Founding Designer: Architect Brand & Design System

Phonely; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Full health and dental coverage

401(k) with 4% match

Unlimited PTO

Meaningful equity

Wellness stipend

Race/tournament stipend

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner provided

Annual offsites in Costa Rica, TheRock

Job summary

Phonely in San Francisco, CA, seeks a Founding Designer to own how Phonely looks, feels, and works across brand and product. You’ll audit, define visual identity, and build scalable design systems that bring consistency as we scale.

You’ll work directly with founders and engineers to bring designs into production, using AI tools like Claude, contributing to frontend code when needed, and shaping design direction with real ownership.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of professional design experience in B2B SaaS or technology.
• Exceptional visual design portfolio across brand and digital products.
• Experience building or maintaining design systems and establishing standards.
• Strong command of UI/UX, typography, layout, color and visual hierarchy.
• Experience designing web applications and collaborating with frontend engineers.
• Ability to own design projects from concept through implementation.
• Comfort with AI tools and learning new technologies to move faster.
• High ownership in a fast-moving startup with an evolving playbook.

Responsibilities

• Audit existing brand and product design, fix inconsistencies, and establish a cohesive identity.
• Own and evolve branding: typography, color, layout, guidelines, and overall direction.
• Build and maintain a scalable design system with reusable components.
• Bring frontend platform consistency to all customer-facing screens.
• Design intuitive interfaces for complex voice AI workflows.
• Collaborate with frontend engineers to implement designs and improve UX.
• Use AI tools to translate guidelines into code and standardize implementation.
• Contribute to codebase with frontend improvements and PRs.
• Maintain brand consistency across website, product, and marketing assets.
• Set the foundation for how design operates at Phonely as we grow.

Skills

Brand design

UI/UX design

Design systems

B2B SaaS

Frontend collaboration

Tools

HTML

CSS

React

GitHub

Job description

Phonely in San Francisco, CA, seeks a Founding Designer to own how Phonely looks, feels, and works across brand and product. You’ll audit, define visual identity, and build scalable design systems that bring consistency as we scale.

You’ll work directly with founders and engineers to bring designs into production, using AI tools like Claude, contributing to frontend code when needed, and shaping design direction with real ownership.