Founding Product Designer

WHAT IS PACKZ? Packz is a best-in-class gamified collectibles platform. Open digital packs, get physical trading cards, and either have them shipped to your door or sell them back instantly. In just six months since launch, users have opened more than $15M of packs and shipped tens of thousands of cards to their homes. We are backed by some of the world's best investors, including investors who previously backed companies like DraftKings, StockX, and The Athletic. Our web product has been live since October and has already found strong traction. Our iOS app is launching this month. We have a small, highly hands-on team, and this is an opportunity to join early as we build in a $100B+ category. THE ROLE We are hiring our first full-time designer at Packz. This is a foundational role with broad ownership across both our web and iOS platforms. We are looking for an exceptional product designer to become our first full-time design hire, own the user experience end-to-end, and help define how Packz should look, feel, and work as we scale. Design matters a lot here because the product has to do several things at once: create excitement, build trust, communicate odds and value clearly, and make complex flows feel simple on both web and iOS. You will work closely with the founders and engineering to shape the product from idea through launch. This is not a narrow execution role. We want someone who can move between product thinking, interaction design, and high-craft UI, bring structure to ambiguous problems, sweat the details, and raise the quality bar across the company. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Own product design end-to-end across Packz web and iOS, from early ideas and flows to polished UI and final handoff - Lead design on the core customer journey, including pack discovery, purchasing, opening, reveal moments, collection management, redemption, and cash-out - Turn complex product, collectibles, and value-exchange mechanics into simple, intuitive, and high-trust user experiences - Partner closely with founders, engineering, and other cross-functional teammates to shape priorities, pressure-test ideas, and ship quickly - Use AI-assisted tools, prototyping, and lightweight code to explore flows, test ideas, and refine interfaces quickly - Conduct lightweight but high-signal user research, usability testing, and feedback synthesis to better understand customer behavior - Establish and evolve Packz's design system, interaction patterns, and visual language across platforms - Improve the product's overall level of polish, consistency, and craft while maintaining startup speed - Work directly with engineering during implementation to ensure quality in the shipped product, not just in mockups - Help define how design operates at Packz, including process, standards, critique, and how we work with external partners when needed WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - 5+ years of product design experience, ideally on consumer products with both mobile and web surfaces - A strong portfolio that shows high-quality visual design, interaction design, systems thinking, and product judgment - Ability to take ambiguous problems and turn them into clear product directions and elegant user experiences - Strong proficiency in Figma and prototyping tools, with a sharp eye for detail and a high bar for craft - Experience collaborating closely with engineers and shipping production-ready work in fast-moving environments - Strong user intuition and a habit of grounding design decisions in customer behavior, feedback, and real-world usage - Comfort operating with high ownership and limited structure as an early hire - Strong communication skills and the ability to explain design rationale clearly to both technical and non-technical teammates - Excitement for building in collectibles, gaming, or other high-engagement consumer categories NICE TO HAVE - Experience as an early or first design hire - Experience designing products that combine entertainment, commerce, and real-money or value-based mechanics - Experience designing game-like systems, reward loops, or other highly engaging consumer experiences - Experience designing for moments of delight, anticipation, and reveal without sacrificing clarity or trust - Familiarity with design systems and building cross-platform consistency from the ground up - Comfort using modern design tools and AI-assisted workflows WHY PACKZ? - Foundational ownership. You will be the first full-time designer and have outsized influence on the product, brand, and how design works at the company. - Real product surface area. This role spans two live platforms, web and iOS, with meaningful opportunities across acquisition, onboarding, pack opening, collection, redemption, and retention. - High agency. You won't be handed perfectly scoped tickets. You'll help identify the problems worth solving, shape the approach, and drive the work through launch. - Category-defining product. Packz combines collectibles, gaming, and commerce in a way that creates unique design challenges and opportunities. The experience has to feel thrilling, clear, and trustworthy all at once. - Competitive compensation and benefits. We offer competitive salary, healthcare, vision, dental, 401(k), and $25 of DoorDash credit each for lunch and dinner every workday. - Tight-knit, in-person team. We work on-site in NYC and care deeply about speed, quality, and building great products together. Please include a portfolio link or personal website with your application. We want to see work that demonstrates product thinking, interaction design, and craft.