Product Designer | SimpleStudy

HireHire; United States; Remote; USD 101,000 - 146,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Remote Europe

Relocation to Lisbon

Competitive salary

Job summary

SimpleStudy is seeking a Senior Product Designer to rebuild our design language and brand for a platform used by 1.5M+ students. You will own the full design process from ambiguity to shipped solutions, partnering with José, the Founding Designer, and engineers to ensure a cohesive, high-quality product.

You will drive the consumer experience, including onboarding, social features, retention, and the learning loop, while shaping the UI, prototypes, and interactions.

Qualifications

• Your portfolio shows artifacts with a clear point of view.
• You can frame ambiguous problems and make them simple to understand.
• You lead with craft and feel, translating product intent into tangible design.

Responsibilities

• Shape the new design language and brand, including design system and app redesign.
• Own the full design process from problem framing to shipped solution.
• Drive the consumer experience: onboarding, social features, retention, and learning loop.
• Collaborate closely with engineers and PMs, ensuring seamless implementation.
• Propose initiatives and challenge the status quo to improve outcomes.
• Raise the design bar across the team.

Skills

High craft

Storytelling

Consumer instinct

Opinions with backbone

Energy and curiosity

English

Tools

Protototyping

Illustration

Animation

Motion design

Job description

Role: Senior Product Designer

Company: SimpleStudy

Location: Remote, Europe (preferably Western / continental); relocation to Lisbon possible

Job Type: Full-time

About SimpleStudy

SimpleStudy is an AI exam prep platform that students find and choose for themselves.

In some numbers:

• 1.5M+ students across the UK, Ireland, Brazil, South Africa, and Australia
• 40-50k new students every week
• Web, mobile, and desktop apps
• $4M seed round with investors from Strava, OpenAI, and Meta

The traction came fast. Now the company is refounding: rebuilding the brand, the design language, and the product experience from scratch. The product grew like a Jenga tower, one feature on top of another. The job now is to rebuild it as a pyramid.

The team is ~30 people, remote with a Lisbon office - lean, product-led, and deliberately not a typical edtech company.

You’ll report to José, the Founding Designer, and work with him as a partner. José tends to lead early framing and direction. You bring strong craft and take the work to the finish line, in close sync with engineering. You both shape the new design language, and you push back with a better idea when you see one.

What you are expected to do:

• Shape the new design language and brand: design system, rebrand, and the new mobile app.
• Own the full design process - from an ambiguous problem to a polished, shipped solution.
• Drive the consumer experience: onboarding, social features, retention, and the learning loop.
• Work in close sync with engineers and PM, not as a handoff step - polish the implementation together until it feels right.
• Bring your own initiatives and say "no, but..." when you see a better way.
• Raise the bar for the whole design team.

What you need to succeed:

• High craft — your visual work is polished and intentional; the details reveal your thinking.
• Storytelling over process — you take an ambiguous problem, frame it, and make it simple. Your portfolio shows artifacts, not diagrams; it has a point of view.
• Consumer instinct — you've shipped B2C products that people chose to use. You understand product metrics and use them as input, but you lead with feel and craft.
• Opinions with backbone — you have a design philosophy, can defend it under pushback, and bring your own initiatives. You don't wait to be told what to build.
• Energy and curiosity — you're an interesting person with a life outside work, and you leave people energised after a conversation.
• English — fluent, written and spoken.

What would be a plus:

• A standout specialty: prototyping, illustration, animation, or motion.
• Experience with social or viral product mechanics.
• Background at consumer companies like Spotify or Strava.
• Early-stage or founding designer experience.
• Comfortable in code: prototyping or polishing the front end.

What you get:

• Build from scratch, at scale — a new design language for a product already used by 1.5M+ students.
• A strong partner - work closely with José, the Founding Designer (ex-Shopify), with direct access to the founders.
• Equity — generous stock options, early enough for them to matter.
• Remote Europe - work from where you choose, with in-person meetups three times a year; relocation support if you want to move to Lisbon.
• Competitive salary — no fixed budget, flexible.