Product Designer

About Us

There are 5 million apps in the world. None of them are exactly what you want.

That meditation app? Too zen. That habit tracker? Too gentle. That meal planner? Too corporate.

They're all built for the "average user," which means they're perfect for nobody.

Playful offers something new: just make it yourself.

We're building the tool where anyone can create mini apps that actually feel like them. Where you describe what you want ("a to-do list that's passive-aggressive when I procrastinate") and get exactly that. Where apps sound like you, not HR.

The catch? For this to work, the apps our AI generates have to be genuinely beautiful — not "template beautiful," but the kind of design that makes someone say "wait, I made this?" And they have to feel different every time. A budgeting app for a college student should not look anything like a budgeting app for a retired architect.

That's where you come in.

What You'll Do

Our goal is to make creating personal, beautiful apps feel personal and beautiful. You'll shape both sides of that: making the Playful platform intuitive and fun to build with, and training our AI designer to listen, bring good taste to the table, and deliver something that feels like the product of a collaboration, not a vending machine. Specifically, you will:

• Be the lead creative voice in product strategy, working closely with founders, product, and engineering to shape where Playful is headed
• Define features from concept through execution. When we decide to build something, you figure out how it works and what it looks like
• Design the flows, interactions, and interfaces of the Playful builder. This is hands-on product design work: wireframes, prototypes, specs, shipped screens
• Own the creative direction of Playful's AI-generated apps. Working with our AI engineers, you'll define and evolve the layer of templates, style systems, and instructions that shape what our AI designer produces. You're the person responsible for Playful's visual voice
• Guide how Playful's aesthetic shows up in our marketing, helping the marketing team express our look and feel consistently across channels
• Create illustrations and visual assets for the product as needed

You Might Be Who We're Looking For If...

You think strategically and do the work. You can shape product direction and push pixels in the same week. You're not above the craft and you're not lost without a brief.

You have a strong visual sense and real range. You know what looks good, you can describe why in words and in mockups, and you can do it across a variety of styles.

You get consumer products. You've designed things that real people choose to use and enjoy, not just internal dashboards or B2B tools.

You know the rules and when to skip them. You understand design fundamentals and process. You also know which ones help at an early stage and which ones get in the way.

You're curious about AI. You pay attention to where AI capabilities are heading and you're excited to use AI as a creative tool in your own work.

Portfolio: What We Want to See

We want to see beautiful work across a variety of styles. Show us range. Show us projects where you set the creative direction, not just executed someone else's. If you've worked on consumer products, games, editorial design, brand systems, or anything where visual craft was the differentiator — lead with that.

We're less interested in enterprise dashboards, admin panels, and B2B SaaS unless you did something genuinely surprising with them.

How to Apply

Drop us your resume, a link to your portfolio, and a note about why you're excited to join Playful Software at joinus@playful.software. Feel free to include links to products, apps, and sites you've crafted or anything else that shows off your skills.

Our Hiring Process

Our interview process is straightforward: a behavioral interview about your past experiences, interviews with the founders and key staff, and meeting with our team. We value design and creative excellence, product insight, eagerness for growth and impact, and the communication skills and empathy to collaborate well with a tight-knit team.

We value diversity. We are an equal opportunity employer: we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, perform essential job functions, and receive other benefits and privileges of employment.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance: 100% coverage for you, 60% coverage for all your dependents
• Voluntary insurance: short-term disability, long-term disability, and life insurance
• 401(k) plan
• Take as much vacation as you like!
• Flexible parental leave

Our Founders

Playful Software is led by cofounders Darrin Massena and Mike Harrington, seasoned technology entrepreneurs and successful product leaders. Prior to Playful, Massena and Harrington cofounded online photo editing service Picnik, which grew to 60 million monthly users worldwide and was acquired by Google in 2010. Before Picnik, Massena cofounded SpiffCode (creators of Warfare Incorporated) and Harrington cofounded Valve Software (creators of Half-Life). Since its start in 2021, Playful Software has been dedicated to democratizing software and empowering creativity on the web.

Playful Life

Our remote team works from home, van, boat, and office. Quarterly, we bring the whole team together to our HQ in Seattle, WA. Along with building this company, together we've forged axes, blown glass, cooked gourmet meals, sculpted clay vessels, battled in curling and bocce, and eaten a lot of food together.