Head of Program Design

Job Title: Head of Program Design

Team: Product

Location: Hybrid in Atlanta (GA) - preferred, Chicago (IL), New York (NYC), or Newark (NJ)

Employment Type: Full-time

FLSA Classification: Exempt 

Start Date: ASAP

About Braven

Braven is a national nonprofit that prepares promising college students to secure a strong first opportunity after college graduation through a career-accelerating program.

We work with higher education and employer partners to offer a life-changing experience that begins with a semester-long course for college students, followed by support that lasts through graduation.  

Together, our ambition is to help rebuild the middle class and revitalize the American Dream.

To learn more, take a look at Braven’s Jobs Report.

About the Role

In order to achieve its ambition of serving 80,000–100,000 Fellows over the next decade, Braven is hiring a Head of  Program Design who will own the evolution, quality, and integrity of every program experience Braven puts in front of students, volunteers, and staff, serving as both the lead builder and the person responsible for setting the standards for how those experiences are designed.

Braven's program is built around a core belief: that students build career readiness by developing the right skills, networks, experiences, and confidence. Everything the Design team builds is in service of that equation. As the leader of the Design team and a member of the Product Leadership Team, you will translate evidence from Braven's research and real-time signals from the field into high-quality, pedagogically sound program assets and learning sequences that can be delivered across dozens of campuses with varying academic lengths (e.g., semester, quarter, summer school, etc.) at scale. 

You hold the line on adult learning best practices regardless of timeline pressure or competing priorities, and you ensure that every staff member and volunteer who facilitates a Braven program experience understands both what they're teaching and why it's built the way it is. We're also looking for someone with a genuinely entrepreneurial orientation, someone who is deeply curious about how other organizations are solving the college-to-career challenge, and who brings that curiosity back into how Braven evolves its own approach. Critically, this person must be able to hold two things as connected rather than in tension: the commitment to human-centered, pedagogically excellent design and the imperative to simplify and scale. The program has to work for the student sitting in front of it and for the institution delivering it at volume. Seeing those as the same challenge — not competing ones — is a prerequisite for excellence in this role.

This role is on the Product team and reports directly to the Chief Product Officer.

What You’ll Do

Build, Steward, and Evolve Braven's Program Experience (30%)

• Design and evolve the entire program experience continuum, which starts with the Accelerator course and extends to supporting our Fellows for 6 months after graduation.
• Maintain a growing high-quality multi-modal library (in-person, virtual, and on-demand) of program experiences, including workshops, learning modules, facilitated sequences, stand-alone resources, on-demand tools, and event designs that help students build the skills, networks, experiences, and confidence needed to secure strong first opportunities after college.
• Create and pilot new program assets in response to what program staff is observing in the field and/or our higher education partners lift up as a need/interest — when teams flag that students are struggling or that a specific need has emerged, your team builds the response, keeping scale and simplicity front and center.
• Translate findings from Braven's research team into concrete design decisions, ensuring that what the evidence says students need is actually reflected in how every experience is structured, sequenced, and facilitated, partnering with execution teams to ensure the program is delivered as intended
• Maintain and refresh program assets over time by updating content regularly based on stakeholder feedback, student outcome data, and shifts in the college-to-career landscape, including staying up to speed on how the context is shifting with students (e.g., pandemic moment that required more online to a digital learning fatigue moment six years after the pandemic) and/or the labor market (e.g., employers are scaling up dramatically so job acquisition is easier including remote work to labor market is shrinking because of over hiring and now how AI is shaping the realities students face in the job market)
• Keep an eye towards what must be true at scale, adjusting designs over time based on feasibility constraints or new technology realities that have ripple effects into designs.
• Be the consummate learner and consumer of our in-person and digital products, in order to stay proximate to the field as well as on the cutting edge of what is to come

Set and Hold the Standard for Quality and Integrity of Program Experiences (25%)

• Define, ensure the execution of, and evolve Braven's standards for high-quality program design, including how experiences are structured, how long they run, how learning is assessed, and how facilitation is approached.
• Ensure all program experiences are grounded in adult learning science, cultural competence (including that of a particular higher education institution), and reflect a deep understanding of Braven's students, predominantly first-generation college students and students from low-income backgrounds, navigating the transition from college to career.
• Stay current on the external field — career readiness research, employer expectations, evolving best practices in adult learning, highly-resourced colleges' career preparation evolutions, digital tools, and bring that knowledge into Braven's design work.

Prepare Staff and Volunteers to Facilitate with Confidence and Fidelity (20%)

• Design and deliver ongoing training that equips program staff and volunteers who are on the front lines with students every day to understand Braven’s approach to career readiness topics, and can deliver to students coherent, consistent guidance.
• Design and deliver training on design intent so that facilitators understand why an experience is built the way it is, and can make good judgment calls when they need to adapt in the moment.
• Ensure training and staff enablement are built into each new program from the start, making them a core part of a complete, high-quality experience.
• Lead conversations with staff about what is likely to come next in the programmatic experience's evolution.

