Staff Product Designer - AI Products

Kraken; South Africa; On-site; ZAR 800,000 - 1,600,000; Full time

Job summary

Kraken is expanding its product design leadership to build elite AI products for external customers and internal platforms. You will own the end-to-end design process, shaping experiences from discovery through launch.

You will work closely with product, engineering, and leadership to define direction, prototype rapidly, and apply user research and data insights to inform decisions. The role demands high craft, ambiguity tolerance, and a passion for innovative fintech products.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in product design with a portfolio demonstrating exceptional craft and impact.
• Led end-to-end product design for zero-to-launch projects as the lead designer.
• World-class product thinking with strong ability to navigate ambiguity.
• Experience designing AI-powered, generative, or probabilistic products is highly desirable.
• Advanced prototyping skills to communicate complex interactions quickly.
• Experience influencing product strategy and cross-functional decisions.

Responsibilities

• Own design end to end: discovery, concept, prototyping, delivery and launch.
• Turn early ideas into real products that people use.
• Design new AI products for external customers and internal systems.
• Prototype fast, test, learn, and iterate to move to the next concept.
• Collaborate directly with product, engineering and leadership to influence strategy.
• Conduct user research and apply insights to prioritize what to build.
• Maintain high craft and user experience across all shipped features.

Skills

Product design

AI product design

Prototyping

UX design

Job description

Building the Future of Open Finance Payward - the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks - has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.

Building the Future of Open Finance Payward - the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks - has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.

The team

Founded in 2011, Kraken is one of the world's longest-standing crypto platforms, trusted by over 10 million individuals and institutions across the globe. It offers spot trading, margin, futures, staking, and OTC services, with products built for both individual investors and institutional clients.

Forget crypto. Fintech/crypto are now one of the same. Come join us to lead Product Design for the building of elite AI products, end-to-end. A personal finance agent that shapes how people spend, save invest and live.

You'll have real ownership of the design work: the experiences you shape, and how they look, feel and behave. You'll work directly with product, engineering and leadership, with no layers of process between you and the work.

This is a rare 0-1 opportunity. The choices you make will shape the products and the people who use them.

We're a small, hardworking team that moves fast and ships with purpose. We're straight-talking, no-nonsense, and deeply invested in the quality of what we build. We care about craft, we care about our customers, and we care about getting things right.

If you're excited by hard problems, high standards, no egos and the chance to build something genuinely new, climb aboard.

The opportunity

• Own design end to end: discovery, concept, prototyping, delivery and launch. You are the designer, with real ownership of the outcome.
• Take products from zero to one, turning an early idea or a rough problem space into something real that people use.
• Build new AI products for external B2C customers, and internal AI products that shape and redefine the way that Payward works.
• Thrive in ambiguity. Define the problem, set the direction and make the call when nobody has handed you a brief.
• Design for non-deterministic experiences, where outputs vary and the system doesn't behave the same way twice. Shape how people interact with, understand and trust intelligent systems.
• Create visually rich, forward-thinking work that sets new benchmarks for what AI products can look and feel like.
• Partner directly with product, engineering and leadership, and influence strategy and roadmap decisions, not just execution.
• Prototype fast to make ideas tangible, test them and learn, then move on to the next one.
• Conduct user research and use customer insights, data and experimentation to decide what to build, and keep improving it after launch.
• Hold a high bar for craft and user experience in everything you ship.

What You Bring

• 7+ years of experience in product design, with a portfolio demonstrating exceptional craft and impact.
• A track record of taking products from zero to launch as the lead or only designer, owning the full design process end to end.
• World class product thinking: Real comfort with ambiguity, you find direction when requirements are unclear, make sound decisions with incomplete information, and adapt as things change.
• Experience designing for non-deterministic experiences, such as AI-powered, generative or probabilistic products, is highly desirable.
• Strong UX and visual design skills, with a record of solving open-ended problems with clarity and elegance.
• Advanced prototyping skills, with the ability to communicate complex interactions and ideas quickly.
• Experience influencing product strategy and cross-functional decision-making.
• Strong systems thinking, with the ability to create coherent, scalable experiences from scratch.

Unless a specific application deadline is stated in the job posting, applications are accepted on an ongoing basis.

Please note, applicants are permitted to redact or remove information on their resume that identifies age, date of birth, or dates of attendance at or graduation from an educational institution.

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment on our team, assessing candidates in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.

Our commitment

Payward is powered by people from around the world and we celebrate the diverse talents, backgrounds, contributions, and unique perspectives that everyone brings to the table. We hire based on merit, seeking out people with the right abilities, knowledge, and skills for the job. We encourage you to apply for roles where you don't fully meet the listed requirements, especially if you're passionate or knowledgeable about crypto.

We may ask candidates to complete job-related skills or work-style assessments as part of our hiring process. These assessments evaluate competencies relevant to the role and are applied consistently across candidates for similar positions. Results are considered alongside experience and interviews, and are not the sole basis for any employment decision.

As an equal opportunity employer, we don't tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind, whether based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws.

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