Founding Product Designer

GovWell•New York, NY

9d•$180,000 - $200,000•Hybrid

About The Position

GovWell is building the AI operating system transforming how governments serve communities, starting with local agencies. GovWell replaces legacy software for municipalities and counties, empowering public servants to radically streamline public services and cut internal processing time for permits and licenses by up to 95%. Founded in 2023, GovWell powers 5,000+ mission-critical processes for agencies in 35+ states serving millions of residents. The company has raised $35M in funding from Insight Partners, Work-Bench, and Bienville Capital, and the team works in person at GovWell HQ in New York City. Government software has historically forced users to choose between two bad options: outdated systems that are painful to use, or newer tools that look better but can’t handle the complexity of how government actually works. We believe the next generation of government software should do neither. It should make extraordinarily complex workflows feel simple, intuitive, and even delightful. GovWell is hiring a Founding Product Designer to define what that future looks like. You’ll be our first design leader and will build the Design function from the ground up. You’ll establish the principles, systems, and standards that shape every GovWell product—while remaining deeply hands-on in the work. You’ll redesign the look and feel of our core platform, help us create AI experiences that feel integral rather than bolted on, and give engineers the tools to build polished, consistent products without design becoming a bottleneck. This is not a role for someone who wants to inherit a mature team or spend most of their time reviewing other people’s work. Initially, you’ll be a full-time individual contributor and thought leader. Over time, you’ll hire and lead the team needed to make design a lasting competitive advantage for GovWell. This role reports directly to our CTO and Co-Founder, Ben Cohen. We have a hybrid work culture that combines regular in-person collaboration at our New York City office (3+ days per week) with flexibility to work remotely.

Requirements

Complexity, made simple: You have a track record of designing intuitive, beautiful products for complex use cases.
A player, not just a coach: You’re an exceptional hands-on product designer who can take an ambiguous problem through to a polished experience—and you’re excited to do the work yourself.
More than a pair of hands: You have strong product judgment. You challenge assumptions, simplify workflows, and help determine what should be built—not just how requirements should look.
AI-native, not AI-curious: You’re an active user of AI and have thoughtful, evolving opinions about how it should reshape software experiences.
Systems without bureaucracy: You can establish a design system that helps teams move faster without letting the system become more important than the product.
Clarity creates momentum: You communicate clearly and can bring founders, product managers, engineers, and customers along with your thinking.
Vision down to the last pixel: You move comfortably between articulating a multi-year product vision and debating the right label, state, or interaction.
A builder of teams: You want to create a Design function and eventually lead a team, but you’re energized by starting as a hands-on individual contributor.
Empathy without prerequisites: You can deeply understand the needs of government staff and residents without prior govtech experience.
Values are how you operate: You align closely with our Core Values.

Responsibilities

Set the design vision for GovWell. Define the principles that make our products intuitive, differentiated, and unmistakably GovWell.
Reimagine the core product experience. Lead a significant evolution of our platform’s visual design and interaction patterns without losing sight of the complex workflows our customers depend on.
Design AI-native experiences. Shape how AI helps government staff complete work—not as a chatbot bolted onto existing software, but as a cohesive part of the product.
Build our design system. Create the components, patterns, and guidance that let product and engineering teams move quickly while maintaining a consistently high bar.
Stay close to customers. Develop a deep understanding of government staff, residents, contractors, and business owners, then turn their needs into simple and thoughtful product experiences.
Raise the quality of everything we ship. Partner closely with our Head of Product (Will Fisher - former Head of Digital at the MTA and builder of the MTA TrainTime mobile app) and software engineers from early exploration through implementation, sweating the details that separate functional software from a truly great product.
Build the Design function from 0 to 1. Define how design operates at GovWell, then hire and develop a world-class team as the company grows.