Many education systems are plagued with inadequate materials and poor management systems, all leading to chronic teacher absenteeism and a lack of learning. Education reform is challenging but it is urgently required if we are to prevent another generation of children missing out. So, we work in partnership with governments, NGOs and non-state actors to address the huge education imbalance between what is available and what is needed right now — we work to bridge the gap.
We believe parents have the right to choose a school for their children and we enable families to enjoy seeing their children learn, improve and flourish at Bridge schools. We locate our schools in some of the most disadvantaged communities in the world. Families in our communities can be earning just $1.90 per person a day; a level the World Bank notes is at extreme poverty. By putting learning at the centre of all we do, Bridge has become an extremely popular choice for underserved families and low-income communities.
With plans to enrol ten million students ten years from now, Bridge offers a tremendous opportunity to grow with one of the world’s most exciting and ambitious social enterprises, with leadership roles available across a number of competencies and geographies.
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 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 an underserved function at Bridge. We’re in the process of proactively changing this, so 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 – it’s an exciting time. 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.
What You Will Do
- Translate strategic business initiatives into designs for amazing digital experiences. This involves collaborating with a variety of stakeholders to define the relevant personas, user journeys, and functional requirements; and then creating the designs that will realise these goals.
- Research and analyse the way our data can be used and then drive improvements in user experience.
- Own the customer feedback function. We need our Product Designers to build the processes and practices required to ensure that we are continuously gathering and addressing usability issues with our software, not just delivering a product and moving on without regard to how users actually experience it on a day to day basis.
- Our Product Designers are at the heart of our products, managing products end to end. So, as well as creating the designs, you’ll also be assisting business stakeholders to define and refine their requests and acting as a product manager/owner in charge of prioritising work to direct our technology delivery teams.
What You Should Have
- An impressive interaction design portfolio demonstrating the way you work and think.
- A love of making visuals, but what drives you is delivering great experiences and solving problems
- A broad understanding of the product process (not just wireframes or visual mockups)
- 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.
- An eye for trends, but you understand that good design is built on principles and trade-offs
- A detailed knowledge with a wide range of user research methods and techniques
- A passion for Bridge’s vision of democratising the right for all children to succeed
- Confidence presenting and defending your work, especially with business stakeholders
Bonus Skills:
- Front-end engineering (HTML, CSS, JavaScript)
- Animation
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 and external products. We have a mission to serve 10 million pupils and for that we need to have powerful and well designed interfaces
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.