Lead Product Designer, Marketplace at Circle

About Us

Circle is dedicated to building the world's leading all-in-one platform for online communities. We empower creators, coaches, educators, and businesses to bring their audiences together through engaging discussions, live streams, events, chat, courses, and integrated payments, all within their own brand. We are proud to be a fully remote company with approximately 200 (and growing) team members from over 30 countries globally. Our philosophy is to seek out exceptional individuals worldwide, equip them to achieve their best work, and in turn, create a meaningful impact on their lives. We prioritize outcomes over hours, operate with high expectations, collaborate across time zones, work highly asynchronously, and meticulously document our processes. Twice annually, the entire company gathers in beautiful locations around the world for fully paid offsites, with past events in Turkey, Portugal, Mexico, Thailand, Colombia, Italy, Ireland, and more. Visit our Careers page for additional insights into working at Circle.

About Discover

People today are seeking more than just content; they desire growth, connection, and transformation-experiences that fundamentally alter their self-perception and worldview. Circle is the platform where these experiences are found. Unlike platforms optimized solely for clicks and consumption, Circle is built around the concept of personal and community evolution. 'Discover' is the interface through which Circle becomes visible to the world, serving as the primary channel for creators to be found and for individuals to discover experiences truly worth their investment of time. This presents a complex two-sided marketplace challenge encompassing communities, courses, events, and more, making it one of the most genuinely intriguing design challenges on the platform.

About the Role

As the Lead Product Designer for Discover, you will own the end-to-end design process: identifying opportunities, defining design direction, and delivering work that elevates the standard for discovery experiences at Circle. You will collaborate closely with a founder-led product team known for its strong vision and high standards. Your role demands a high level of craft, systems thinking, and the ability to generate bottom-up ideas to transform that vision into reality. You will join a design team where context is openly shared, ownership is truly embraced, and talented individuals are trusted to perform their best work. This role is specifically for designers with deep expertise in consumer marketplace products, including owning discovery, ranking, and engagement at scale. If your background is primarily in internal tools, CMS platforms, or growth systems, this role may not be the right fit; we encourage you to apply to our Core Product role instead.

The Problem You'll Be Solving

Discovery is one of the most challenging design problems, as it requires simultaneously serving two audiences with often opposing needs: creators who require visibility, trust signals, and growth; and consumers who need clear signals through noise, confidence to commit, and experiences that consistently deliver on their promise. What makes this challenge particularly novel at Circle is the integration of AI as the core interaction model. This isn't merely a filter or a recommendation widget, but the primary mechanism by which Discover comprehends user intent and surfaces relevant, valuable experiences. Key questions arise: How does an AI-driven experience cultivate trust within a marketplace? How can an AI-powered surface feel like a trusted recommendation from a knowledgeable individual, rather than an impersonal, ranked list from a detached system? These are genuine open questions, and the quality of your answers will directly manifest in the product's success.

What You'll Be Doing

• Own Discover's design end-to-end: Identify opportunities, frame problems, establish design direction, and ensure successful shipment. You will connect insights across the entire platform, understanding how a community business's compound product influences what Discover surfaces, and translate this systems understanding into every design decision.
• Design AI-driven discovery experiences: The new era of user experience is conversational and relational. You will design the interfaces, curation experiences, and trust signals that make AI-driven discovery feel effortless, building a human-like relationship between the platform, creators, and members, rather than an algorithmic one.
• Serve both sides of the market: You possess a systems-level understanding of what makes a marketplace thrive, recognizing how creator visibility is earned, how consumer confidence is built, and how a single flawed experience can erode trust on both sides. This comprehensive understanding will inform your design decisions, not just surface-level execution.
• Prototype at speed: You leverage AI-assisted tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, v0, or Lovable, having recognized that this approach enables rapid stress-testing of ideas. You remain engaged with the problem from concept through launch, collaborating closely with engineers to bridge the gap between design vision and shipped experience.
• Mentor and elevate: You elevate the craft standard on Discover through the exceptional quality of your own work and by actively developing other designers alongside you. You provide constructive feedback and maintain a consistently high bar for design excellence.

