What are the responsibilities and job description for the Founding Designer, London AI Startup position at HireGlide (YC F25)?
About the Company
The company works with large enterprises to deliver fast, scalable research and insight capabilities that go beyond the cost, delay, and limitations of traditional approaches. Their clients value the ability to receive insights in hours rather than months, including access to audiences that are difficult or impossible to reach through conventional means.
The company is well-funded and works with leading organisations across technology, financial services, communications, and public affairs.
It is a lean and highly effective team that moves fast, holds a high bar, and trusts each other to own outcomes end-to-end. The culture is collaborative but low-ego: ideas win on merit, not seniority. For anyone who has ever wanted to work somewhere their contributions genuinely shape the direction of a company, this is that moment.
The Role
This is a founding design hire. The successful candidate will be the first dedicated designer at the company, reporting directly to a co-founder, with an outsized impact on how the product looks, feels, and works — and how the world perceives the brand.
The company is looking for someone who is a designer first. Someone with exceptional taste, craft, and a portfolio that speaks for itself, but who thinks and executes like an engineer — comfortable translating vision into working software, whether that means writing code themselves or leveraging AI tools.
What the Successful Candidate Will Do
- Own product design end-to-end — from early concept and exploration through to polished, production-ready interfaces, defining how users experience the platform and shaping new product features from the ground up.
- Own the brand and visual language — working alongside an external design agency to build and evolve a distinctive, cohesive identity across every touchpoint.
- Build what they design — writing front-end code or using AI-assisted development tools to bring work to life. The company values designers who close the gap between mockup and implementation.
- Explore new ways of doing things — experimenting with novel interaction patterns, data visualisations, and interfaces that make complex AI-driven insights feel intuitive and accessible.
- Set the bar for design culture — as the first design hire, establishing the standards, systems, and workflows that scale with the company.
What the Company Is Looking For
- An outstanding portfolio. Evidence of taste, range, and end-to-end ownership.
- A designer who thinks like an engineer. Someone who understands technical constraints, reasons about systems, and can have a productive conversation with a backend engineer about data models or API design.
- Comfortable building — whether that's front-end development (React, HTML/CSS, etc.) or working fluently with AI coding tools. Willingness and aptitude matter more than current skill level.
- Deeply curious and willing to learn. AI tools are evolving fast. The right candidate is excited by that, not threatened by it, and actively integrates new tools into their workflow.
- Early-stage mindset. Thrives with ambiguity, moves fast, and takes ownership. Energised by the opportunity to define something from scratch.
Logistics
- Location: London, in-office.
- Salary: Competitive, depending on experience.
- Equity: Meaningful equity — this is a founding role and will be rewarded as such.
Why Join Now
The successful candidate would be joining a lean, ambitious team at the earliest stage — backed by world-class investors, solving a genuinely novel problem at the intersection of AI and human behaviour. As the founding designer, they won't just be filling a role. They'll be shaping the product, the brand, and the culture from day one.