At Ello, our mission is to maximize the potential of all children. Our first product (Read with Ello) is an AI reading teacher that listens to a child read from real books. It uses evidence-based reading instruction to help them when they get stuck and behavioral psychology to motivate them to keep going. We’re now building on the success of Read with Ello and putting together the pieces of the world’s first complete AI teacher for children.

We’re a highly technical team building delightful learner-centered experiences which leverage the massive recent advances in AI. Our products put children on a path of lifelong learning, creating the foundation for their future and ours. Together, we believe we can close literacy and educational gaps around the world. We are backed by world-class investors, just closed a Series A, and we’re ready to bring on new talent to help achieve our vision.

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 have recently closed a funding round; previously announced investors include leading US and European VCs including Project A Ventures, Reach Capital, Khosla Ventures, Homebrew, WndrCo, Human Capital 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 wider community; we place significant emphasis on ensuring diversity in our team and inclusion in our culture. We want to create an environment in which we can all be our best selves, use our strengths to take Ello forward, and develop our own skills. We want to have fun while working hard to do impactful things that we’re proud of – we believe it’s possible to do both.

About Ello

Ello is building joyful, research-based learning experiences that help children grow as confident, capable readers and learners. Our work sits at the intersection of learning science, curriculum expertise, and product design, and we partner closely with subject matter experts to ensure our content is developmentally sound, instructionally effective, and creatively ambitious.

Role Overview

Ello is seeking a contract Math Subject Matter Expert (SME) to support the instructional vision and design of our math experiences. This is a part-time, remote, project-based contract (~10 hours per week). This role is ideal for an experienced math educator or curriculum designer who can think both instructionally and creatively—someone who can define what learners need to learn, and also imagine how that learning could come to life within a digital product.

The Math SME will collaborate with Ello’s curriculum, product, and design teams to:

• Shape math scope and sequence
• Identify appropriate learning progressions and instructional moves
• Envision engaging math activities and interactions
• Advise on how Ello’s existing features and content types can support math learning

Key Responsibilities

Instructional Strategy & Scope

• Develop and/or refine math scope and sequence aligned to early and elementary math learning (e.g., number sense, operations, geometry, measurement, problem-solving)
• Make principled decisions about learning progressions, prerequisite skills, and conceptual development
• Advise on grade-level expectations and how skills should build over time

Activity & Experience Design

• Envision the types of activities, tasks, and practice opportunities that best support the math scope and sequence
• Help translate math learning goals into engaging, developmentally appropriate digital experiences
• Provide guidance on how math concepts can be taught through interaction, representation, feedback, and play****

Product-Focused Consultation

• Collaborate with Ello’s team to explore how existing product features and activity formats could be leveraged or adapted for math
• Creatively consult on new possibilities for math learning within Ello’s current constraints
• Offer feedback on early concepts, prototypes, or content plans from an instructional lens

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with curriculum specialists, designers, and product managers to ensure math content is:
  • Instructionally sound
  • Age-appropriate
  • Feasible within the product
• Communicate clearly and constructively with non-math specialists

Qualifications

• Deep expertise in math education, curriculum design, or learning science (especially early elementary or elementary math)
• Experience designing or evaluating math scope and sequence or instructional frameworks
• Strong understanding of conceptual math development, not just procedural skills
• Ability to think creatively about how learning happens in digital environments
• Experience working with AI tools such as LLMs and image generation tools.
• Experience collaborating with cross-functional teams (curriculum, product, design, engineering)
• Comfortable working in a consulting / contract capacity with evolving needs

Nice to Have

• Experience with edtech products, digital curriculum, or interactive learning tools
• Familiarity with research-based math instruction (e.g., number sense development, representations, productive struggle)
• Background in classroom teaching, coaching, or curriculum leadership
• Portfolio of past work, if applicable
• Experience adapting instruction to constraints while maintaining instructional integrity

Engagement Details

• Contract role; scope and hours to be determined based on project needs but will likely start at ~10 hours per week
• Remote and flexible
• Hourly rate will be determined based on experience and location
• Opportunity for ongoing collaboration as Ello’s math work evolves

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 offices in São Paulo, Brazil; Nairobi, Kenya; and New York.

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.

Our stack spans across various technologies, from custom-built in-house real-time ML models, to our consumer-facing mobile app, to internal infrastructure and tools. An overview of the different parts of our tech stack:

AI/Machine Learning

• Custom built child speech recognition model for real-time inference, written in C++
• Python libraries for ML prototyping and training (Pytorch, TensorFlow, sklearn, etc.)
• Infrastructure running continuous model training & fine tuning on GCP/AWS
• Applied state-of-the-art AI foundation models for adaptive applications & generative content

Mobile App

• Ello mobile app built using Unity (running on iOS/Android/Kindle).
• Custom bridging interface connecting Unity app front-end with on-device child speech model & service (ObjC/Swift on iOS and Java/Kotlin on Android)

Web Frontend

• Customer-facing and internal web portals written in React

Backend

• NestJS backend using MongoDB
• GraphQL API served over Apollo