Lead Product Designer at Circle

About Circle

Circle is at the forefront of building the world's leading AI-powered, all-in-one platform for digital businesses. Our innovative solution empowers creators, coaches, educators, and businesses to seamlessly integrate their audience through engaging discussions, live streams, events, chat, courses, and payment processing, all within a single, branded environment. We pride ourselves on being a fully remote company, comprising approximately 270 (and growing) team members spanning over 30 countries globally. We are dedicated to finding exceptional individuals worldwide, providing them with the resources to perform their best work, and in turn, creating a significant impact on their lives. While we do not track hours, we uphold high expectations for performance. Our team collaborates asynchronously across various time zones and maintains thorough documentation. Twice a year, we host company offsites in stunning locations around the world, with past destinations including Turkey, Portugal, Mexico, Thailand, Colombia, Italy, and Ireland. Explore our Careers page for more insights into working at Circle.

About the Role

As a Lead Product Designer, you will take full ownership of the design for one of Circle's most critical product areas. This entails defining problems, shaping strategic direction, and shipping complete user experiences, rather than simply executing based on a brief. The specific product area will be assigned based on your strengths and current company priorities. You will report directly into the product design organization, serving as the most senior individual contributor (IC) designer for your assigned area. You will collaborate closely with product managers, engineers, and design leadership, and work alongside other Lead designers across Circle's product surface. As the team expands, you will be expected to elevate the standard of design among your peers.

AI is not merely a feature in this role, it is integral to our workflow. Circle's design team utilizes AI tools daily for exploring product directions, prototyping with code generation tools, and rapidly stress testing ideas, significantly outpacing traditional workflows. We are seeking a candidate who already embraces this approach and is eager to push its boundaries further.

What you'll be doing

• End-to-End Product Area Ownership: Identify opportunities, clearly frame problems, establish design direction, and deliver solutions, operating as a peer to Product and Engineering, not merely a downstream executor.
• Complex Flow Design: Design intricate, multi-step product flows that cater to diverse user types, balancing the needs of creators with member experience, and simplifying sophisticated behaviors.
• Rapid Prototyping & Testing: Prototype and test at speed using AI-assisted tools, code generation workflows, and any method that accelerates reaching a testable concept.
• Strategic Influence: Contribute to product roadmap discussions, identify opportunities missed by other teams, and connect dots across the entire product.
• Craft Standard Elevation: Drive high standards for interaction design, visual quality, and the meticulous details that distinguish a polished product.
• Close Collaboration: Work closely with engineers and design engineers to transform concepts into functional, shippable experiences, moving beyond simple spec handoffs.
• Team Development: Enhance the broader design team through constructive feedback, shared frameworks, and the exemplary quality of your own output.

What you'll need to be successful

• Values Alignment: Strong adherence to Circle's core values (please review them on our careers page).
• English Proficiency: Proficient in English (spoken, written, and reading) at a CEFR Level C2 / ILR Level 5.
• Extensive Product Design Experience: 5-7+ years of product design experience. Your portfolio should demonstrate systems-level thinking, including shipped 0-to-1 work, complex multi-user flows, and clear evidence of your impact on product direction, not just interface design.
• Senior Design Leadership: Proven experience operating as the most senior designer on a product area, capable of setting direction, making trade-offs, and owning outcomes without constant guidance.
• Strong Prototyping Skills: Ability to build clickable, realistic prototypes independently. Bonus if you actively use AI-assisted prototyping tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, v0, or Lovable.
• Figma Proficiency: Expertise in Figma for high-fidelity design and collaborative workflows.
• Exceptional Communication: Outstanding written and verbal communication skills, enabling you to clearly articulate complex ideas, influence decisions, and align distributed teams asynchronously. Your ability to write well is crucial for decision-making in a remote environment.
• Comfort with Ambiguity: Comfortable designing in ambiguous situations and building conviction through iterative processes, rather than awaiting perfect requirements.
• Evolving AI Workflow: An active and developing AI workflow, demonstrating concrete experience using AI tools in your design process. This is a critical aspect of our evaluation for this role.

Compensation & Benefits

This position is primarily offered at a Lead level; however, we may consider candidates at the Senior level depending on experience alignment. In either scenario, the compensation will fall within our published range. Circle provides U.S.-benchmarked compensation globally, along with company equity and ongoing refresh grants, plus 35 days of paid time off annually. As a remote-only team, we gather twice a year for company retreats in exciting international destinations. In addition to exceptional flexibility and autonomy, we offer a comprehensive benefits package supporting health, wellbeing, and professional development. For more details, please visit our Candidate Hub.

Learn more

• Candidate Safety & Interview Process Notice
• Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
• How We Use Candidate Data
• Equal Employment Opportunity
• Visit our Candidate Hub to learn more about working at Circle, our benefits, and our hiring process.