Lead the Team and Shape Program Strategy (25%)

• Lead, develop, and grow a team of designers who are responsible for the full scope of design work across Braven's program experience, from the Accelerator course to post-course support for Fellows, which lasts until six months post graduation.
• Manage the team as well as the team’s mental agility in a way that allows for business as usual, as well as the ability to flex, be nimble, and start to innovate in a manner that meets the moment.
• Serve as a member of Braven's Product Leadership Team, contributing design expertise to cross-functional decisions about what the program should do next, how it should evolve, and what it will take to deliver it at scale.
• Partner with colleagues across Research, Data, Program Delivery, and Operations to ensure design decisions are grounded in evidence, informed by what's happening in the field, and set up to be delivered well.
• Engage directly, including online and ground-based visits with the field to inform perspective.
• Bring a constant eye toward program simplification while regularly asking which design elements are truly essential for student outcomes, where the program has accumulated complexity that doesn't drive value, and how to redesign experiences that are both excellent and more scalable over time.
• Partner across the organization with program delivery teams, operations, and technology to identify where design changes could unlock scale, and help Braven distill the program architecture toward what it truly needs to be as it grows.
• Help scope and grow the Design team as the organization scales toward serving 25,000+ Fellows.
• Serve as a member of the "One Braven" leadership team, contributing to org-wide strategy and stewarding a healthy, high-performing culture for both your immediate team and the broader organization.
• Other duties as assigned.

Requirements

Minimum Requirements

• Education: BS/BA
• 10+ years of experience designing clear, engaging, purposeful, and culturally competent learning experiences
• 3+ years of experience managing a team toward outcomes

Preferred Qualifications 

• Master's degree or other certification in learning design, instructional design, or a related field
• Expert practitioner in human-centered design and adult learning science, with a strong point of view on what makes a learning experience work for adults, especially adults navigating high-stakes career moments
• Demonstrated experience building and maintaining a program or curriculum library that serves multiple delivery teams or contexts. You know how to design for reuse, not just for one-time use
• Experience designing human-centered learning experiences that scale through technology.
• Experience designing training for the people who deliver your programs, not just the content itself, but the facilitation guides, design rationale, and enablement that help others teach it well
• Experience and agility with keeping old, evolving, and piloting new designs all at the same time.
• Exceptional written and verbal communicator who expresses ideas clearly, simply, and with strong design instincts
• Competent in synthesizing multiple data types such as observations, user interviews, research, feedback, and quantitative data to identify root problems and drive design improvements
• Deep alignment with Braven's core values and a belief in Braven's mission, informed by experience working with or for student populations like Braven's Fellows — predominantly people of color from low-income backgrounds
• Proven track record of building and growing high-performing teams, including developing talent at multiple levels and scoping new roles as an organization grows
• Strategic thinker who can hold both the quality of a single experience and the coherence of the full student journey simultaneously, you can zoom in and zoom out
• Skilled at working across teams and influencing without formal authority, you know how to advocate for quality with colleagues who have different mandates and timelines
• Experience contributing to organizational strategy as a senior leader, including cross-functional collaboration at the leadership team level

Technical Skills

• Proficient in learning management systems and content editors (Braven currently uses Canvas and Articulate)

Please know that no one ever meets 100% of the preferred qualifications. If much of this describes you, we encourage you to apply.

Work Demands

• Ability to work in-person in one of these three hub cities of Braven’s: Atlanta (GA), Chicago (IL), Newark (NJ), or New York City (NY), 3 days per week
• Travel 2–3 times per quarter for team convenings, site visits, and organizational gatherings 

Additional Requirements

• Authorized to work in the U.S.
• Braven doesn’t offer employment visa sponsorship

Application & Interview Process

While the interview process may vary slightly, the general process will be:

• Phone screen with Talent Team member
• Performance Task
• Interview with Hiring Manager
• Panel Interview with Key Partners
• Reference Checks

Benefits

Compensation and Benefits

Braven offers competitive base salaries based on the midpoint of the market among not-for-profit organizations of similar size, with opportunities for salary growth over time. We believe in compensating staff members fairly in relation to each other, their qualifications, and their impact on behalf of the organization, and take internal and external equity seriously. Given our commitment to equity, Braven does not negotiate salary offers; instead, each salary offer is determined carefully using external and internal benchmarking.

Starting salary within the range is determined by role scope and qualifications, with new hires starting at the lower end to allow for growth with performance. Braven does not base compensation on individual candidate salary expectations and is committed to maintaining internal equity. The salary ranges, by geographic market, for this role are set forth $154,500-$193,100 in Atlanta, $163,200-$204,000 in Chicago, and $179,600-$224,400 in New York City and Newark. This is based on a 50-hour work week. This is a full-time, and benefits eligible position where you will be working at 100% capacity.  

Braven also provides competitive, comprehensive benefits, recognition, and career development. While Braven reserves the right to change benefits at any time, current benefits include: 

• Unlimited vacation time in addition to org-wide holidays and week-long shutdowns in July and the end of the calendar year (this is a minimum of 19 days per year)
• Braven supports your path to parenthood and beyond with $25,000 in lifetime Carrot benefits for fertility, family-building, and hormonal health
• Match of your 401K contribution up to 5% of your base annual salary, starting your first full month
• Coverage of 85% of health insurance premium for employees and dependents
• 12 weeks of paid parental leave
• A one-month paid sabbatical after 4 years on staff

Please note that Braven is firm in its compensation philosophy because of our deep, long time commitment to equity; therefore, only candidates who believe our total rewards package aligns with what they are looking for in their next opportunity are encouraged to apply. 

Location

We gather in the office 3 days a week (Tuesday through Thursday) and work remotely 2 days a week (Monday and Friday). Therefore, this role requires teammates to live within commuting distance of one of our hubs: Atlanta, Chicago, New York City or Newark. We believe in the magic, connection, and collaboration that happens when people work together face-to-face, and we believe in giving people flexibility to focus, balance personal priorities, and save themselves two commutes per week.

Braven is an equal opportunity employer and considers qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected factor.  We encourage talented individuals of all backgrounds to apply.