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. What You'll Do 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. 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 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. Familiarity with accessibility principles (WCAG) and inclusive design is a plus. Experience designing for marketplaces, platforms, or multi-sided networks is a plus. Experience designing AI-powered products or conversational interfaces is a plus. Background in HR tech, recruiting, or talent marketplace products is a plus. Compensation & Benefits Competitive compensation in the range of $100,000–$120,000 USD annually. Flexible fractional engagement with remote work. Visa sponsorship is not available. Location Fully remote — open to candidates worldwide.