---
title: 'Lead Product Designer at Karya'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/lead-product-designer-karya-bengaluru-cy2cs3ndzbza'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-08'
---

# Lead Product Designer at Karya

- **Company:** Karya
- **Location:** Bengaluru, India
- **Posted:** 2026-05-08
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-08
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/karya/jobs/5214033008

## Job description

About Karya:

Why was Karya on the [cover of the Time Magazine](https://time.com/6297403/the-workers-behind-ai-rarely-see-its-rewards-this-indian-startup-wants-to-fix-that/) , [highlighted by Satya Nadella](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY2CpA05IWI&t=3015s) , and [invited to present its work to Sundar Pichai](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/google-for-startups_karya-had-the-incredible-opportunity-to-present-activity-7260320022256844801-IqFs?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAABCwLHABbvmVlzleiTzIxaWWdg2PxTutXE0) one on one?

In part, because Karya is on a mission to provide AI enabled earning and learning opportunities to communities with high talent, but low access to opportunities. Karya achieves this while also delivering high quality, timely, and price competitive data to its clients.

Karya builds high quality datasets for large companies like Google and Microsoft, while providing ethical work opportunities and fair wages to its workforce.

Karya’s workers make nearly 20 times the Indian minimum wage and through our one-of-a-kind digital work platform, we have delivered over 40 million digital tasks and have positively impacted over 100 thousand workers. In the coming years, our goal is to rapidly scale our impact by bringing economic opportunities to millions of underserved users in India. With a rapidly growing global presence, we are also looking to expand our client base in the Indian market by partnering with leading Indian enterprises.

About the Role:

We are looking for a Lead Product Designer to shape how technology creates meaningful, dignified opportunities for low-income and historically excluded communities. At Karya, design is about reimagining who technology is built for, and who gets to participate in the AI economy. You will lead the design of products that work in low-resource environments, across languages, and for users with diverse levels of digital access and literacy.

This is a leadership role combining hands-on design, team building, and deep collaboration across product, technology, and field operations.

## Why This Role Matters

At Karya, we are building systems where communities are not just users, but contributors to the technologies shaping the future.

Design plays a critical role in ensuring that these systems are accessible, inclusive, and truly representative.

## What You Will Do

Design for Inclusion & Real-World Contexts

- Design experiences that work in low-bandwidth, low-literacy, and multilingual environments
- Build products that reflect the realities of low-income and underserved communities, not idealized users
- Champion localization beyond translation - including cultural, linguistic, and contextual relevance
- Simplify complex systems into intuitive flows that are accessible to first-time or intermittent digital users

Lead & Grow the Design Function

- Set clear goals, priorities, and design direction aligned with product and impact outcomes
- Manage and mentor a team of designers across UI, UX, and research
- Create a culture of craft excellence, critical thinking, and continuous learning
- Establish scalable design systems and processes

Drive End-to-End Product Design

- Own the design of mobile-first and web-based products from concept to execution
- Create flows and prototypes grounded in strong UX principles
- Balance speed and quality in a fast-moving, impact-driven environment
- Lead end to end design for new verticals at Karya (currently building Karya Learn)

User Research & Field Learning

- Lead user research across diverse geographies and communities
- Conduct usability testing, field visits, and participatory design exercises and enable junior designers to do the same
- Translate insights into product decisions grounded in real user behavior

Cross-functional Collaboration

- Work closely with Storytelling, Product, Engineering, and Operations teams to ship impactful solutions
- Bridge the gap between product thinking and community realities
- Work closely with the Design Researcher to design user research studies

Experimentation & AI-driven Design

- Explore and integrate AI-assisted design workflows into product development
- Design for human-in-the-loop systems and AI-enabled platforms
- Continuously experiment with new approaches to improve accessibility, efficiency, and impact

## What We’re Looking For

## Experience & Skills

- 5-7 years of experience in product design, with experience leading designers
- Strong portfolio demonstrating work across mobile and web applications
- Deep understanding of UX principles, interaction design, and visual design
- Hands-on experience with user research and usability testing
- Proven ability to collaborate across disciplines

Mindset & Orientation

- Strong bias toward building for inclusion, not just scale
- Sensitivity to the needs of low-resource and underserved communities
- Curiosity about language, culture, and how people interact with technology in constrained contexts
- Comfort working in ambiguity and translating complex problems into simple, usable solutions
- Interest in AI, ethical data systems, and human-centered AI workflows

## Nice to Have

- Experience designing for multilingual or regional-first products
- Exposure to low-bandwidth or offline-first design patterns
- Experience working with field teams, NGOs, or community-driven programs
- Familiarity with AI products or human-in-the-loop systems

## What We Offer

- Flexible leave and vacation policy

- Remote / hybrid work options

- Insurance as per industry standards

- Access to leaders in technology and social impact

- Meaningful work at the intersection of AI, design, and equity

Karya celebrates diversity and is an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered without regard to race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, or any other protected status.

