Product Designer - 1st hire, build with AI

Kovo

18h•Remote

About The Position

Join an early-stage startup. Unlock access to credit. Accelerate economic opportunity. Join us as our 1st Product Designer! You'll leverage AI as a supercharger for your craft, not a replacement for it. AI lets you do things that weren't even tenable five years ago: run deep research before you start, rapidly explore dozens of ideas, stress-test designs through multiple user perspectives, and arrive at a much stronger starting point for the high-fidelity work that still demands a skilled designer's eye. You'll experiment with AI to streamline your workflows as it becomes increasingly more useful. About us Kovo is transforming financial access for underserved Americans. We believe everyone deserves the opportunity for economic independence. Our innovative financial empowerment platform creates pathways to credit and financial inclusion, empowering individuals traditionally excluded from financial opportunities. We've scaled revenue 20x over the past three years, and our revenue efficiency (revenue per employee) is benchmarked at the 99th percentile. This is a venture-scale company that has started generating positive free cash flow early in its lifecycle, resulting in less dilution for our employees as we accelerate momentum without being dependent on venture funding to stay alive. We're seeking exceptional individuals eager to help us scale another 20x and beyond. Kovo is backed by Inspired Capital and Homebrew, along with founders and leaders from Plaid, Column, Ramp, Affirm, Cash App, NerdWallet, Alloy, MoonPay, Uber, Etsy, LendingClub, Grindr, and more. Why you might be excited about us Direct impact on millions of people’s ability to access credit High ownership with minimal bureaucracy Speed, learning, and impact are core values Why you might not be excited about us Roles and priorities evolve quickly Some systems and processes are still being built The pace of execution and career growth is intense (not optimized for work-life balance)

Requirements

4+ years or equivalent depth of experience designing digital products, ideally in fintech or consumer-facing applications
Advanced proficiency in Storybook, Figma (components, auto layout, libraries, prototyping), and Framer
Strong ability to translate complex problems into clear, intuitive user flows and explain and defend design decisions
Experience with design systems, component-based UI, and design-to-development handoff
Familiarity with experimentation, A/B testing concepts, and using data to inform design decisions
Basic understanding of Git and version control workflows
Basic familiarity with HTML, CSS and accessibility best practices
Energized by creating user experiences that empower underserved individuals seeking financial independence
Self-starter who thrives in ambiguity, handles shifting priorities fluidly, and takes full ownership of outcomes
Comfortable in a high-intensity, remote environment with significant accountability
Motivated to experiment with and use AI as an enabler for higher-quality craft not as a shortcut to lower-quality output

Nice To Haves

Experience using AI tools to create interactive prototypes for testing ideas

Responsibilities

Design end-to-end experiences
Own the full design process: from research and discovery through wireframes, prototypes, and polished UI
Design intuitive, accessible, and visually compelling experiences that translate complex financial problems into clear user flows
Evolve our design system to ensure consistency and scalability across the product
Use data, user research, and experimentation to continuously validate and improve designs
Use AI to amplify your craft
Apply AI to supercharge upfront research, competitive analysis, and rapid low-fidelity exploration of dozens of concepts
Validate ideas faster through simulated user perspectives (e.g., walking through the product as different personas)
Apply your taste and judgment to identify the strongest directions from broad AI-assisted explorations, then invest your craft skills in fewer, higher-quality high-fidelity iterations
Work closely with product, marketing, engineering, and customer experience to inform and iterate on designs
Partner with engineering to ensure seamless design-to-development handoffs