Craig Leren

Product designer crafting software from concept to code

I’m Craig, a Principal Product Designer based in Brooklyn. I’ve spent my career designing and building software, most recently leading design at Progress Learning, a K-12 EdTech platform serving millions of students. I work across the full product surface, from research and interaction design to prototyping and front-end engineering. I’m most interested in the work that makes it into production.

Portrait of Craig Leren

Experience

Progress Learning

Principal Product Designer

July 2025 – Present

  • Lead UX strategy and design system evolution across the Progress Learning platform.
  • Use AI design-engineering tools (Cursor) to rapidly prototype and ship cohesive, accessible, user-centered product experiences.
  • Bridge product design and engineering with design tokens, component architecture, and shipped front-end work.

K-12 Compare

Founder, Designer, and Engineer

April 2026 – Present

  • Building a free, independent platform that helps educators research, compare, and manage the EdTech their schools use.
  • Designing and building every layer end-to-end (UX, front-end, back-end, and payments) using Cursor as a daily design-engineering partner.

Progress Learning

Chief Product Officer

June 2022 – June 2025

via Horizon Education acquisition

  • Continued leading Horizon Education product as a standalone platform after acquisition.
  • Drove the platform integration into Progress Learning's K-12 ecosystem in 2025, aligning Horizon's SAT/ACT assessment solutions with the broader Progress vision.

Horizon Education

Chief Product Officer & Chief Marketing Officer

January 2018 – June 2022

  • Led the digital EdTech K-12 product from inception, scaling from $250K to $2.75M ARR and from 10K to 250K yearly active users.
  • Designed all user interfaces and managed a team of software developers using agile methodologies.
  • Led design and development of the marketing website on Webflow with a focus on SEO and landing-page conversion.
  • Increased user engagement 40% through data-driven product enhancements; drove 15% adoption lift and 25% performance improvement via targeted UX changes.

Craig Leren Design

UI/UX Design Consultant

January 2014 – December 2017

Education

  • University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

    B.S. Architecture & Art

    2004 – 2008

Skills

Product
Product Strategy & Vision, Roadmap & Prioritization, Cross-Functional Leadership, User Research & Discovery, Agile Product Operations, Go-to-Market & Growth
Design
Product Design, UX Strategy, Design Systems, Rapid Prototyping (Figma & Code), Accessibility (WCAG)
Engineering
Front-End (TypeScript, React, Next.js, Tailwind), Design Tokens & Component Architecture, AI-Assisted Design Engineering (Cursor)
Tools
Figma, Cursor, Claude Code, Webflow, HubSpot, Jira

Contact

Reach me at hello@craigleren.com or on LinkedIn.