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.