Freelance Product Designer (Fractional)

ABOUT THE ROLE This is a fractional, fully remote Product Designer role at an early-stage AI-powered talent marketplace startup. You will serve as the design voice working directly alongside the founding team and engineering, shaping everything from candidate-facing AI conversations to hiring manager dashboards. The work matters because great design here directly affects how people find their next career opportunity. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Own the entire design surface, including product UI, candidate-facing experiences, company dashboards, and the AI interaction layer. - Turn ambiguous product problems into clean, intuitive flows and ship real product quickly with minimal layers. - Build and evolve the design system from the ground up as the product scales. - Run lightweight user research by conducting candidate and company interviews, observing sessions, and identifying points of friction. - Contribute to product direction alongside the founding team, going beyond execution to influence strategy. 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 product design and design system work. - A portfolio that demonstrates taste, clarity, and thoughtfulness through shipped, current product design work. - Experience designing end-to-end user flows and interaction models for multi-stakeholder products. - Experience building and evolving design systems from scratch or at an early stage. - Proven ability to conduct lightweight user research including interviews and session observation. - Comfortable working autonomously with minimal direction and communicating async across a distributed team. - Experience designing for marketplaces, platforms, or multi-sided networks is a strong plus. - Experience designing AI-powered products or conversational interfaces is a strong plus. - Background in recruiting, HR tech, or talent marketplace products is a bonus. COMPENSATION & BENEFITS Compensation is $100,000 to $120,000 USD annually on a fractional freelance or contractor basis. Visa sponsorship is not available. LOCATION Fully remote, open to candidates worldwide.