Fractional Founding Designer

Job description

About the Role

This is a founding design position at an early-stage AI-powered recruiting platform, working 10–20 hours per week in a fractional capacity. You won't be executing tickets — you'll be setting the visual and interaction standards that the entire product is built against, owning the look, feel, and design language from the ground up.

What You'll Do

- Define and own the product's design direction, establishing the visual identity and UX standards everyone else builds against.

- Create high-fidelity mockups and interactive prototypes using tools like Figma, Sketch, or Adobe XD.

- Build and document a design system that scales with the team.

- Work directly with engineering and product to implement designs and navigate technical constraints.

- Conduct or facilitate user research, usability testing, and qualitative feedback sessions to continuously refine the product.

- Manage design-to-code handoff, with an understanding of how designs translate to frontend implementation.

What We're Looking For

- 3+ years of product design experience shipping consumer or B2B products end-to-end.

- Demonstrated experience establishing design systems, standards, and documentation for engineering teams.

- Proficiency in Figma, Sketch, or Adobe XD for prototyping and high-fidelity design work.

- Comfort making design and product strategy decisions with incomplete information, iterating based on real user feedback.

- A portfolio showcasing shipped products with a clear problem-solving or before/after narrative.

- Experience at early-stage startups or in fractional/part-time design roles is a strong plus.

- Familiarity with HTML/CSS and frontend implementation concepts is a bonus.

Location

Fully remote. Open to candidates based in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland).