Staff Product Designer, Network

Handshake•San Francisco, CA

13d•$190,000 - $240,000•Hybrid

About The Position

As a Staff Product Designer on the Network team at Handshake, you'll design the experiences that introduce millions of people to Handshake and help them build lasting professional relationships throughout their careers. You'll own the end-to-end experience across acquisition, onboarding, activation, referrals, and network growth—creating intuitive, engaging experiences that help users discover opportunities, connect with their communities, and realize value from their very first interaction. This team sits at the heart of Handshake's growth strategy, shaping how users first discover the platform, build their professional network, and develop habits that keep them coming back. You'll work on high-impact consumer experiences where exceptional craft, experimentation, and user psychology come together to drive meaningful business outcomes. As a Staff Designer, you'll help define the future of the Handshake network while partnering closely with product, engineering, data science, marketing, and brand to build products that millions of people use.

Requirements

7+ years of product design experience, ideally building consumer-facing products at scale.
Experience designing products with millions of active users, ideally in social, marketplace, network-driven, or consumer growth environments.
Strong communicator who clearly articulates design decisions, tradeoffs, user insights, and the thinking behind them to partners and leadership.
Deep visual and interaction design expertise, with a proven track record of shipping high-quality consumer experiences that drive measurable impact.
Experience designing for growth, including acquisition, onboarding, activation, engagement, referrals, or other user lifecycle experiences.
Comfortable incorporating generative AI tools into the design process to accelerate ideation, prototyping, and iteration, while maintaining a high bar for product thinking, craft, and user experience.
Comfortable using qualitative and quantitative insights to inform design decisions, evaluate experiments, and iterate quickly.
Highly collaborative. You value diverse perspectives and partner effectively across engineering, product, data science, marketing, and brand.
Design-led thinker who raises the bar by embedding design thinking into product development and helping others grow.
Impact-driven. You prioritize ruthlessly and focus on the work that matters most.
Gritty and hands-on. You're willing to roll up your sleeves and take ownership—nothing is "someone else's problem."
Deeply motivated by Handshake's mission and committed to helping people build meaningful careers in the AI economy.
Curious and always learning, with a growth mindset.

Nice To Haves

Experience designing growth experiences, including onboarding, referrals, social sharing, viral loops, SEO/content surfaces, or registration optimization.
Familiarity with product-led growth, network effects, marketplaces, or multi-sided platforms.
Passion for early-career professionals, the future of work, or the intersection of AI and human potential.

Responsibilities

Partner closely with product, engineering, marketing, data science, and content teams to define problems, shape product strategy, and deliver exceptional consumer experiences.
Own design end-to-end, from early concept through post-launch iteration: user flows, interaction prototypes, high-fidelity mocks, and collaboration through implementation.
Design experiences across acquisition, onboarding, activation, referrals, and network growth that help users quickly discover value and build lasting engagement.
Tackle complex, ambiguous consumer design problems by translating behavioral insights and user needs into simple, intuitive experiences.
Rapidly iterate through wireframes, prototypes, and experiments to validate ideas and optimize conversion, engagement, and retention.
Partner with cross-functional teams to design and refine growth experiments across landing pages, onboarding flows, referral programs, viral mechanics, and conversion touchpoints.
Obsess over craft, bringing a strong point of view on visual design, interaction design, and systems thinking while maintaining a relentless focus on user outcomes.