Product Designer

GFR Fund; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Profit sharing

Small, high-trust team

Creative freedom and responsibility

Job summary

Highrise is seeking an exceptional product designer to shape how millions of players experience play and friendship daily. You’ll own design problems from understanding users to polished UI, shipping with ownership and accountability.

This role targets either a junior with standout work or a seasoned designer with world-class shipping experience, emphasizing typography, hierarchy, spacing, color, and interaction.

Qualifications

• A portfolio that speaks for itself with strong visual craft and clear thinking.
• Either an early-career designer with rapid growth or an experienced designer who has shipped at scale.
• Real taste backed by rigor: user-centered point of view and strong reasoning.
• Ability to produce exceptional work fast, balancing speed and quality.
• Fluency in Figma and modern design tooling; AI-assisted workflows are a plus.

Responsibilities

• Own design work end to end: research, flows, wireframes, prototypes, and final polished UI.
• Design experiences around play, self-expression, and friendship for millions of players.
• Build on and strengthen the design system; establish patterns and ensure consistency.
• Back decisions with evidence: interviews, usage data, and competitive analysis.
• Iterate on live feedback and ensure the work lands well in players' hands.

Skills

Figma

Design systems

User-centered design

Job description

About Highrise Highrise is a social platform and virtual world with millions of players around the globe. Identity, self-expression, and play are at the core of everything we build. Our players come to Highrise to connect, create, and belong, and they spend real time and real care here. They notice the difference between good and great, and so do we.

About Highrise Highrise is a social platform and virtual world with millions of players around the globe. Identity, self-expression, and play are at the core of everything we build. Our players come to Highrise to connect, create, and belong, and they spend real time and real care here. They notice the difference between good and great, and so do we.

The Role

We're looking for an exceptional product designer to shape how millions of people experience play and friendship every day.

We don't hire on years of experience. We hire on the work. This role fits two kinds of people: a junior designer with rare talent whose portfolio already outclasses most seniors, or a seasoned designer with a stellar track record shipping products used by millions. Either way, the bar on fundamentals is the same: typography, hierarchy, spacing, color, interaction. These can't be faked, and they're the first thing we look at.

You’ll own design problems end to end: from understanding the player and the problem, through flows and wireframes, to polished, production-ready UI that ships. You're not handing off to the next person in the pipeline. You're seeing it through to the moment it lands in players' hands, and then you're watching how it lands. We ship fast, we iterate on live feedback from one of the most engaged communities in gaming, and we hold everything we release to a standard our players can feel.

This is a high-output, high-accountability, and high-reward role. If that excites you instead of intimidating you, that's the energy we're looking for.

What You’ll Do

• Own design work end to end: research, flows, wireframes, prototypes, and final polished UI. Shipped, not just mocked
• Design experiences around play, self-expression, and friendship that feel effortless to millions of players across a deep, complex product
• Build on and strengthen our design system: establish patterns where they don't exist, and hold the line on consistency where they do
• Back your decisions with evidence: player interviews, usage data, and a sharp study of the best products in and outside of gaming
• Iterate relentlessly on live feedback. You care how the work performs in players' hands, not just how it looks in Figma

What We’re Looking For

• A portfolio that speaks for itself: impeccable visual craft, clear thinking behind every decision, and fundamentals strong enough that they need no explanation
• One of two profiles: an early-career designer whose talent and rate of growth are impossible to ignore, or an experienced designer who has shipped world-class product design at scale. We care about the quality of the work, not the length of the résumé
• Real taste, backed by rigor: a strong user-centered point of view, and the research and reasoning to defend it
• The ability to produce exceptional work fast. Speed and quality are both non-negotiable
• Fluency in Figma and modern design tooling. Comfort with AI-assisted workflows is a plus. Whatever gets you to the best result, fastest, as long as the taste and final decisions are yours
• A complete ownership mentality. You find the problems worth solving, you drive the work forward, and you make everyone around you sharper
• A genuine love of games, social products, or virtual worlds is a strong plus. Our best work comes from people who understand why players care

What We Offer

• A profitable, self-funded company that's been building for over a decade
• A small, high-trust team where your work directly shapes an app used by millions of people globally every day
• The creative freedom, and the responsibility, to do the best work of your career