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Scholarly

Seattle

Founding Product Designer at Scholarly

ON-SITE MID
Posted 2 days ago
$160,000 - $190,000
Scholarly logo

Company snapshot

Scholarly

Scholarly revolutionizes faculty affairs software for higher education with innovative automation and AI tools, streamlining data management and reporting for administrators and faculty members.

E-commerce Information Technology & Services B2C B2B
Team size
1-10
Founded
2023
LinkedIn

Quick Summary

Role Overview

Scholarly is seeking its first full-time Founding Product Designer to lead the design of an AI-native system for higher education faculty data. This role involves owning the end-to-end user experience for both administrators and faculty while establishing the company's design systems and processes.

Key Responsibilities

  • Own product design end-to-end from initial customer problems to polished shipped experiences
  • Build and maintain the Scholarly design system including components and data-dense patterns
  • Conduct user interviews and usability tests with faculty and administrators to inform product direction
  • Prototype features using HTML and CSS to ensure high-fidelity interactions and front-end polish
  • Lead the design for the company website and all sales or marketing materials
  • Collaborate with leadership and engineering to guide product strategy and decision-making

Requirements Snapshot

  • Seven or more years of product design experience with complex B2B or SaaS products
  • Proven track record of building or evolving comprehensive design systems
  • Hands-on experience planning and conducting independent user research studies
  • Working knowledge of front-end code including HTML and CSS
  • Ability to work on-site in Seattle five days per week

Expected Impact

As the founding designer, you will establish the visual and functional standards for the entire platform, transforming fragmented workflows into an intuitive AI-powered system. Your work will directly improve decision-making for higher education institutions and eliminate manual data entry for faculty. By setting the design bar and process, you will shape how the company scales its product and brand.

A DesignJobs.World summary of the employer's posting, written to highlight scope, requirements, and fit (AI-assisted, human-reviewed). For full details, see the description below.

Compensation

$160,000 - $190,000

Job Description

ABOUT SCHOLARLY

Scholarly is building the next generation of AI-powered software for higher education with a faculty-first focus. As institutions face a wave of digital transformation, our mission is to become the AI-native system of record for faculty data.

Our platform unifies fragmented workflows into a single, intelligent system - powering annual reviews, promotion & tenure, appointment tracking, and more - while eliminating manual data entry and improving decision-making for institutions. We're a mission-driven, product-focused team shaping the future of higher education.

POSITION OVERVIEW

Scholarly is hiring its first full-time designer. As our Founding Product Designer, you'll own how Scholarly looks, feels, and works - from the data-dense screens administrators live in every day, to the faculty-facing experiences that need to just work, to the website and materials that introduce us to new institutions.

We're looking for a designer with 7 or more years of experience, including meaningful time shipping complex B2B or SaaS products. You'll work directly with engineering and leadership, and you'll be the person who sets up how design works at Scholarly: the system, the process, and the bar. You can read about how we work in this blog post https://kellysutton.com/2025/08/04/how-were-working-2025.html.

This role is based in Seattle and on-site with the engineering team in Pioneer Square.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

  • Own product design end-to-end. Take features from fuzzy customer problem to shipped, polished experience - workflows, information architecture, interaction design, and visual design.

  • Build and own the Scholarly design system. Define the components, tokens, and patterns our frontend is built on, including the dense tables and grids that power faculty data management.

  • Talk to our users. Run interviews, usability tests, and site visits with faculty, department administrators, and faculty affairs teams at our customer institutions, and turn what you learn into product direction.

  • Prototype in code. You're comfortable in HTML and CSS - whether that's building a high-fidelity prototype, pairing with an engineer, or shipping a front-end polish fix yourself. Claude and other AI tools are your force multipliers.

  • Shape the brand. Lead design for our website, sales and demo materials, and the documents we put in front of prospective customers.

  • Guide product decisions. You'll have a real voice in what we build and why, not just how it looks.

QUALIFICATIONS

  • 7 or more years of product design experience, with a portfolio that shows complex, workflow-heavy or data-dense products shipped to real users.

  • Experience building or significantly evolving a design system.

  • Hands-on user research experience - you've planned and run your own studies.

  • Working knowledge of front-end code (HTML, CSS).

  • Brand or marketing design experience is a strong plus.

  • Experience in higher education, healthcare, HR, or other enterprise/regulated software is a plus, but not required.

  • Authorized to work in the United States (citizen or green card holder). We're not able to sponsor visas at this time.

  • Excited to work on-site in Seattle 5 days per week.

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