Senior Product-Minded UI/UX Designer (Pencil.dev) — Long-Term, US-Hours Collaboration

About the role We're a founder-led product studio building web applications for US-based clients (DTC ecommerce, wellness, and SaaS). We need a senior UI/UX designer who thinks like a product manager, not just a visual stylist — someone who can take a vague business goal, turn it into a prioritized feature set, and hand developers designs that are clean, coherent, and actually buildable. This is not a "make it pretty" role. You'll own the product-design layer end to end: understanding what the client and their customers actually need, deciding what gets built (and what doesn't), and producing designs in Pencil.dev that ship without friction. If you've ever looked at a feature request and thought "this adds complexity for no real value, here's a simpler way," you're who we're looking for. What you'll do Translate requirements into product decisions. Sit with founders/clients, understand the business goal and the end customer, and turn that into clear user flows and scoped features. Prioritize ruthlessly. Recommend what to build first, what to defer, and what to cut. Push back when a request adds complexity without payoff, and propose the simpler path. Design in Pencil.dev. Produce coherent, consistent, developer-ready designs — clear components, sensible states, and a structure that maps cleanly to how the app will be coded. Keep complexity in check. Every design decision should be implementable without ballooning dev effort. You understand the tradeoff between "ideal" and "shippable." Spec for developers. Hand off clear specifications and Loom walkthroughs explaining how each screen and interaction should be implemented, so engineers aren't guessing. Think about growth. Proactively suggest features and UX improvements that help the client's business grow — conversion, retention, activation — not just things that look good. Collaborate in the dev workflow. Work alongside developers using GitHub and similar tools; comment, track work, and stay close to implementation so design intent survives to production. Communicate clearly in US business hours. Async-first, but available for overlap with US clients and the team. Clear written English and a confident, professional client manner are essential. What we're looking for 5+ years of senior UI/UX / product design experience on real, shipped web products. Hands-on proficiency with Pencil.dev (or strong design-tool fluency with a fast ramp to it — tell us your relevant tool experience). A genuine product-management mindset: feature prioritization, scoping, customer-needs discovery, and the judgment to say no. Proven ability to produce developer-coherent designs — clean systems, consistent components, clear states — not one-off mockups. Comfort working in a developer workflow (GitHub, version control, dev handoff tools). Experience producing Loom videos and written specs for handoff. Excellent English communication and direct, professional collaboration with US clients. The confidence to push back and make better suggestions when a design or request is wrong — backed by reasoning. Nice to have Background designing for DTC ecommerce, wellness, or SaaS products. Familiarity with modern stacks (React, Supabase, or similar) so you understand implementation constraints. Experience working with AI-assisted coding tools (Cursor, Claude Code, Lovable, etc.). How to apply Skip the generic cover letter. In your proposal, please answer: Share 1–2 examples where you changed the product direction or scope of a feature — what was originally requested, what you recommended instead, and why. What's your experience with Pencil.dev specifically? If none, what tools have you used and how quickly can you ramp? Briefly describe how you hand off designs to developers (specs, Loom, components, etc.). Include a portfolio link with web/product work — bonus for cases where you can explain the product reasoning, not just the visuals. Engagement: Long-term, starting [hourly / part-time / ~__ hrs per week — edit to fit]. Rate is open — share yours. We read every thoughtful application and reply quickly. Looking forward to seeing how you think.