Founding Designer

Company:

SimpleStudy is a consumer AI platform for students. The company just closed a $4M seed round, with 1.5M + students across five primary markets: UK, Ireland, Brazil, South Africa, and Australia. Over ~40,000 new students join every week. The team is ~20 people, operating remotely with an office in Lisbon.

Notable investors include the first investors of Facebook and Revolut, and founders of Strava, and Intercom. The company is lean, product-obsessed, and deliberately not a typical education company — it's built consumer-first, with heavy PLG and A/B testing culture. 1 in 4 students in Ireland already use the product, and they want to do that for several hundred million students around the world.

Team:

Two current designers — both very strong in execution.The new hire would be the first founding/staff-level design partner. Reports directly to Oisin.

Responsibilities and key results:

• Own the full design process end-to-end — from understanding ambiguous problems to shipping solutions, without needing the problem framed in advance

• Partner directly with Oisin on product direction, roadmap priorities, and design philosophy — bring a point of view and defend it

• Drive consumer experience design: onboarding, social/viral loops, retention, growth surfaces

• Work in a PLG/A/B testing environment — ship features, measure impact, iterate fast

• Eventually help shape the broader design team a new hires (~3 total planned)

Must-haves:

• Strong product thinking — takes a vague brief and frames + solves the problem independently. Shows "why" before "how"

• Consumer product background — has designed for B2C audiences at scale

• Opinions and backbone — has a design philosophy, can defend it under pushback, willing to disagree with a founder

• Chemistry and personality — interesting hobbies, curiosity, authenticity

• Ownership mindset — end-to-end, from problem definition to shipped solution

• Comfortable with experimentation, A/B testing, data-led iteration

• Early-stage or founding designer experience

Nice-to-have:

• Experience with social/viral product mechanics

• Background at Duolingo, Spotify, Strava, Notion, Monzo, or similar consumer PLG products

• Some craft/taste for visual design (not just process)

• Hobbies: Enjoys the outdoors, sports, or some other physical activity

Conditions:

• Remote in Europe (preference: Western/continental Europe)

• Portugal/Lisbon relocation sponsorship possible

• Salary: no fixed budget, flexible

• Stock options: yes

• Contract type: full-time employment, independent contractor