Founding Product Designer

A little about us… Knit is the AI-native research agency. We help the world's most iconic brands make confident decisions through deep customer understanding. Knit pairs our AI-native tooling with world-class researchers to run quant and qual at scale - delivering executive, decision-ready insights to inform billion dollar decisions. Teams at Amazon, Mars, T-Mobile, Paramount, McCormick, Nestle, Medtronic and 100+ others trust Knit to bring real customer voices into their biggest decisions. Knit recently closed its Series B, raising $60M+ to date. Our team of ~80 is US remote friendly, with headquarters in our NYC midtown office. Our team is built with operating talent from Kantar, Ipsos, Doordash, Square, Hatch, and unicorn startups. Overview We're looking for a Founding Product Designer to define and elevate the product experience at Knit. As our very first designer, you will own the end-to-end user experience, set the standard for our product design language, and shape how human researchers and AI agents interact. You'll build the foundation for our design system, rethink complex workflows, and pioneer the future of intuitive, high-impact agentic software. We want someone who combines exceptional visual taste with strong UX thinking and product judgment . You'll work directly with our Chief Product Officer, PMs, engineers, researchers, and customers. This is a hands-on, individual contributor role with significant ownership and autonomy. Over time, you'll have the opportunity to build a team and scale the design function as Knit grows. Responsibilities | What you will own... 1. Own design projects from concept through production Lead design initiatives from problem discovery and early concepts through prototyping, implementation, and iteration. Work closely with PMs and engineers to turn ideas into shipped products. Move quickly, make thoughtful tradeoffs, and take ownership of the quality of what ships. 2. Build and own Knit's design system Create and maintain a design system with reusable components, patterns, and guidelines that PMs, engineers and AI agents can use across the product. Establish clear design standards that help humans & AIs make good decisions independently. Own the visual quality and consistency of our product, ensuring every interface is polished, intuitive, and true to Knit's brand. 3. Rethink and improve the product experience Continuously evaluate our product to identify usability issues and opportunities for improvement. Simplify complex workflows, rethink information architecture and interactions, and design intuitive end-to-end experiences. Know when to improve an existing interface and when to rethink the experience entirely. 4. Develop deep user understanding Use a mix of qual and quant research. Work directly with enterprise customers, researchers, and internal teams to understand their needs, workflows, and challenges. Observe users, conduct interviews and usability tests, and use what you learn to inform designs. Use tools like Amplitude to understand what users are doing at scale. Look beyond what users ask for to understand the problems they're trying to solve. Required Skills & Experiences We're looking for a senior, hands-on product designer with exceptional visual craft, strong product instincts, and the independence to establish design at Knit. Must-haves • 7+ years of product design experience: A track record of independently owning, designing and shipping digital products, from discovery through launch at early stage startups. Experience as a founding or early designer who helped establish a company's design standards and practices. • Design systems: Experience building and maintaining scalable design systems, reusable components, and consistent patterns that PMs, engin