Founding Product Designer

The business

We are two founders with three exits between us. We have raised more than $15m from world class investors, and our companies have generated more than $50m across those exits. We build consumer products, and this one is funded from our own profits. There is no VC timeline, no fundraise we need to close, and no plan to raise external capital, so we can build for the long term without the usual pressure to keep financing the business. Salary is top of market and stable, with a defined path as the business grows.

The product

You step into a book as a character. You decide what you do and say, and the story moves around you. The people in it remember what happened, want things of their own, and do not always do what you expect.

Millions of people already spend hours a day talking to fictional characters, but the products they use are chat windows with a costume on. Nothing remembers properly, nothing builds, and nothing pays off. We are building the version that actually behaves like a story.

This is a text-first product, so the reading experience is everything. Typography, spacing, pacing, transitions and the way words appear on the page matter more here than in almost any other consumer product. The interface should almost disappear. The reader should feel like they are inside a book, not operating software.

Nobody has done this well yet, because it is a hard AI problem and a hard product design problem at the same time.

The role

You are the founding product designer. You work directly with the founders and the founding engineer to build the product, take it to market, and improve it quickly from what real readers do.

You will own the visual design and much of the UX, with genuine creative freedom over how the product looks, moves and feels. You will shape the experience from the first screen a reader sees to the moment they close a chapter.

What you will own.

– The reading experience. Typography, layout, the composer, streaming text, transitions, motion and the small details that make a digital product feel like a beautifully designed book.

– The wider product. Onboarding, discovering stories, the library, character interactions, episode endings, sharing and everything that surrounds the core reading experience.

– Prototyping and exploration. Taking rough ideas and turning them into something we can click, experience and test. You use AI and modern prototyping tools to explore quickly, but your taste determines what is worth keeping.

– Design quality in production. Working closely with the founding engineer to make sure what ships is as good as what was designed. You stay involved through implementation, test the real product and refine the details until they feel right.

– The design foundations. The visual language, interaction patterns and standards that future designers inherit.

We have strong product and design instincts ourselves, so this will be a close collaboration. We know how to give clear direction, make decisions quickly and leave room for the person doing the work to bring their own ideas. We expect you to push back when you think we’re wrong.

You do not need to write production code. You do need to understand how digital products are built, prototype your ideas and care deeply about the quality of what ships.

How we work

The bar is a tier A consumer product: typography, interaction, motion, pacing and visual consistency all count, and we will push on every one of them.

We would rather have something clickable today than spend a week discussing how it might work. We expect you to bring ideas, defend your decisions and change your mind when there is a better answer.

AI is part of how we work. We want you using it to explore, prototype and move faster, without letting it make the design decisions for you.

You are never stuck alone: founders are available daily, the founding engineer works closely with you, and you will have the tools and support you need. We give honest feedback, trust people with responsibility and have no process that exists for its own sake.

What we are looking for

– Exceptional visual and UX taste. Your portfolio makes this obvious before you explain anything.

– Extremely strong typography. You understand hierarchy, spacing, line length, rhythm and readability. You notice details most people miss.

– A real consumer product designer. You have designed and shipped products end to end, not just created attractive concepts.

–…