🎨 Senior Product Designer

⛔️ Top Requirements

1. AI-native design workflow — hard requirement, not a nice-to-have.
2. Strong senior-level product design craft.
3. Strong product judgment / taste.
4. Strategic product thinking, not UI execution alone.
5. Ability to ideate and contribute to product direction.
6. Strong communication, reasoning, and ability to challenge/push back constructively.

🎯 What We Are Hiring For

EverAI / Candy.ai — see 🗣️ Pitching the Company for the full story and scale. Hands-on, end-to-end design across chat experiences, character creation, monetisation and growth flows, and emerging surfaces (live/interactive features, AI video). Works directly with the Design Lead (Arni), PMs, and founders — high autonomy, often the only designer on a surface. Mobile-first.

We are not looking for someone who primarily receives requirements and turns them into polished screens. We want a senior designer who understands the product/user problem, generates and challenges ideas, makes and explains strong product/design decisions, and moves from ambiguity toward a strong solution — using AI actively in that workflow.

A separate, candidate-facing JD exists for external sharing — ask your TA contact for it.

⛔️ Screening Criteria

• AI-native workflow — one of only four roles company-wide with an explicit mandatory AI-usage gate (alongside Senior Ruby on Rails Engineer, Senior Product Manager, and AI Cinematic Video Editor/Creator). Uses AI tools daily for design, prototyping, or content generation (Claude, Cursor, image/video gen, code-based prototyping) — real prompting, experimentation, and AI-assisted creation, not just familiarity. Can talk specifics, not aspirations.
• Product design craft — end-to-end consumer product design, mobile-first, shipped at real scale (approximately 5+ years). Can explain the problem, constraints, options considered, decisions made, trade-offs, and final outcome — not just show polished screens. Advanced Figma and strong prototyping (design-tool and/or code-based).
• Product judgment / taste — distinguishes a strong product experience from merely polished UI: clear reasoning, prioritization, thoughtful trade-offs, ability to simplify. Not reducible to subjective visual preference.
• Strategic / product thinking — contributes to what should be built and why, not only how it should look.
• Ideation — generates ideas and alternative solutions rather than waiting for fully formed requirements.
• Communication / pushback — defends decisions, challenges weak assumptions, disagrees constructively, explains reasoning clearly, and changes their mind when evidence is stronger. Async communication quality (concise writing, brief-following) is a strong predictor for this fully remote team.
• Ownership — can distinguish what they personally did from what the team did.

Also confirms comfort with NSFW/adult product experiences (asked directly, early) and the B2B/contractor-to-full-time engagement model (confirmed explicitly on the first call, logged in writing) — see the shared Candidate Hard Gates & Red Flags guide for the general framework.

🚩 Red Flags

Do not reject candidates merely for coming from an agency, consultancy, startup, smaller company, or an unconventional background — assess craft and evidence on their own merits. Be cautious with freelancers or studio owners with little in-house experience (probe commitment and ability to operate inside a team) but don't rule them out.

💬 Recruiter Screening Questions

1. What's your current situation, and why are you exploring? (Listen for counter-offer dynamics.)
2. Why EverAI? Did you review Candy.ai and the Handbook?
   • What draws you to AI companionship as a space?
3. Which product areas did you fully own, concept → launch, in your last role?
4. Walk me through the single screen or flow you're proudest of — why does it work? (Craft probe.)
5. Tell me about a time you proposed or significantly changed a product direction, rather than just executing a spec you were given. (Ideation probe.)
6. Tell me about a time you disagreed with a PM, founder, or stakeholder on a design decision — how did you make your case, and what happened? (Pushback probe.)
7. How do AI tools sit in your day-to-day design workflow — which ones, for what, concretely?
   • Give a recent example. How do you evaluate or correct the output?
8. Have you designed for sensitive/NSFW categories? What was your hands-on involvement?
9. You'd be engaged B2B/contractor initially, with potential transition to full-time — does that work for you? (Record answer verbatim; also confirm country of residence — tax/contract setup varies, don't assume from nationality.)
10. Location / compensation expectations / notice period?
11. What questions do you have for me?

🎯 Strong Signals / Sourcing Guidance

Positive signals — not automatic hard gates:

✅ Positive portfolio signals: custom domain built on Framer or Webflow; animation & interaction shown in case studies; strong, concise visual and written communication; clean/modern/premium aesthetic; at least one strong relevant case study plus a second meaningfully related one (B2C, AI-driven, social/entertainment); demonstrated impact (outcomes, results, or clear rationale).

🏷️ Titles candidates may hold: Senior Product Designer, Lead Product Designer, Senior UI/UX Designer, Senior Interaction Designer, Product Design Lead (smaller companies), UX/UI Lead, Product Designer II, Digital/Creative Designer.

Calibration — Example Profiles That Fit

Use these as the taste benchmark: if a submitted profile wouldn't sit comfortably next to these, it's a pass.

• Anton Blinkov — Apple Design Award (Loona); multiple shipped consumer apps; motion/interaction-savvy; clear problem→solution→results case studies.
• Kristina Lenberg — motion-led storytelling; shipped at Snapchat and Tabby; outcome-focused case studies; strong systems thinking with visual innovation.
• Arni Lochner — example candidate for calibration.

📁 Sourcing Guidance

🔄 Interview Process

Follows the shared default process — see ⏳ Hiring Process for details on each stage. The case study is a scoped design exercise (~4–5 hrs, clear written brief, includes a ≤5-minute Loom walkthrough with working audio); the final round is with founders (Thomas, Mike).

Set the full process in writing up front — no fast-tracks or skipped steps, regardless of seniority, referral, or counter-offer pressure; a candidate repeatedly probing to shorten it is a culture-fit flag. Referrers stay fully outside the process (no task selection, feedback, or candidate communication) — route candidate questions to Arni or your TA contact only.