---
title: 'Sr Founding Product Designer at Syndesus'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/sr-founding-product-designer-syndesus-san-francisco-tf1bx2ja9qjv'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Sr Founding Product Designer at Syndesus

- **Company:** Syndesus
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $180k–$230k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-03-30
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/syndesus/am9icG9zdDpnfmEU7Nvk2ApWnpRRlmkb

## Job description

Sr. Founding Product Designer | San Francisco Bay Area | In office | Full-time

Product Designer | Voice AI Startup

## About the Company

Our client is a fast-growing Y Combinator-backed Voice AI startup reimagining the modern contact center from first principles. Backed by leading investors and scaling at an exceptional pace — $36M ARR with a team of just 20 people — they're building the infrastructure that powers real-time AI voice agents for thousands of companies across sales, support, and logistics. Recognized as a top 50 AI app and one of the fastest-growing software vendors of 2025, this is a team that moves fast and builds things that matter.

## The Role

As a Founding Senior Product Designer, you'll own the end-to-end product design experience for a platform where every interaction happens in real time, under pressure, with real users. You'll work directly with founders, engineers, and customers to shape features from first principles — not just polish UI after decisions are made. This is a high-ownership role with genuine influence over product direction, UX quality, and design standards.

## Key Responsibilities

- Own the full product design lifecycle — from early concepts and PRDs through to polished, shipped features used by customers in high-stakes, real-time environments
- Shape how users interact with AI voice agents, translating complex technical workflows into clear, intuitive experiences
- Partner directly with engineers and founders to define, refine, and ship features, ensuring design quality is preserved all the way to production
- Conduct customer interviews and translate real user pain points into thoughtful, effective design solutions
- Proactively identify friction, inconsistencies, and opportunities across the product and drive improvements from idea to launch
- Build and evolve the company's design system, setting standards for consistency and scalability as the product and team grow
- Influence product direction through strong opinions, clear rationale, and taste-driven decisions

## Requirements

- 5+ years of product design experience on shipped products
- Strong user-centered design background — HCI, design, or equivalent
- Excellent product taste with a sharp sense of usability, visual hierarchy, and clarity
- Detail-oriented with a high bar for polish and consistency
- Comfortable operating in a fast-moving, ambiguous startup environment
- Ownership mindset — you prefer end-to-end problem ownership over a narrow design scope
- Bonus: Experience designing developer-facing or technical products

## Compensation & Benefits

- Salary: $180K – $230K
- Equity: Offered
- Schedule: Full-time, 70 hrs/week (50 onsite + 20 remote, flexible hours)
- Location: Redwood City, CA
- 100% medical, dental, vision coverage
- Unlimited meals and snacks
- Gym, cellphone, internet and commute reimbursement
- Visa sponsorship available (H1B, TN, L-1, E-3, F-1, O-1) -

Interview Process

- Recruiter intro call (15 min)
- Portfolio walkthrough and design decision discussion (30 min)
- Live UX question or brief design exercise — candidate's choice (45 min)
- Onsite (3 hours): live Figma design exercise + user understanding deep dive

## About Syndesus

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Syndesus builds elite engineering and AI teams in Canada for US-based VC-backed startups, offering a fully-managed Employer of Record (EOR) solution to eliminate cross-border hiring friction.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Bootstrapped)
- **Headquarters**: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- **Founded**: 2014
- **Founders**: Marc Pavlopoulos

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Talent-as-a-Service / Professional Employer Organization (PEO) / Technical Recruiting
- **Target customers**: US-based VC-backed technology startups and enterprises needing senior AI, ML, and software engineering talent from Canada
- **Mission or purpose statement**: To accelerate innovation by replacing the slow, transactional hiring model with a seamless, strategic solution that delivers seniority and speed.

## Products & Services
- **[AI Talent Sourcing]**: Access to a curated pool of pre-vetted, enterprise-proven senior engineers (AI, ML, data science, full-stack) from Canada. Candidates have track records at major tech companies.
- **[Employer of Record (EOR)]**: Syndesus acts as the legal employer for Canadian talent hired by US companies, handling all payroll, benefits, compliance, and provincial labor law requirements.
- **[Canada Co-pilot]**: An outsourced HR team service for US companies that need deeper support managing the administrative and compliance details of their Canadian workforce.
- **[Relocation & Immigration Support]**: Assistance for foreign-born tech workers (and their US employers) who need options for working remotely in Canada due to visa or immigration issues, including H1-B visa alternatives and Canadian immigration pathways.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available (private, bootstrapped company)
- **Key Metric**: 63 total employees (as of latest data); 16,000+ LinkedIn followers; 25 open positions listed on careers page
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not publicly disclosed (appears to be self-funded)
- **Growth Signals**: Rapid headcount growth with 25 active job openings across Canada and the US (New York, San Francisco, Austin, Frisco, Dallas, San Jose, Quebec, Toronto) in both hybrid and remote roles; expanding into major US tech hubs; strong employer brand on LinkedIn.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Speed**: Ability to move from initial consultation to a compliant new hire in as little as three weeks by leveraging a pre-vetted talent pool.
- **Curated Talent Focus**: Specializes exclusively in senior, production-ready AI and engineering talent with enterprise experience, not general staffing.
- **Full-Stack Friction Removal**: Combines elite talent sourcing with a fully-managed EOR solution, eliminating the legal, payroll, and compliance risks of cross-border hiring in a single partnership.
- **Deep Canadian Network**: Canada has one of the deepest AI talent pools in the world, and Syndesus has built a specific pipeline to access it for US companies.

## Strategic Focus
- Aggressively scaling its own team across North America to meet demand, with a heavy emphasis on senior engineering roles (AI, ML, data, backend, full-stack) and product management.
- Deepening its specialization in AI talent as the primary growth driver for its clients.
- Expanding its physical footprint into key US tech markets (New York, San Francisco, Austin) while maintaining a strong Canadian HQ presence.

## Why Work Here
- **High-Impact Work**: Employees help solve the single biggest blocker to innovation for top US tech companies: accessing elite AI and engineering talent.
- **Growth Trajectory**: The company is in a rapid growth phase with 25 open roles, offering significant career advancement opportunities for early joiners.
- **Flexible Work Environment**: Offers a mix of remote (Canada, US West Coast), hybrid (Toronto, Frisco, Quebec, New York), and in-office (New York, San Francisco) roles, catering to different working preferences.
- **Founder-Led & Experienced**: Led by Marc Pavlopoulos, a 20+ year veteran of scaling VC-backed tech companies in Silicon Valley, providing strong leadership and operational insight.
- **Culture**: Positioned as a strategic partner, not a transactional recruiter, with a focus on speed, quality, and solving hard problems for clients.

## Sources
1. [syndesus.com/about-us](https://syndesus.com/about-us/)
2. [syndesus.com/home](https://syndesus.com/home/)
3. [LinkedIn - Syndesus, Inc.](https://ca.linkedin.com/company/syndesus)
4. [Built In - Syndesus Careers](https://builtin.com/company/syndesus)
5. [Jobs.gem.com - Syndesus Careers](https://jobs.gem.com/syndesus)

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