Founding Product Designer

GovWell

New York (NY)

Hybrid

USD 140,000 - 180,000

Full time

14 days+

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Benefits offered by this job

Competitive base salary

Equity / stock options

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) program

Flexible PTO

Job summary

An innovative tech startup in New York City seeks a Founding Product Designer to enhance product usability and coherence as they scale. This role will involve defining interaction patterns and workflows to create a consistent user experience across the platform. The ideal candidate should possess over 5 years in SaaS product design and strong systems-level understanding, preferably with a background in public-sector technology. Competitive compensation and equity options are included along with flexible PTO in a hybrid work environment.

Qualifications

5+ years designing complex, workflow-heavy SaaS products.
Experience in defining reusable interaction patterns and design systems.
Strong ability to validate workflows with modern AI tools.
Active use of AI-native design and prototyping workflows to validate ideas.

Responsibilities

Define shared interaction patterns, terminology and design systems.
Prototype and iterate using AI-native tools.
Support incubation work for AI products.
Design core government workflows end-to-end.
Embed with engineers to shape and direct design.
Embed directly with engineers early in shaping, providing fast, high-leverage design direction that enables teams to ship quickly without heavy process or downstream redesign.
Establish lightweight but scalable design foundations, including components, patterns, and information architecture, without overbuilding systems or ceremony.
Raise the quality bar over time as the product matures, removing complexity, improving usability, and reinforcing a unified platform experience.
Ensure GovWell’s product reflects the realities of operational government work: high volume, high stakes, and low tolerance for confusion.

Skills

Complex SaaS product design

End-to-end workflow ownership

Systems-level design

AI-native design workflows

Public-sector workflows

Tools

Lovable

Figma

Cursor

Job description

🏛️ About GovWell

We the people (and the taxpayers) deserve good government — but today, interacting with government services is often frustrating and inefficient. GovWell is building the AI-powered platform that transforms how governments serve communities, starting with local agencies.

Our first product helps municipal and county governments modernize complex services like permitting and licensing. GovWell combines a highly configurable SaaS system of record with generative AI that automates work for staff, guides residents through services, and is radically simple to deploy.

Founded in 2023, GovWell powers 3,000+ critical processes for agencies in 29 states serving millions of residents. We’ve raised $9.5M in seed funding from Work-Bench and Bienville Capital, and work in person at our HQ in New York City. Read more about our founding story in TechCrunch.

☀️ Why GovWell?

A mission that matters: Building AI-powered products to fix outdated government systems isn’t just a technical challenge—it’s a historic opportunity to improve our foundational relationship with government and ensure trillions of tax dollars result in high quality services. WATCH: Mission & Vision with CEO & Co-Founder Troy LeCaire
Real-world impact: GovWell’s product is the system of record for government services that affect millions of Americans. From streamlining permitting for small businesses to accelerating affordable housing development, your work will make an immediate difference.
Join a startup in hyper-growth: We’ve found product-market fit and are scaling the business very quickly (4X ARR growth in the last year). As an early team member, you’ll learn what it takes to build a successful startup. You’ll work closely with the founders while enjoying exceptional autonomy and ownership over your work.

🌟 Role overview

GovWell is hiring a Founding Product Designer to own product coherence and usability as our platform scales. This role ensures that as multiple engineering pods move quickly, GovWell still feels like one simple, trustworthy, and consistent product.

You will define shared interaction patterns, terminology, workflow foundations, and design systems that allow teams to execute fast without fragmenting the user experience. You’ll be an active partner to product and engineering in shaping core workflows, reducing complexity for government users, and ensuring that speed does not come at the expense of clarity or usability.

This role reports directly to GovWell’s founders. We operate in a hybrid model with regular in-person collaboration in our New York City office (3+ days per week).

💻 What you’ll do

Own system-level product coherence across GovWell by defining shared interaction patterns, reference workflows, terminology, and design systems that prevent divergence as teams ship in parallel.
Prototype and iterate rapidly using AI-native tools such as Lovable, Figma AI, and Cursor-assisted workflows to explore ideas, test workflows, and unblock engineering.
Support 0→1 incubation work, especially AI-powered products, by providing rapid feedback, prototypes, and direction while keeping experimentation lightweight.
Partner closely with Product Management on roadmap sequencing and UX strategy to ensure cross-team initiatives fit together into a cohesive experience.
Design core government workflows end-to-end, deeply understanding how staff operate in areas like permitting, inspections, licensing, planning, and payments, and simplifying the highest-frequency paths.
Embed directly with engineers early in shaping, providing fast, high-leverage design direction that enables teams to ship quickly without heavy process or downstream redesign.
Establish lightweight but scalable design foundations, including components, patterns, and information architecture, without overbuilding systems or ceremony.
Raise the quality bar over time as the product matures, removing complexity, improving usability, and reinforcing a unified platform experience.
Ensure GovWell’s product reflects the realities of operational government work: high volume, high stakes, and low tolerance for confusion.

🧠 Who you are

5+ years designing complex, workflow-heavy SaaS products, with experience owning end-to-end flows across interconnected surfaces rather than isolated screens.
Proven ability to design and ship quickly alongside empowered engineers, shaping solutions early, iterating in tight loops, and creating design foundations that scale across teams.
Strong systems-level designer with a track record of defining reusable interaction patterns, workflow primitives, and design systems that prevent fragmentation as products scale.
Highly fluent in AI-native design and prototyping workflows; actively uses modern AI tools to explore ideas quickly, validate workflows, and unblock engineering with lightweight design assets.
Strong product judgment and bias toward simplicity, consistently identifying the highest-leverage usability and coherence problems and reducing complexity in high-stakes operational software.
Interest or experience in govtech or public-sector workflows is a strong plus; demonstrated ability to learn complex operational domains quickly is required.

🖥️ Design Tooling