Product Designer
About the role
AwardSpring is an established, growing SaaS company that partners with hundreds of colleges, universities, and foundations across the US and Canada to award scholarships and manage their donors. We complete the virtuous cycle of giving, getting, and giving again, on a mature, multi-tenant platform, with a small, focused team.
AI-native development changed engineering first, but it is changing design just as fast. The line between a Figma file and a shipped feature is collapsing, and we want designers who are already shipping on the production side of that line. If you have used AI prototyping tools to ship real interfaces, or you have been frustrated that your work too often dies in handoff, this role is what you have been waiting for.
This is an individual contributor role on a small product team. You will work directly with engineering and product on the same surface, ship into production, and report to the CTO.
How we work
We're an AI-native product team. Nearly 100% of the code in our product is AI-generated, and every IC (engineer, PM, designer) ships features end-to-end with agentic tooling. The lines between disciplines are intentionally blurred: PMs ship code, engineers make product calls, designers prototype in production. We hire for fluency in agentic development, not time in any one stack.
If you've been building this way on nights and weekends because your day job won't let you (rigid stack, no token budget, "that's not how we do things here"), this is the place where it's the actual job.
What you'll do
- Ship UX, UI, and interaction work end-to-end across our products. Three months in, we should be able to point to things that exist because you built them
- Prototype in code (via agentic tooling), not just in Figma. Designs that ship are designs that work in the real codebase
- Own the visual and interaction system for the surfaces you touch
- Push back when product framings are weak; propose tighter alternatives
- Stay close to users; let what you observe shape what you ship
Who you are
- You have used Claude Code, Cursor, AI prototyping tools, or comparable agentic tools to ship real product work, not just mocks. We will walk through what you built
- 3+ years shipping product design work that made it to production
- A portfolio that shows interaction, system, and craft thinking, not just visuals
- Strong opinions about what "good" looks like, design decisions and product decisions both
- Stack-agnostic; comfortable in unfamiliar codebases
- Comfortable presenting work to customers, executives, and peers
What we give you
- Top-tier AI tooling with unlimited token budgets
- Day-one access to the latest models as they ship
- A mature, multi-tenant production codebase with real users and real stakes
- Health, dental, and vision insurance, 401(k) match, unlimited PTO, and paid parental leave
Our values
- ACTION: Take initiative, be accountable, share what you know.
- DETERMINATION: Simplify and improve, get past obstacles with creativity and persistence.
- HUMANITY: Empathy and kindness in every interaction.
- IMPROVEMENT: Grow daily, add value to clients and teammates.
Workspace
Hybrid, based in our West Loop / Fulton Market office in Chicago, roughly three days a week.