Lead Product Designer

Home From College; California City (CA); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Health Insurance

Dental Insurance

Vision Insurance

401(k) Plan

Unlimited PTO

Laptop reimbursement

WFH setup reimbursement

Hybrid in Santa Monica

Job summary

Home From College is seeking a Lead Product Designer to own the end-to-end user experience across the HFC platform. You’ll guide flows from discovery to shipped features, partner with engineering, and measure adoption and usability after launch.

You’ll also collaborate with Product Marketing to communicate new features and help shape product decisions, ensuring experiences are intuitive, useful, and impactful for college students and brands alike.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of product design experience, including startup experience.
• Experience designing consumer apps or marketplace products.
• Fluent with design tools and prototyping from sketch to high-fidelity.
• Experience building or contributing to a design system.
• Ability to work with engineers and product marketing.
• Strong portfolio showing problem framing and shipped outcomes.
• Self-directed and capable of owning ambiguity.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end product UX for desktop and mobile.
• Design flows, wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity mocks.
• Maintain design system and visual language.
• Collaborate with engineers through implementation and QA.
• Work with marketing on launches and landing pages.
• Conduct user research with students and brands.
• Contribute to branding assets and product marketing materials.
• Advocate for user perspective and design quality.

Skills

Lead design

Product design

Design systems

UX research

Cross-functional collaboration

Prototyping high-fidelity

AI-enabled design

Job description

Company Overview

Home From College (HFC) is a marketplace that connects college students with brands offering paid gigs, internships, and early-career opportunities. For students, we're often the first real bridge between college and the working world. For brands, we're how they reach a generation that's hard to reach anywhere else.

We're in full growth mode, focused on getting the HFC App into the hands of every college student in the country and turning first-time users into repeat GIG completers. We're at the stage where every shipped feature reaches real users quickly. The product and design decisions made now will define our trajectory, and we're building out the product team with A players.

The Role

We're hiring a Lead Product Designer to own the end-to-end user experience across HFC.

You'll work across the full product lifecycle: understanding user needs, designing new features and workflows, partnering closely with engineering through implementation, and measuring adoption, usability, and user feedback after launch. You'll use those insights to continuously refine and improve the product over time.

You'll also work with Product Marketing to ensure new features and functionality are clearly communicated and effectively showcased to users.

Design at HFC isn't just about execution. You'll play an active role in shaping product decisions and helping ensure we build experiences that are intuitive, useful, and impactful.

What You'll Do

• Own HFC's product UX end-to-end across desktop and mobile app.
• Design features start to finish: flows, wireframes, prototypes, high-fidelity mocks
• Build and maintain HFC's design system, UX patterns, and visual language
• Partner with the team to shape and design features from problem framing through shipped experience
• Work directly with engineering throughout the build — catch edge cases, make calls the spec didn't cover, ship with quality
• Partner with marketing on launches, landing pages, and how features show up to users
• Run research with students and brands to test assumptions and refine flows
• Contribute to design beyond the core product when needed — marketing assets, landing pages, brand polish
• Be a strong voice for the user and raise the bar for design quality across everything HFC ships

What We're Looking For

• 7+ years of product design experience, ideally including time at an early-stage startup
• Background designing consumer apps, consumer software, or marketplace products
• Strong design tool fluency — you can move from sketch to high-fidelity quickly
• Comfort with design tools for product spec designing
• Comfort using AI tools in your design process, or experience designing AI-native features
• Experience building or contributing to a design system
• End-to-end product thinking — your portfolio shows problem framing, tradeoffs, and shipped outcomes, not just polished screens
• Sharp product judgment — you advocate for UX without becoming a blocker, and you know when to push and when to ship
• Self-directed — comfortable owning ambiguity without management overhead
• Clear communicator with engineers, leadership, and non-designers alike

Bonus Points

• Two-sided marketplace experience
• Familiarity with college students, Gen Z, or early-career audiences
• "First designer" or "founding designer" experience at a previous startup

What We Offer

• Competitive annual base compensation
• Equity Option Award Compensation
• Health, Dental, and Vision Insurance
• 401(k) Plan
• Unlimited PTO
• Laptop and WFH setup reimbursement
• Hybrid office environment in Santa Monica