Design Director

Joi AI is a platform for AI-lationships — personalized, emotionally intelligent connections between people and AI characters. We build characters that have their own personality, mood, and voice: they can ignore you, argue with you, miss you. If you've seen the film Her — that's roughly where we're headed.

Our platform serves both emotional and intimate needs without judgment, built on the values of rejection-free connection, sex positivity, freedom to be yourself, and ethical integrity. Today we have tens of millions of conversations on the platform. Our goal: 10% of the global population in long-term AI-lationships with our characters.

Joi Lab (joilab.ai) is our open research arm — we build open-source generative models, agent architectures, and training infrastructure. All code, weights, and data are public. We're not chasing the next ChatGPT wrapper; we're working on true AI agency: persistent memory, self-modification, self-authored constraints.

The role

You'll own the entire visual and experiential surface of Joi AI - the ad someone clicks, the landing page they arrive on, the character they choose, the conversation they keep coming back to. One owner, one coherent story, no seams between marketing and product.

You'll report directly to the CEO and lead a small, senior team: two product designers (mobile and web), a UX writer, and a researcher. The team is self-sufficient, so this isn't about pushing work through it - it's about setting direction team can run with and defending it with reasoning rather than authority.

The mandate is commercial. Design here is measured by what it moves: conversion to purchase, retention, LTV, etc.. Our design system exists and the product works; the ceiling is much higher than where we are, and closing that gap is your job.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Own the end-to-end user experience - from ad creative and landing pages through onboarding, character selection, chat, media generation and retention loops - holding the whole journey coherent rather than optimizing screens in isolation.

• Move product metrics through design: form hypotheses, prioritize them against the roadmap, validate through A/B tests, and see them into release with measurable outcomes.

• Set a single design direction and evolve the design system: UI, UX patterns, character visual language, generated content, animation and UX copy.

• Lead and grow the design team, and build the cross-functional working relationship with product, analytics, marketing and engineering - from prototype to release.

• Turn user research, interviews and support insights into concrete roadmap initiatives with a clear rationale and a clear path to implementation.

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR

• 3+ years leading a design team of 3 or more, in B2C daily-use products -- AI companions, social, dating, health & fitness, edtech, messengers; products at 2M+ MAU or $50M+ revenue.

• Cases where your design work measurably moved the business: what you changed, why, and what happened to conversion, retention or LTV - with numbers before and after.

• Strong product design expertise: UX, UI, user flows, information architecture, prototyping; fluent in Figma; experience building and maintaining design systems.

• A track record of working inside the product function, not next to it: A/B testing, prioritization frameworks like RICE, research that reaches the roadmap.

• A real visual eye paired with an analytical mind, English at C1 or above, and genuine comfort with adult and AI-companion content.

• Nice to have: hands-on experience with AI-generated visual content tools (Nano Banana, Higgsfield, Wan).

WHY JOI

• You're joining the company that's redefining what relationships with AI look like — before the category gets crowded

• We move fast: ideas become live experiments in days, not quarters

• Joi Lab gives you access to frontier model research — open-source, no corporate gatekeeping

• Small team, high trust, high ownership — you'll see the direct impact of your work

• Work from anywhere with our fully remote, full-time setup.

• Standard 28-day annual leave policy.

• 7 yearly wellness days for life admin or recovery—no sick notes needed.

• Referral rewards up to $5000 for helping us hire top talent.

• We cover 50% of costs for training, conferences, and global meetups.

• Subsidized English classes through our corporate discount.

• Health support: receive up to $1,000 annually for medical fees or private insurance if you aren't on the group plan.

• Optimized workspace: we equip you in-office or provide $1000 every three years to perfect your home office or co-working setup.

• Peer-to-peer recognition: earn gratitude bonuses and swap them for swag, massage vouchers, or team adventures.

NEXT STEPS

• Intro call - conversation with the Recruiter

• Portfolio & cases interview - how your design decisions moved product metrics

• Final interview - product vision and team fit with the CEO