Product Designer

We’re hiring a Product Designer to help shape how our product speaks to the world. You’ll work across engineering, product, GTM, and operations to design features that earn trust through clarity, care, and detail that’s easy to miss but impossible to ignore.

At Ascend, we see design as a conversation between product and user—one that unfolds across UI, copy, systems, brand, and motion. This role is for someone who wants to sharpen their craft while operating with range: a designer who can think systematically, move quickly, and cares about building tools that are both useful and quietly beautiful.

• Experience with velocity: 3+ years of experience designing software at a growth-stage startup

• Strong fundamentals: confident in visual and interaction design, and systems thinking, with a portfolio that shows clarity and restraint

• Attention to detail: you catch the small things, care about them, and help others do the same

• Building for scale: you’ve designed products that serve complex use cases for enterprise customers

• Shaping from zero: you’re energized by ambiguity and know how to find shape in a blank canvas

• A point of view: you know what good design looks like, and why something falls short

• Creative range: you’re excited to stretch beyond product UI and into brand, motion, storytelling, or wherever the work demands

• Experience working on SaaS, fintech, or accounting tools

• Familiarity with front-end development or working closely with engineers

• Prior experience with design systems, especially at smaller startups

• Exposure to motion, animation, or data visualization

As an early member of a small team, your impact won’t just be measured by the features you ship. You’ll help shape how design is practiced at Ascend:

• Our quality standards and how we uphold them

• Our processes and how we scale them

• Our rituals, critiques, and team culture

• Our system of values for craft, performance, and communication

You’ll be joining a team that is open-minded and restless about improvement.

First 30 Days — Immediate Impact

• Ship your first features in week one—build context by contributing to real product work

• Get hands-on with our design system through implementation and iteration

• Collaborate with GTM on brand and marketing assets

• Join product reviews, critiques, and design rituals to build context fast

First 60 Days — Full Contribution

• Own and ship a scoped product feature end-to-end

• Contribute patterns and polish to our design system

• Partner closely with engineering to improve design/dev collaboration

• Support marketing and brand efforts with fluency and consistency

First 90 Days — Independent Ownership

• Take ownership of a meaningful product surface area and operate with autonomy

• Drive a project from early discovery to implementation

• Raise product quality through reviews, system design, and strong partnerships

• Suggest improvements to how we work—process, tools, and cross-functional practices

If this sounds like a fit, we’d love to hear from you. Please include a portfolio or samples of work that help us understand how you think and what you value in design.

Compensation: $120,000 with equity