What You'll Need to Be Successful

• Strong alignment with our values, which can be found on our career page.
• Proficiency in English (spoken, written, and reading) at a CEFR Level C2 / ILR Level 5.
• Marketplace or two-sided platform experience is a hard requirement: You have designed for both sides of a market, understanding what erodes and builds trust. Your portfolio should demonstrate how you influenced product outcomes, not just interfaces.
• 5+ years of product design experience, including shipping 0-to-1 work, complex multi-user flows, and clear evidence of driving product direction rather than simply executing it.
• Experience as the most senior designer on a product area, setting direction, making tradeoffs, and owning outcomes without constant guidance.
• Genuine fluency with AI-assisted prototyping: You independently build realistic prototypes using tools like Cursor, Claude Code, v0, or Lovable. This is integral to your thought process, not just a production method. You can articulate your process concretely.
• Proficiency in Figma for high-fidelity design and cross-functional collaboration.
• Proactive communication: You share your thinking without being prompted, surface decisions early, offer genuine opinions, and keep your team informed consistently. At Circle, communication is fundamental to building trust and shipping work.
• Comfort designing in ambiguity: Discover is still evolving. You build conviction through iterative design, rather than waiting for perfectly defined requirements.

Compensation and Benefits

The cash compensation range provided is a starting point, between $140,000 - $170,000 USD per year. In addition to equity, benefits, and perks, your cash compensation is subject to an annual review and potential increase. Your role, location, and unique circumstances may influence specific benefits.

The Fun Stuff

• Fully remote: Work from anywhere in the world!
• Autonomy and trust: We prioritize outcomes above all else.
• Paid time away: All employees receive 35 days of PTO annually. We also offer a paid sabbatical after 5 years of service.
• Generous U.S. benchmarked compensation and startup equity, regardless of your global location.
• Awesome medical coverage: 100% coverage for you and your family, or medical reimbursement options where applicable.
• Parental leave: Comprehensive leave for parents expanding or starting a family.
• Home office stipend: To help you get set up and running effectively.
• Learning & development stipend: To support your professional skill enhancement.
• Annual bonus potential: For roles that do not already receive variable income or commission.
• Company retreats: Twice a year, the Circle team convenes for a fully paid company retreat in incredible international locations, with past retreats in Colombia, Portugal, and Mexico, and more planned.

Check out our Careers page for more details.

Candidate Safety & Interview Process Notice

At Circle, the safety and trust of our candidates are paramount. We note that recruiting fraud is increasingly prevalent, with bad actors sometimes impersonating companies or employees.

How Our Process Works

• All applications must be submitted through our official applicant tracking system (Greenhouse).
• If you are selected to proceed, you may be invited to record a short introductory video or proceed directly to a live interview.
• All live interviews are conducted face-to-face via video (Zoom or Google Meet) with a member of the Circle team.
• We do not conduct text-only interviews.
• We do not conduct interviews via chat applications or messaging platforms.
• We do not use AI bots to interview candidates.

Official Communication Channels

• All official communication from Circle will originate from [email protected] or an email address ending in @circle.co or @circle.so.
• We will never contact you from unofficial domains (such as ".team", ".careers", or similar variations).
• We will never request sensitive personal information early in the process, nor ask for any form of payment.

If you receive a suspicious message claiming to be from Circle, please do not respond.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

As a fully remote international company, diversity is an inherent part of our DNA. Our CEO, Sid Yadav, articulates our hiring mission as: "let’s find talent in underserved and under-represented corners of the world, set them up to do the best work of their lives, and in turn, change their life." To achieve this, we offer competitive U.S. benchmarked compensation globally and proactively seek candidates who enhance the representation of diverse backgrounds, cultures, and lived experiences within our teams.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Circle is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws. If you require accommodations during the recruitment process, please inform us, and we will work to meet your needs.

How We Use Candidate Data

At Circle, we are committed to protecting your personal information. As a job applicant, the personal data you provide is collected and processed in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). This notice outlines the types of personal information we collect, the purpose for its collection, and your rights.

Information We Collect:

We collect the following categories of personal information from job applicants:

• Contact information (e.g., name, email address, phone number).
• Employment history and qualifications.
• Education history.
• References and any other information you choose to share during the application process.

Purpose of Collection:

We collect this information for the following purposes:

• To assess your qualifications and suitability for the position.
• To communicate with you during the recruitment process.
• To comply with legal and regulatory obligations.

Your Rights Under GDPR and CCPA include the right to access, delete (subject to legal exceptions), or opt out of the sale of your personal information (note: we do not sell personal information). For more details, refer to our full Privacy Policy. By submitting your application, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this privacy notice.