Founding Product Designer

Sekai; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive base salary + meaningful equity

Full health insurance

Job summary

Sekai, located in Sunnyvale, California, is seeking a Founding Product Designer to own the user experience from end-to-end and elevate product quality. This role requires strong product taste, visual design skills, and fluency in Mandarin Chinese.

The ideal candidate will drive UX decisions, enhance product clarity, and define design systems, all while collaborating closely with the founding team and engineering. Benefits include a competitive salary, equity, and full health insurance.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of product design experience, ideally in consumer or mobile-first products.
• Strong UX judgment and product sense.
• Strong visual design skills and high taste level.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end design across key product surfaces on mobile and web.
• Drive UX for major product flows and make clear product experience decisions.
• Improve the overall quality, clarity, and polish of the product.

Skills

Product design experience

UX judgment

Visual design skills

Strong systems thinking

Experience with modern AI tools

Job description

About the Role

We are looking for our first design hire: a Founding Product Designer who can own the user experience end-to-end and raise the quality bar of the product.

This is not a supporting design role. We want someone who can act as a true UX owner — someone who can identify what feels broken or confusing, define better product experiences from first principles, and help shape the product DNA, visual language, and design system of the company.

The right person has strong product taste, excellent UX judgment, solid visual craft, and is highly AI-native. Mandarin Chinese is required for this role.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end design across key product surfaces on mobile and web

• Drive UX for major product flows and make clear product experience decisions

• Improve the overall quality, clarity, and polish of the product

• Define and evolve product DNA, visual language, interaction patterns, and design systems

• Work closely with founders, product, and engineering to shape and ship new experiences

• Use modern AI and design tools to explore, prototype, and iterate quickly

Requirements

• 2+ years of product design experience, ideally in consumer or mobile-first products

• Strong UX judgment and product sense

• Strong visual design skills and high taste level

• Ability to design from scratch and bring structure to ambiguous problems

• Strong systems thinking and experience building reusable patterns or design systems

• High ownership and comfort working in a fast-moving startup

• Comfortable working closely with engineers

• Highly AI-native and comfortable using modern tools in daily workflow

Nice to Have

• Experience with consumer social, creator, gaming, or AI products

• Frontend or engineering background

• Ability to prototype in code or implement light frontend work

• Experience as an early or founding designer at a startup

Benefits

• Competitive base salary + meaningful equity

• Full health insurance