Founding Product Designer (Mobile)

Location: New York City (Onsite)

Compensation: $175–$225K base salary + meaningful equity

About the Opportunity

A well-funded early-stage startup in NYC is looking for a Founding Product Designer to shape the experience of a fast-growing consumer health mobile product. The team has achieved significant traction in a short period of time, with hundreds of thousands of users and a rapidly expanding customer base—all before building out a dedicated design function.

This is a rare chance to join as the first designer, working directly with the product founder to define the look, feel, and soul of a product used during one of the most transformative moments in a person’s life. You will be designing across mobile, web, brand, character systems, motion, and physical touchpoints. If you’ve been waiting for a “design at the ground floor” role where your work is deeply impactful and seen by millions—this is it.

What You’ll Do

• Own the full mobile product experience — lead UI, UX, and interaction design across core flows such as behavior tracking, content surfaces, progress visualization, and habit-building features.
• Continuously refine and experiment — iterate quickly using user feedback, behavioral data, and direct product insights.
• Drive a cohesive visual identity — expand a unified brand system across the mobile app, website, marketing collateral, social assets, and occasional packaging/physical materials.
• Create intuitive data visualizations — turn health, behavior, and progress data into clear and emotionally supportive visual systems.
• Develop and extend character-driven design — improve an existing mascot/character system and introduce new expressive elements.
• Prototype and ship with engineering — deliver polished, production-ready designs in Figma and collaborate with engineering to ensure high-quality implementation.
• Elevate user experience through motion — incorporate animations, transitions, and micro-interactions to create an app that feels alive and supportive.

What We're Looking For

• 4+ years of experience designing consumer mobile products, ideally with strong end-to-end ownership in past roles.
• A portfolio demonstrating top-tier visual and interaction design, especially for iOS applications.
• Excellent design instincts — high taste, strong attention to detail, and an ability to recognize what feels “off” or “just right.”
• Practical, product-minded design thinking — you prioritize what improves the user’s experience, not what looks most impressive in isolation.
• Comfort working across multiple surfaces — product UI, branding, web, illustration, motion, and marketing.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills — able to explain design rationale clearly and work closely with product and engineering.
• Fast execution and comfort with ambiguity — thrives in environments where decisions happen quickly and direction evolves.
• Must be NYC-based or willing to relocate — this is an in-person role in Midtown Manhattan (near Bryant Park).
• A designer at heart — you genuinely love designing and want to spend your day doing hands-on work, not managing others.

Nice to Have

• Experience with motion/animation tools (Rive, Lottie, After Effects, etc.)
• Character or illustration experience
• Strong graphic design fundamentals including typography, layout, and hierarchy
• Experience working in health, wellness, behavior change, or gamified consumer apps
• Prior experience as a founding or early design hire at a fast-growing startup

Why This Role Matters

This product is already reaching a large and passionate user base, and design plays a critical role in how people engage with it emotionally and functionally. Joining now allows you to directly influence the product’s evolution at a moment of explosive growth. Your work will become the foundation for scaling a category-defining consumer experience over the coming years.

If you're looking for an opportunity where your craft truly shapes the direction of a company—and you want to work shoulder-to-shoulder with product and engineering in a high-ownership environment—this role offers exactly that.