## About Karya

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: AI Data Services, Language Technology, Ethical Data Collection, Impact Tech
- **Target customers**: B2B – AI labs (e.g., Google DeepMind, Microsoft), enterprises building multilingual AI systems, government and public-sector AI initiatives
- **Mission**: “Create dignified digital work that improves livelihoods while shaping AI systems that reflect the people who build them.” [karya.in](https://www.karya.in/about/mission/)

## Products & Services
- **Conversational Speech Datasets**: Large-scale datasets across 22 official Indian languages for speech recognition and conversational AI. [karya.in](https://www.karya.in/)
- **Evaluation Benchmarks (Samiksha)**: National-scale evaluation frameworks covering 6 Indian languages, 17 models, and 4 key domains (healthcare, agriculture, finance, law, education, public services). [karya.in](https://www.karya.in/)
- **Data Collection & Annotation Services**: Domain-specific transcription, localized translation, and multimodal dataset creation (including egocentric datasets for physical/embodied AI). [karya.in](https://www.karya.in/)
- **Karya Platform (PaaS)**: A digital work platform that distributes AI-data microtasks to rural workers, enabling human-in-the-loop evaluation and bias mitigation. [karya.in](https://www.karya.in/) and [linkedin.com](https://in.linkedin.com/company/karya-inc)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private company)
- **Total Funding**: USD $1,000,000 (grant from Google.org, led by Google.org, November 2024) [linkedin.com](https://in.linkedin.com/company/karya-inc)
- **Key Metric**: Over 130,000 workers have completed 65+ million paid digital tasks; 99 employees (45.8% YoY growth) [linkedin.com](https://in.linkedin.com/company/karya-inc)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Google.org (grant), Google DeepMind, Microsoft, partnerships with leading AI labs; expanded to Kenya and Ethiopia [karya.in](https://www.karya.in/about/mission/)
- **Growth Signals**: Launched Karya Institute (2025) to explore the future of work in AI; published research at CHI 2019 and LREC 2020; spun out of Microsoft Research; presented to Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai [karya.in](https://www.karya.in/about/mission/)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Ethical & Inclusive Data Sourcing**: Karya’s platform directly benefits low-income rural workers by paying fair wages, differentiating itself from exploitative data labeling models.
- **Deep Focus on Underrepresented Languages**: Specializes in 22 Indian languages and underserved communities globally, creating datasets that major AI companies cannot easily replicate.
- **End-to-End Pipeline**: Offers data collection, annotation, evaluation, and deployment – a vertically integrated stack for multilingual AI.
- **Research-Backed Origin**: Born from Microsoft Research, giving it credibility and technical depth in crowdsourced work and language technology.

## Strategic Focus
- **Geographic Expansion**: Pilots in Kenya and Ethiopia to replicate the model for African languages and communities.
- **“Earn & Learn” Strategy**: Developing pathways for workers to gain skills and move out of poverty, combining earning with upskilling.
- **Karya Institute**: Research arm exploring the future of digital work and AI’s impact on low-income communities.
- **Product Diversification**: Moving beyond data collection into evaluation benchmarks and platform-as-a-service for enterprise clients.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-Driven Culture**: Join a team committed to using AI for social impact – creating dignified work and inclusive AI systems.
- **Growth Trajectory**: Rapidly scaling (45% headcount growth YoY) with opportunities to shape operations, technology, and impact in India and Africa.
- **Work Policy**: Mix of office (Bangalore) and remote roles (e.g., Visual & Motion Designer Remote, Health Program Lead Remote) as seen on the careers page. [greenhouse.io](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/karya)
- **Engineering & Research Focus**: Strong technical team (29% in technical roles) with backgrounds from Microsoft, Wadhwani AI, and top Indian institutes. Work on cutting-edge NLP, speech, and multimodal AI.
- **Notable Perks**: The chance to work directly with global AI labs (Google DeepMind, Microsoft) and present to top tech leaders. Limited employer reviews (2.0/5.0 from 1 review on LinkedIn) – candidate should research culture further.

## Sources
1. [karya.in – Homepage](https://www.karya.in/)
2. [karya.in – About/Mission](https://www.karya.in/about/mission/)
3. [LinkedIn – Karya Company Page](https://in.linkedin.com/company/karya-inc)
4. [Greenhouse – Karya Careers Page](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/karya)

## Other roles at Karya

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