Founding Product Designer

About Hello Canopy

Hello Canopy is an AI enablement platform for HR teams. We are building an AI-native, centralised system that brings together data, insights, and connected tools like compliance, HR operations, engagement and performance. We’re helping HR teams focus on people work, not paperwork.

We’ve built and proven our MVP and are now moving into our evolved product vision: a scalable, AI-first platform designed to change how workplaces operate.

We’ve come through one of the world’s top global accelerator and VC-backed programs, Techstars, and our founding team brings deep expertise in workplace culture, HR, and compliance. We're grounded in our values and driven by the opportunity to create a new category of HR tech, rethinking how HR teams are enabled and how people experience work.

What it means to be a Founding Product Designer

The design decisions we make will shape the future of what good HR tech looks and feels like. Not just for HR teams, but for the millions of employees we hope to reach one day. At its core, this role is about building trust through design. The way people move through our product, the clarity of the flows, the ease of use, and the humanity of the experience will be fundamental to whether we deliver the outcomes we’re here to create.

And this isn’t product design as it used to be. AI is reshaping how people interact with software, and we’re designing natively for that future. You’ll be at the forefront of figuring out what intuitive, AI-driven interaction looks like and how we weave it into the product in ways that feel seamless, safe, and genuinely useful.

As our founding Product Designer, you’ll set the tone for all of this. You’ll define what great design means at Hello Canopy, balancing fast experimentation with thoughtful, long-term product decisions. The mark you leave on the product now will ripple through everything we build in the years ahead.

About the role

As our first Product Designer, you’ll be involved from ideation to iteration, and execution. You will:

• Work across research, interaction, and UI, creating experiences that are simple but impactful.
• Prototype and iterate quickly to validate ideas, while also stepping back to design the systems and foundations that will scale with us.
• Establish our first design system and principles, setting the standard for craft and usability across the platform.
• Work closely with Hello Canopy’s co-founders, engineers, and customers to bring clarity to problems and shape how we solve them.
• Explore and define the future of interaction design in an AI-native product. This is where we can lean into experimentation and pushing the boundaries of design.
• Keep our users at the centre by building empathy through curiosity, customer conversations, and feedback loops.

Wait! If you don't 100% match the criteria above, that’s ok and we still want to hear from you.

About you

We care less about titles and are more interested in experience. Whether you’ve called yourself senior, lead, or something else, what matters is your ability to balance speed and craft, solve problems creatively, and design with impact.

You might be a great fit if you:

• Have taken an idea from a rough sketch or early concept all the way through to a shipped product.
• Can translate problems into quick prototypes, test them with customers, and then refine into designs ready to be built.
• Enjoy experimenting with new ways of solving problems and always come back to what delivers value for customers. This is especially important to us as we built an AI native platform.
• Have experience creating or contributing to design systems, and are excited to help shape the foundations of Hello Canopy’s.
• Care deeply about usability, trust, and the small details that make an experience feel effortless.

Where you're based: Our co-founders are in Sydney and work hybrid between home and WeWork, but you can be anywhere in Australia. However, working together in person on big hairy problems is sometimes needed and we'd arrange you to come to Sydney from time to time.

Your working hours: We've listed this role as full-time however we would be open to 3-4 days a week.

Why join us

You’ll be joining at the ground level of an early-stage startup that is shaping a new category in HR tech. We’re building a company and a team that are deeply driven by values and by creating impact. We don’t believe in moving fast just to break things, because not everything needs to be, or should be, broken. Instead, we use our experience to know when to go fast and when to slow down. As co-founders, we’re committed to building a place where people can do their life’s best work, with the balance that makes that possible.

What that looks like in practice:

• A full-time role with equity so you share in the value you help create.
• A seat at the table as part of the founding team, shaping not just the product but the company we are building.
• Deep involvement in customer conversations, product strategy, and commercial decisions. We don’t gatekeep context.
• The opportunity to work on AI at the ground floor, making decisions that will shape the platform for years to come.

For more details about the role and our co-founders, see our notion page: https://shorturl.at/ceLY7

A note on location and sponsorship: We know amazing talent comes from all around the world but right now, we're not in a position to sponsor visas or hire from outside of Australia.