---
title: 'Founding Designer at Phonely'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/founding-designer-phonely-san-francisco-ek9w6xe9b08x'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-29'
---

# Founding Designer at Phonely

- **Company:** Phonely
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $140k–$230k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-10-19
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-29
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/phonely/c3c2858b-8d86-4200-8540-456ae2b33b63

## Job description

Founding Designer San Francisco, CA | On-site | Full-time Compensation: $140,000–$230,000

## About Phonely

At some point in the future, every business will answer their phone with voice AI. We are building the platform that makes it possible.

Phonely builds conversational voice AI agents for high-volume phone workflows. Our customers use us to qualify leads, book appointments, route calls, and resolve real customer conversations in production. We are growing fast and just getting started.

## About the Role

We’re hiring a Founding Designer to own how Phonely looks, feels, and works across our brand and product.

As our first design hire, you’ll audit our existing design, define our visual identity, and build the systems that bring consistency to everything we create. From our website and branding to the frontend platform our customers use every day, you’ll establish the design standards that shape Phonely as we scale.

This isn’t a role where you hand off Figma files and call it a day. You’ll work directly with our founders and engineers to bring designs into production, using AI tools like Claude to help implement design standards and contributing to frontend code when needed.

We’re looking for someone with exceptional design taste who can think strategically, execute independently, and build something that lasts. You’ll have real ownership over our design direction and the freedom to define what great design looks like at Phonely.

## What You’ll Do

- Audit our existing brand and product design, find the inconsistencies, and establish a cohesive visual identity
- Own and evolve our branding: typography, color, layout, visual guidelines, and overall direction
- Build and maintain a scalable design system with reusable components and standards
- Bring consistency to our frontend platform so every customer-facing screen follows the same principles
- Design intuitive, polished interfaces that make complex voice AI workflows easy to understand
- Work directly with frontend engineers to implement designs and improve the product experience
- Use AI development tools like Claude to translate design guidelines into code and standardize implementation
- Contribute to the codebase when needed, including frontend improvements and pull requests
- Maintain brand consistency across our website, product, marketing materials, and customer-facing assets
- Set the foundation for how design operates at Phonely as we grow

## What You’ll Bring

- 3+ years of professional design experience, ideally in B2B SaaS, technology, or a design-forward company
- Exceptional visual design skills and a portfolio showing high-quality work across brand and digital product
- Experience building or maintaining design systems and establishing consistent standards
- Strong command of UI/UX, typography, layout, color, and visual hierarchy
- Experience designing web applications and working closely with frontend engineering teams
- Ability to own design projects from initial concept through implementation
- Comfort with AI tools and learning new technologies to move faster
- Strong attention to detail and the ability to explain and defend design decisions
- High ownership and comfort in a fast-moving startup where the playbook doesn’t exist yet

## Nice to Have

- Previous experience as a Founding Designer or early design hire at a startup
- Experience at a company recognized for exceptional design quality
- Background designing B2B SaaS platforms or complex web applications
- Hands-on frontend experience with HTML, CSS, React, or similar
- Experience working with GitHub, contributing code, and submitting pull requests
- Familiarity with AI-assisted development tools such as Claude
- Experience defining or evolving a company’s brand identity from the ground up

## Why Join Phonely

We are a team of ex-athletes, founders, and builders who are deeply passionate about the problem we’re solving. We’re a curious, driven, low-ego group that finds joy in hard challenges. As we grow the team, we are being extremely intentional about the culture we’re building. We care far less about a person’s pedigree than we do about finding smart people with grit and genuine kindness. If this resonates with you, please reach out!

## Benefits

- Full health and dental coverage
- 401(k) with 4% match
- Unlimited PTO
- Meaningful equity
- Wellness stipend
- Race/tournament stipend (so you can go compete in cool stuff!)
- Breakfast, lunch, and dinner provided
- Annual offsites in fun spots (Costa Rica, the Rockies)

Interview Process

1. 15-min intro call
2. Portfolio review focused on visual design, brand identity, and design systems
3. Deep dive with leadership on your design approach, past work, and technical capabilities
4. Final conversation with leadership

## About Phonely

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Phonely provides lifelike AI voice agents that answer business phone calls, manage chats and SMS, and automate customer interactions across channels.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A)
- **Headquarters**: San Jose, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Not publicly listed (CEO: William Bodewes)

## Core Business
- **Industry**: Voice AI / Customer Communication Automation
- **Target Customers**: B2B – SMBs to Fortune 500 enterprises; verticals include healthcare, home services, legal, insurance, real estate, e‑commerce, and contact centers.
- **Mission**: *“Building technology that lets businesses provide better support to their customers, lets doctors see more patients, and lets the rest of us never get put on hold again.”* [phonely.ai/about](https://www.phonely.ai/about)

