What are the responsibilities and job description for the Product Designer position at NextWork?
Welcome to NextWork, the company changing the way the world learns.
As our second product designer, you're stepping into a high-craft, high-trust and high-ownership role in a team of seven. Learners spend hours on NextWork every day, and this role will be obsessive about the quality of that experience.
We're a close-knit team that values collaboration, transparency and low ego. Your work will directly change the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. As a team, we challenge each other to push the limits of what we can build in our lifetime.
What you'll do
- Champion for a high quality craft bar across NextWork’s product; execute on sharp product and visual decisions.
- Bring motion and delight into the learning experience, like interactive architecture diagrams, animations, micro-interactions.
- Work in a tight feedback loop with our lead designer and our founder to align on what “great” looks like, then ship.
- Partner closely with engineering to get your work into production and iterate based on learner feedback.
- Spend time with our learners to deeply understand how they use and feel about your work every day.
You'll love it here if you...
- Are obsessed about beautiful consumer software (we love Linear, Notion, Fey, Canva, and more).
- Care deeply about the details users feel (spacing, rhythm, hierarchy, motion), it’s your happy place.
- Have a portfolio of design work that’s already in production, not just mockups or static screens.
- Are ready to work extremely closely with our lead designer and our founder, to learn and carry forward the vision for NextWork product experience.
- Are ready to thrive in a high-feedback environment with the team. You are not overly attached to any design - be ready to iterate and start over!
- Want to be early enough to shape everything in a scrappy environment, and held accountable that what you build is being used by learners at scale.
- Have strong opinions, hold them lightly, and move fast when the facts change.
This might not be for you if you...
- Want to work remotely.
- Need a fully specced design system before you can start.
- Want to spend most of your time in design research.
- Want a calm, predictable pace.
- Don’t want to stay close to engineering to get the work shipped, or for continuous improvements once it’s in production.
- Don't actively use AI in your workflow - we're an AI-native startup building in 2026.
About NextWork
NextWork's mission is to meet the skill demand to solve the world's toughest problems, and we're doing this by building the best place to learn and showcase your AI skills.
We're a small, tight-knit team of seven that just moved from New Zealand to Austin. 200k people across 190 countries are learning with NextWork, and AI is just the beginning. This role will shape our visual language, interaction quality, and design culture as we scale.
Perks and benefits
- Equity - Own a part of the business that you're building!
- 401(k) with up to 3% company contribution
- Health, dental, vision insurance
Come work with us!
At NextWork, your work helps close humanity's skill gap.
It's high ownership, high visibility, and high impact. If that excites you - and you want your work to change what people are able to do in the world - then reach out here or email your portfolio to natasha@nextwork.org.