Learning Designer — Early Reading Specialist Internship

At Ello, our mission is simple and urgent: to maximize the potential of every child, everywhere.

We are building an AI teacher for children ages 4–9—one that makes learning feel magical, intuitive, and deeply engaging. Through games, conversations, playful challenges, and stories, children learn by exploring—not through traditional lessons or drills. The experience is designed to be joyful, rooted in learning science, and accessible even for children who are still learning English.

We have a beta cohort using the app and are beginning to scale content to shape the platform's future. We’re looking for creative and thoughtful Learning Designers who can help craft meaningful educational experiences and bring them to life through our activity-building platform.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Design engaging reading and literacy activities for children ages 4–9 that balance learning, play, and exploration

Create interactive experiences that support foundational reading development through stories, games, and playful challenges

Design activities targeting phonemic awareness, phonics, decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension

Use AI prompting tools to implement lessons, test interactions, and refine experiences based on learner behavior and feedback

Collaborate with reading specialists and creative teams to shape activities

Generate or curate visual assets that make learning intuitive and engaging

Help create experiences that feel immersive, magical, and emotionally engaging for children

Iterate quickly in a fast-moving product environment

WHO YOU ARE

You have experience teaching reading to children or designing literacy learning experiences

You can translate learning science into practice

You understand how children learn to read and how to make literacy instruction accessible, intuitive, and joyful

You have a strong understanding of foundational literacy development and evidence-based reading instruction

You have a portfolio showcasing curriculum design, learning activities, interactive lessons, or child-centered educational experiences

You enjoy using AI tools like ChatGPT and are excited about the future of AI in education

You’re comfortable learning new tools and workflows (no coding experience required)

You’re self-directed, collaborative, curious, and creative

NICE TO HAVE

Background in early literacy, elementary education, curriculum design, or the science of reading

Experience with early childhood education

Familiarity with prompting, conversational design, or educational AI tools

Experience with interactive storytelling, games-based learning, or children’s media

Experience with visual, video, or audio creation tools (Sora, Suno, etc.)

WHY JOIN US?

Help shape a product that could transform how children learn reading, math, and English around the world

Work with a creative, mission-driven team building entirely new kinds of educational experiences

Flexible remote work with async collaboration

Opportunity to work at the frontier of AI and child-centered learning design

About Ello

Ello is a public benefit corporation on a mission to maximize the potential of all children. We’re currently around 45 people, headquartered in San Francisco with another 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 seriously. Because our mission is to support all children, our team must be representative of the communities we work in; we place significant emphasis on ensuring diversity in our team and inclusion in our culture.

We feel enormously privileged to be one of the few companies with the opportunity to take a shot at truly revolutionizing education with AI at this inflection point in technology. We don’t take it for granted, so we work urgently to turn that vision into reality. We want to create an environment where we can all be our best selves, use our strengths to take Ello forward, and develop our skills. We want to have fun while working hard to do impactful things we’re proud of – and we believe it’s possible to do both.