## Products & Services
- **Phonely AI Receptionist**: Natural, human‑like voice agent that handles inbound calls – appointment scheduling, lead qualification, routing, payments, follow‑up, and outbound outreach. Supports 100+ languages and voice cloning. [phonely.ai](https://www.phonely.ai/)
- **Omnichannel Platform**: Extends AI agents to phone, live chat, SMS, and API – delivering consistent experiences across channels.
- **Analytics & Optimization**: Call recording, transcription, AI‑powered insights, and performance dashboards to continuously improve conversations.
- **Custom Workflows**: Configurable conversation flows, scripts, tone, routing logic, and escalation paths. Integrates with CRMs, scheduling software, and other business tools.
- **Compliance & Security**: SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA, PCI compliant – built for regulated, high‑stakes conversations.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Raised **$16.5 M** in total funding (Series A of $16 M closed in 2026). [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/phonely)
- **Notable Investors**: Y Combinator, Base10 Partners, Etech, EngageCX, TSA Telco Group (over 10 investors total).
- **Growth Signals**:
  - **10,000+** businesses using the platform
  - **100,000+** calls per day processed
  - **70%** reduction in operational costs reported by customers
  - **70%** of businesses set up in less than 5 minutes
  - Trusted by Fortune 500 companies and backed by leading accelerator Y Combinator.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Lifelike AI**: Voice agents built by PhD researchers with natural turn‑taking, emotion handling, and voice cloning that sounds human.
- **Omnichannel Unity**: One platform for phone, chat, SMS, and API – not just voice.
- **Enterprise‑Grade Compliance**: Supports HIPAA, SOC 2, GDPR, CCPA, and PCI out of the box – critical for healthcare, legal, and finance.
- **Rapid Deployment**: 70% of businesses go live in under 5 minutes; enterprise gets dedicated setup teams.
- **Deep Integrations**: Pre‑built connectors to CRMs, scheduling tools, and payment systems – zero human intervention possible.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scale AI‑First Customer Communication**: Expand the platform’s capability to handle millions of calls while maintaining quality and compliance.
- **Vertical Expansion**: Deepen workflows for high‑regulation industries (healthcare, legal, insurance).
- **Community & Partner Ecosystem**: Host webinars, roundtables, and a Slack community to share playbooks and foster customer success.
- **Continuous Optimization**: Use analytics and machine learning to make every agent smarter and every call more effective.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Values include *customer obsession*, *intensity* (fast shipping and iteration), *attention to detail*, and *trust* (building for regulated environments).
- **Team**: Composed of AI researchers, engineers, operators, and customer‑obsessed builders – described as “people who know voice AI is hard.”
- **Impact**: Work on a platform that handles 100K+ daily calls for 10K+ businesses, from small clinics to Fortune 500 enterprises.
- **Growth**: Join an early‑stage (Series A) company backed by Y Combinator, with significant runway and customer traction.
- **Work Model**: Not explicitly stated as remote or hybrid; HQ in San Jose, CA. Careers page lists open positions.
- **Perks**: Opportunity to shape the future of voice AI, work with PhD researchers, and build at the intersection of AI and real‑world customer communication.

## Sources
1. [Phonely AI – Product & Company Overview](https://www.phonely.ai/)
2. [Phonely About Page – Mission & Team](https://www.phonely.ai/about)
3. [Phonely Careers Page](https://www.phonely.ai/careers)
4. [CB Insights – Funding, Investors, HQ Details](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/phonely)

## Other roles at Phonely

- [Operations Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/operations-specialist-phonely-san-francisco-74w5enaf2n9a) — San Francisco, CA
- [QA Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/qa-engineer-phonely-canada-md7gp7nn8mk1) — Canada
- [Founding Product Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-product-manager-phonely-san-francisco-k5pvxa9k4hzy) — San Francisco, CA
- [Founding Content Marketing Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-content-marketing-lead-phonely-san-francisco-nfqhxft889cn) — San Francisco, CA
- [Technical Customer Success Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-customer-success-manager-phonely-san-francisco-2wh3dm68htrb) — San Francisco, CA
- [Senior Business Development Representative](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-business-development-representative-phonely-san-francisco-h4b6r9kf0ggt) — San Francisco, CA
- [Business Development Representative](https://feeny.ai/job/business-development-representative-phonely-san-francisco-yavhbsmdgxk6) — San Francisco, CA
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- [Software Engineer Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-intern-phonely-san-francisco-hacsghp5gjzk) — San Francisco, CA
- [Sales Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-engineer-phonely-san-francisco-jcw3j5fwaf7r) — San Francisco, CA