Freelance Product Designer (Fractional)

About the role

This is a fractional Product Designer role at an early-stage AI-powered talent marketplace startup, working directly alongside founders and engineering to shape the entire product experience. You'll be the design voice in the room — owning everything from candidate-facing AI conversations to hiring manager dashboards — with real ownership and no design-by-committee.

Responsibilities

• Own the full design surface: product UI, candidate experiences, company dashboards, and the AI interaction layer.
• Turn ambiguous, early-stage problems into clean, intuitive user flows while maintaining a high bar for craft.
• Build and evolve the design system from the ground up.
• Run lightweight user research — candidate and company interviews, session observation, and friction identification.
• Produce developer-ready handoffs including specs, redlines, and asset exports, collaborating closely with engineering on implementation fidelity.
• Shape product direction alongside the founding team, contributing input beyond pixels.

Requirements

• 5+ years designing digital products, with meaningful time at a startup as the primary or sole designer.
• Deep fluency in Figma for product design and design system work.
• A portfolio demonstrating taste, clarity, and thoughtfulness — with shipped work.
• Experience designing end-to-end flows and interaction models for multi-stakeholder products.
• Experience building or evolving design systems from an early stage.
• Comfort conducting lightweight user research including interviews and session observation.
• Ability to work autonomously, async, and with minimal direction in a distributed team.
• Prior fractional, contract, or multi-client design experience, including managing availability, capacity, and billing logistics.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills for presenting and documenting design decisions.

Nice-to-have skills

• Familiarity with accessibility principles (WCAG) and inclusive design.
• Experience designing for marketplaces, platforms, or multi-sided networks.
• Experience designing AI-powered products or conversational interfaces.
• Background in HR tech, recruiting, or talent marketplace products.

Pay

Competitive compensation in the range of $100,000–$120,000 USD annually.

Schedule

Flexible fractional engagement with remote work.

Location

Fully remote — open to candidates worldwide.