Freelance Product Designer (Fractional)

ABOUT THE ROLE This is a fractional Product Designer role embedded directly with the founding team of an early-stage AI-powered talent marketplace, working across the full product surface — from candidate-facing AI conversations to hiring manager dashboards. You'll be the design voice in the room, shipping real product quickly without layers or design-by-committee. The work directly shapes how people discover and land new career opportunities. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Own the entire design surface: product UI, candidate-facing experiences, company dashboards, and the AI interaction layer. - Turn ambiguous, early-stage problems into clean, intuitive flows while maintaining a high level of craft. - Build and evolve the company's 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 beyond pixels to strategy and priorities. - Manage fractional engagement logistics: communicate weekly availability, track capacity, and handle billing expectations clearly. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - 5+ years designing digital products, with meaningful time at a startup as the primary or sole designer. - Deep fluency in Figma for both product design and design system work. - A strong portfolio demonstrating taste, clarity, and shipped work — not just aesthetics, but solved user problems. - Experience designing end-to-end flows for multi-stakeholder products (e.g. candidates, companies, internal teams). - Experience building design systems from scratch or at an early stage. - Comfort conducting user research and translating findings into product improvements. - Proven ability to work autonomously, async, and in distributed teams with minimal direction. - Prior fractional or contract design experience with concurrent client management. - Familiarity with accessibility standards (WCAG) and inclusive design is a plus. - Experience with AI-powered products, conversational interfaces, or marketplace/multi-sided platform design is a strong plus. - Background in HR tech, recruiting, or talent marketplace products is a plus. COMPENSATION & BENEFITS Compensation range: $100,000 – $120,000 USD annually. Flexible fractional engagement with fully remote work. Visa sponsorship is not available. LOCATION Fully remote — open to candidates worldwide.