Founding Designer

Founding Designer
San Francisco, CA | On-site | Full-time
Compensation: $140,000–$230,000

About Phonely
At some point in the future, every business will answer their phone with voice AI. We are building the platform that makes it possible.

Phonely builds conversational voice AI agents for high-volume phone workflows. Our customers use us to qualify leads, book appointments, route calls, and resolve real customer conversations in production. We are growing fast and just getting started.

About the Role
We’re hiring a Founding Designer to own how Phonely looks, feels, and works across our brand and product.

As our first design hire, you’ll audit our existing design, define our visual identity, and build the systems that bring consistency to everything we create. From our website and branding to the frontend platform our customers use every day, you’ll establish the design standards that shape Phonely as we scale.

This isn’t a role where you hand off Figma files and call it a day. You’ll work directly with our founders and engineers to bring designs into production, using AI tools like Claude to help implement design standards and contributing to frontend code when needed.

We’re looking for someone with exceptional design taste who can think strategically, execute independently, and build something that lasts. You’ll have real ownership over our design direction and the freedom to define what great design looks like at Phonely.

What You’ll Do

• Audit our existing brand and product design, find the inconsistencies, and establish a cohesive visual identity
• Own and evolve our branding: typography, color, layout, visual guidelines, and overall direction
• Build and maintain a scalable design system with reusable components and standards
• Bring consistency to our frontend platform so every customer-facing screen follows the same principles
• Design intuitive, polished interfaces that make complex voice AI workflows easy to understand
• Work directly with frontend engineers to implement designs and improve the product experience
• Use AI development tools like Claude to translate design guidelines into code and standardize implementation
• Contribute to the codebase when needed, including frontend improvements and pull requests
• Maintain brand consistency across our website, product, marketing materials, and customer-facing assets
• Set the foundation for how design operates at Phonely as we grow

What You’ll Bring

• 3+ years of professional design experience, ideally in B2B SaaS, technology, or a design-forward company
• Exceptional visual design skills and a portfolio showing high-quality work across brand and digital product
• Experience building or maintaining design systems and establishing consistent standards
• Strong command of UI/UX, typography, layout, color, and visual hierarchy
• Experience designing web applications and working closely with frontend engineering teams
• Ability to own design projects from initial concept through implementation
• Comfort with AI tools and learning new technologies to move faster
• Strong attention to detail and the ability to explain and defend design decisions
• High ownership and comfort in a fast-moving startup where the playbook doesn’t exist yet

Nice to Have

• Previous experience as a Founding Designer or early design hire at a startup
• Experience at a company recognized for exceptional design quality
• Background designing B2B SaaS platforms or complex web applications
• Hands-on frontend experience with HTML, CSS, React, or similar
• Experience working with GitHub, contributing code, and submitting pull requests
• Familiarity with AI-assisted development tools such as Claude
• Experience defining or evolving a company’s brand identity from the ground up

Why Join Phonely
We are a team of ex-athletes, founders, and builders who are deeply passionate about the problem we’re solving. We’re a curious, driven, low-ego group that finds joy in hard challenges. As we grow the team, we are being extremely intentional about the culture we’re building. We care far less about a person’s pedigree than we do about finding smart people with grit and genuine kindness. If this resonates with you, please reach out!

Benefits

• Full health and dental coverage
• 401(k) with 4% match
• Unlimited PTO
• Meaningful equity
• Wellness stipend
• Race/tournament stipend (so you can go compete in cool stuff!)
• Breakfast, lunch, and dinner provided
• Annual offsites in fun spots (Costa Rica, the Rockies)

Interview Process

1. 15-min intro call
2. Portfolio review focused on visual design, brand identity, and design systems
3. Deep dive with leadership on your design approach, past work, and technical capabilities
4. Final conversation with leadership