Product Design Lead, Founding Team

The Role
You'll set the craft bar for everything Wondr ships. You'll own the design system, the core product surfaces, and the interaction language that makes Wondr feel considered rather than templated, distinctly Wondr rather than a copy of Discord, Patreon, or Instagram. You'll work closely with the Founder/CEO, CTO, engineering, and a visual designer, turning product direction into screens the team can confidently build.

This is an ownership role, not a support role. You won't inherit a design system to maintain; you'll build it from scratch and decide what the product looks and feels like at every surface. The Founder is looking for a real partner on product feel, not someone to execute a spec she's already fully defined. If you want a seat where your calls actually shape how Wondr looks and behaves, this is that seat.

This starts as a contract engagement built to prove fit fast, with a clear track to a senior role on the founding team.

What You'll Own
Design system: Build and own the system from scratch: tokens, components, patterns, documentation. Every new screen should look like it belongs to the same product.
Product surfaces: Design and ship every creator- and member-facing surface, from onboarding through the core product experience.
Product feel: Define what makes Wondr distinctly Wondr. Partner with the Founder on product direction and hold the craft bar as the product grows.
Research and judgment: Study interaction patterns, competitive products, and user behavior. Flag design and experience gaps before they become expensive to fix in engineering.
Delivery: Hand off specs engineering can build against without guesswork, and follow through from concept to shipped screen, not just to handoff.
Source of truth: Maintain the design system and pattern library as the one place the team looks for how something should look and behave.

What We're Looking For
4+ years in product design, with real ownership in a small team where your decisions had compounding consequences
A shipped consumer product you owned end to end, not an agency handoff
A design system you built from scratch, not one you inherited or designed on top of
Strong point of view on what makes a product feel right, not just look right
Enough motion and interaction craft to make a product feel alive, not static
Comfort respectfully challenging founders and collaborators when something can be better
High personal ownership: you spot what's missing and fix it without being asked