Our mission at Ello is simple and urgent: maximize the potential of every child, everywhere.
We're building the world's first AI teacher to close that gap: one that listens, speaks, adapts, and inspires, just like the best human educators.
Our first product, Read with Ello, is already helping tens of thousands of kids each week learn to read. It listens as they read aloud, offers support when they stumble, and generates magical, personalized stories. It works, and kids love it.
Now, we're scaling that success into something even bigger: a complete AI teacher that can help children learn far beyond reading, including math and language learning. Our new app combines language, speech, and memory to deliver interactive learning for kids worldwide; check it out [here](https://www.ello.com/). We're moving fast: we ship weekly, test directly with kids, and push the boundaries of what’s possible with AI in education.
With the resources of the world's top investors and the heart of a public benefit corporation, we're here to revolutionize how children learn globally. Featured on TIME's Best Inventions and Fortune's Change the World, Ello is a small, mission-driven team taking on one of the most important challenges of our time: to democratize education.
## **About the Role**
Ello is seeking a full-time AI Learning Designer (Math) to help shape the instructional vision and design of our math learning experiences. This role sits at the intersection of elementary math pedagogy and AI: you'll build and refine AI-powered math learning activities, steer our AI tutor to teach math the way a great human educator would, and work shoulder-to-shoulder with engineers to make it happen.
This role is ideal for an AI-forward math educator or curriculum designer who can think both instructionally, creatively, and technically—someone who can define what learners need to learn, imagine how that learning can come to life within an AI-powered digital product, and collaborate deeply with engineers to build the future of educational technology.
Because this role sits at the intersection of curriculum and technology, we’re looking for someone with a strong technical foundation. That might come from a background in computer science, AI, computational thinking, educational technology, or extensive experience building AI-enabled products and workflows. You don’t need to be a software engineer, but you should be excited to work closely with engineers, understand the capabilities and limitations of modern AI systems, and have a strong conceptual understanding of how AI components and software systems work together to deliver intelligent, interactive learning experiences.
You’ll collaborate closely with curriculum, product, engineering, and design to shape Ello’s elementary math curriculum, develop engaging learning experiences, and ensure our math instruction is grounded in both learning science and exceptional product design.
We're aiming to significantly grow our library of math activities this year, and we need someone who can ramp up quickly and hit that pace independently. This role is open as either a full-time contractor (SF preferred but open to remote candidates) or a full-time employee based in San Francisco. We're moving fast to fill it, but for the right person, we see this as a long-term seat on the learning design team.
## **What You’ll Do**
* Design and build AI-powered math lessons that combine strong pedagogy with engaging learner experiences.
* Evaluate AI tutor outputs to ensure they are instructionally effective and developmentally appropriate.
* Guide and refine AI tutor behavior by helping shape prompts so the agent teaches as an expert math tutor would.
* Collaborate with engineers and AI researchers to continuously improve the quality of AI-driven instruction through testing, iteration, and evaluation.
## **Key Requirements**
* Deep expertise in math education, curriculum design, or learning science, particularly in early elementary or elementary mathematics
* A strong technical foundation. This could include experience in computer science, artificial intelligence, educational technology, or building technology-enabled learning products.
* A genuinely AI-forward workflow — you use LLMs and other generative AI tools daily, and can speak specifically to how they've changed how you work
* Comfortable communicating fluently with engineers and product teams, translating instructional ideas into AI-powered learning experiences
* Able to ramp quickly, take ambiguous direction, and hit a high output bar independently
## **Nice to Have**
* Background in computer science, software engineering, data science, or a related technical field
* Experience designing AI-assisted educational experiences
* Experience building edtech products or digital learning experiences
* Familiarity with research-based math instruction, including number sense development, visual representations, and productive struggle
* Portfolio demonstrating curriculum or product work
## **We Look for Candidates Who**
* Obsess over learning design because all children deserve an education that creates impact with delight.
* Experiment constantly, especially with AI, because yesterday’s workflows won’t build tomorrow’s products.
* Have a strong, opinionated sense of what good math pedagogy looks and feels like.
* Move with urgency because opportunities like this don’t come around often.
* Default to ownership instead of waiting for permission.
* Build meaningful relationships and communicate with honesty, empathy, and respect.
## **About Ello**
Ello is a public benefit corporation on a mission to maximize the potential of all children. We're currently around \~50 people, headquartered in San Francisco with a second office in Nairobi, Kenya.
Our team has deep expertise in artificial intelligence, K-12 education, and child development across institutions such as Stanford, Berkeley, Google, Apple, and more. We were part of Y Combinator's W20 batch and are funded by world-class investors including Goodwater Capital, Homebrew, Reed Hastings, Common Sense Growth, Ravensburger, Project A Ventures, Reach Capital, Khosla Ventures, WndrCo, Visible Ventures, and K9 Ventures.
We're a small, collaborative team that takes each other's voices very seriously. Because our mission is to support all children, it is critical that our team is representative of the communities we work in; we place significant emphasis on ensuring diversity in our team and inclusion in our culture. If you have questions about immigration, reach out to us.
We feel enormously privileged to be building at this moment. Advances in AI have made it possible, for the first time, to imagine giving every child a truly personalized teacher. We don’t take that opportunity for granted.
We work with urgency because millions of children can’t wait. We care deeply about craftsmanship because learning experiences should feel magical. And we believe it’s possible to build ambitious technology while building a company where people do the best work of their careers.
If that excites you, we’d love to meet you.
Visa sponsorship is not available for this role.
