---
title: 'Founding Product Designer at Scholarly'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/founding-product-designer-scholarly-seattle-nx05hk9c8cp2'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-31'
---

# Founding Product Designer at Scholarly

- **Company:** Scholarly
- **Location:** Seattle, WA
- **Compensation:** $160k–$190k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-10-26
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-31
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/scholarly/1762c64d-6a6b-4f13-9267-c2b414295bd1

## Job description

## ABOUT SCHOLARLY

Scholarly is building the next generation of AI-powered software for higher education with a faculty-first focus. As institutions face a wave of digital transformation, our mission is to become the AI-native system of record for faculty data. Our platform unifies fragmented workflows into a single, intelligent system - powering annual reviews, promotion & tenure, appointment tracking, and more - while eliminating manual data entry and improving decision-making for institutions. We're a mission-driven, product-focused team shaping the future of higher education.

## POSITION OVERVIEW

Scholarly is hiring its first full-time designer. As our Founding Product Designer, you'll own how Scholarly looks, feels, and works - from the data-dense screens administrators live in every day, to the faculty-facing experiences that need to just work, to the website and materials that introduce us to new institutions. We're looking for a designer with 7 or more years of experience, including meaningful time shipping complex B2B or SaaS products. You'll work directly with engineering and leadership, and you'll be the person who sets up how design works at Scholarly: the system, the process, and the bar. You can read about how we work in this blog post https://kellysutton.com/2025/08/04/how-were-working-2025.html. This role is based in Seattle and on-site with the engineering team in Pioneer Square.

## KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

- Own product design end-to-end. Take features from fuzzy customer problem to shipped, polished experience - workflows, information architecture, interaction design, and visual design.
- Build and own the Scholarly design system. Define the components, tokens, and patterns our frontend is built on, including the dense tables and grids that power faculty data management.
- Talk to our users. Run interviews, usability tests, and site visits with faculty, department administrators, and faculty affairs teams at our customer institutions, and turn what you learn into product direction.
- Prototype in code. You're comfortable in HTML and CSS - whether that's building a high-fidelity prototype, pairing with an engineer, or shipping a front-end polish fix yourself. Claude and other AI tools are your force multipliers.
- Shape the brand. Lead design for our website, sales and demo materials, and the documents we put in front of prospective customers.
- Guide product decisions. You'll have a real voice in what we build and why, not just how it looks.

## QUALIFICATIONS

- 7 or more years of product design experience, with a portfolio that shows complex, workflow-heavy or data-dense products shipped to real users.
- Experience building or significantly evolving a design system.
- Hands-on user research experience - you've planned and run your own studies.
- Working knowledge of front-end code (HTML, CSS).
- Brand or marketing design experience is a strong plus.
- Experience in higher education, healthcare, HR, or other enterprise/regulated software is a plus, but not required.
- Authorized to work in the United States (citizen or green card holder). We're not able to sponsor visas at this time.
- Excited to work on-site in Seattle 5 days per week.

## About Scholarly

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Scholarly builds modern faculty information software for higher education institutions, streamlining faculty administration with AI-powered data management and workflows.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed-stage; total funding approximately $8M as of April 2026)
- **Headquarters**: Denver, Colorado, USA (with a second office in Seattle, Washington)
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Rusty Cowher (CEO) and Kelly Sutton (CTO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Educational technology / Faculty affairs software for higher education
- **Target customers**: B2B – universities, medical schools, engineering schools, law schools, business schools, colleges of arts & science, and art schools
- **Mission or purpose**: To streamline faculty administration so faculty members can spend less time on admin tasks, while empowering institutions with the data they need to operate effectively.

## Products & Services
- **[Faculty Information System]**: A comprehensive SaaS platform that centralizes faculty data, automates annual evaluations, promotion & tenure workflows, tracks sabbaticals, and provides AI-powered reporting and dashboards. Includes a faculty public profiles module, a workflow builder, and integrations with existing university systems.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding of ~$8M – includes a $1M pre-seed round (June 2023), a $4M seed round (July 2024), and a $3M growth capital round from existing investors (announced April 2026) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/scholarly-software)).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not publicly named; described as “leading software investors” on the company website. Partners include higher education institutions and advisory network members.
- **Growth Signals**: 69.2% year-over-year headcount growth (15 employees as of mid-2026), active hiring for 4+ roles (Senior SDR, Senior Software Engineer, Senior Implementation Manager, Head of Growth), renewed SOC 2 Type II compliance in January 2026, consistent monthly product updates with AI features (AI CV Import, AI Assistant, Model Context Protocol), and presence at industry events like the AIR Forum.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Purpose-built for faculty affairs**: Deep domain focus on higher education administration, unlike generic HR or CRM platforms.
- **AI-powered automation**: Uses AI to reduce manual data entry (e.g., importing CVs, generating reports) and to surface actionable insights.
- **SOC 2 Type II certified**: Meets enterprise security standards required by universities.
- **Advisory network**: Engages faculty affairs administrators directly to shape product roadmap and ensure relevance.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scale the team and product**: Using fresh growth capital to accelerate hiring across engineering, implementation, and growth roles.
- **Expand platform capabilities**: Continuous investment in workflows, APIs, public profile hosting, and AI features to serve a broader range of institution types and use cases.
- **Deepen market penetration**: Targeting medical, engineering, law, and business schools with tailored solutions, and expanding to colleges of arts & science and art schools.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven work**: Influence how higher education faculty are managed and supported across top institutions.
- **Early-stage impact**: Join a 15-person team where each role has outsized ownership and visibility into the company’s strategy.
- **Collaborative culture**: Monthly product update posts and open communication on LinkedIn suggest a transparent, team-oriented environment.
- **Work model**: Hybrid – offices in Denver, CO and Seattle, WA; some roles (e.g., Senior SDR) are listed as “Denver or Remote,” while engineering roles may be based in Seattle or remote-friendly. Candidates should confirm for each position.
- **Perks & culture**: Modern tooling (e.g., Gusto, Datadog, Ashby for hiring), focus on work-life balance, and opportunities to attend industry conferences.

## Sources
1. [Scholarly Software – About Page](https://scholarlysoftware.com/about)
2. [Scholarly Software Careers Page (Ashby)](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/Scholarly)
3. [Scholarly Software LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/scholarly-software)
4. [Scholarly Software on Built In](https://builtin.com/company/scholarly-software)
5. [Scholarly Software – Homepage](https://scholarlysoftware.com/)

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