Product Designer | SimpleStudy

Role: Senior Product Designer

Company: SimpleStudy

Location: Remote, Europe (preferably Western / continental); relocation to Lisbon possible

Job Type: Full-time

About SimpleStudy

SimpleStudy is an AI exam prep platform that students find and choose for themselves.

In some numbers:

• 1.5M+ students across the UK, Ireland, Brazil, South Africa, and Australia

• 40–50k new students every week

• Web, mobile, and desktop apps

• $4M seed round with investors from Strava, OpenAI, and Meta

The traction came fast. Now the company is refounding: rebuilding the brand, the design language, and the product experience from scratch. The product grew like a Jenga tower, one feature on top of another. The job now is to rebuild it as a pyramid.

The team is ~30 people, remote with a Lisbon office — lean, product-led, and deliberately not a typical edtech company.

You'll report to José, the Founding Designer, and work with him as a partner. José tends to lead early framing and direction. You bring strong craft and take the work to the finish line, in close sync with engineering. You both shape the new design language, and you push back with a better idea when you see one.

What you are expected to do:

• Shape the new design language and brand: design system, rebrand, and the new mobile app.

• Own the full design process — from an ambiguous problem to a polished, shipped solution.

• Drive the consumer experience: onboarding, social features, retention, and the learning loop.

• Work in close sync with engineers and PM, not as a handoff step - polish the implementation together until it feels right.

• Bring your own initiatives and say "no, but…" when you see a better way.

• Raise the bar for the whole design team.

What you need to succeed:

• High craft — your visual work is polished and intentional; the details reveal your thinking.

• Storytelling over process — you take an ambiguous problem, frame it, and make it simple. Your portfolio shows artifacts, not diagrams; it has a point of view.

• Consumer instinct — you've shipped B2C products that people chose to use. You understand product metrics and use them as input, but you lead with feel and craft.

• Opinions with backbone — you have a design philosophy, can defend it under pushback, and bring your own initiatives. You don't wait to be told what to build.

• Energy and curiosity — you're an interesting person with a life outside work, and you leave people energised after a conversation.

• English — fluent, written and spoken.

What would be a plus:

• A standout specialty: prototyping, illustration, animation, or motion.

• Experience with social or viral product mechanics.

• Background at consumer companies like Spotify or Strava.

• Early-stage or founding designer experience.

• Comfortable in code: prototyping or polishing the front end.

What you get:

• Build from scratch, at scale — a new design language for a product already used by 1.5M+ students.

• A strong partner - work closely with José, the Founding Designer (ex-Shopify), with direct access to the founders.

• Equity — generous stock options, early enough for them to matter.

• Remote Europe — work from where you choose, with in-person meetups three times a year; relocation support if you want to move to Lisbon.

• Competitive salary — no fixed budget, flexible.

How to apply:

A deck or a walkthrough video is fine. Show the work, keep it curated.

Please email links to your LinkedIn / Resume and portfolio to alex@hirehire.me with the subject line [SimpleStudy PD]. We are excited to learn more about you and your work!

The vacancy is proudly presented by the hirehire recruiting agency.

"Craft matters here from day one. You'll rebuild the brand, the design system and the product together with José, a founding designer who cares a lot about how things feel. 1.5M students, real traction, and a team that picks quality over speed."

— Tanya Sivo
Product Design Expert, hirehire