Head of Design

Who we are

Founded in 2016, Alef Education (ALEFEDT on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange) is an award-winning AI powered learning solutions provider redefining K to 12 education. Headquartered in Abu Dhabi, the company serves approximately 2.0 million students and 84,000 educators across 19,000 schools in the UAE, Indonesia, and Morocco.

Its flagship Alef Platform delivers personalized learning experiences that enhance student engagement and outcomes, while its supplemental solutions Alef Pathways, Abjadiyat, and Arabits extend learning across subjects and languages.

Through its innovative use of artificial intelligence, data insights, and culturally relevant content, Alef Education is transforming teaching and learning to advance equity, access, and excellence for every student. 

About The Role

The Head of Design sets the overall design direction, using product insight, user research, data, and design strategy to shape priorities and improve the end-to-end product and brand experience. They also build and develop the design team, establish clear ways of working and quality standards, and align Product, Engineering, Content, and other leaders around delivering consistent, high-quality outcomes.

Key Responsibilities:

Shape strategy and align cross-functional leaders

• Use design to help set direction, not just execute it.
• Make trade-offs clear: what we focus on now, what we pause, and why.
• Align Product, Design, Engineering, Content and other teams on priorities and how we’ll work together.

Own the end-to-end product and brand experience

• Apply product design thinking across the full journey, connecting user needs, learning goals, business needs and the wider product experience.
• Ensure the experience feels consistent and clearly “us” across product, marketing, and content.
• Make key journeys simple, clear, and accessible for learners and customers.
• Find the biggest experience problems and lead the work to fix them.
• Build and maintain a design system teams can rely on.

Lead and develop the Design teams and evolve ways of working

• Set a clear quality bar, ownership model and ways of working across the design teams.
• Grow design leads and team members into stronger owners, with less reliance on a few senior people.
• Create clear ways of working from Problem Discovery → Solution Discovery → Solution Lock → Development → Launch → Learn.
• Make design ownership and sign-off clear, and encourage low-fidelity exploration before teams move into high-fidelity solutions.
• Improve the biggest workflow bottlenecks to increase speed and quality.

Drive insight- and data-informed design

• Combine user research, qualitative insight, and product data to guide decisions.
• Define what success looks like and measure whether changes improved the experience.
• Focus on a small set of meaningful metrics. 

To Be The Right Fit, You'll Need

• Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design, Visual Arts, or a related field. A Master’s degree is a plus.
• Minimum of 6 years in branding or visual design, with at least 3 years in a leadership role; working experience in the region is a plus
• Familiarity with the local culture and education system helps tailor designs effectively.
• Ability to create culturally respectful and relevant designs that resonate with the regional audience.
• Experience in product design, visual identity, and brand design; an affinity with designing for learning. 
• Understanding of user interface and user experience design principles.
• Experience with AI prototyping in an emerging tool.
• Strong understanding of typography, color theory, and layout design.
• Ability to develop long-term visual strategies that support brand growth.
• Expert in Figma, Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign and similar tools.
• Experience with project & product management tools and methodologies.
• Ability to build strong relationships and work collaboratively with cross-functional teams.
• Experience with presenting research findings to stakeholders
• Fluency in English; Arabic is preferred.

What we offer

We believe our people are our greatest advantage. We value curiosity, purpose, and the drive to make a real difference. When you join Alef, you join a mission — and a team that’s just as passionate about transforming education as you are.

Here’s a glimpse of what we offer:

• Annual flight allowance
• Annual performance bonus
• Education allowance
• Health and Life insurance
• Enhanced leave policy
• A hybrid work model and remote working days to work from anywhere 

At Alef, we don’t just imagine a better future for education.

We build it — together.

https://www.alefeducation.com/