Product Designer
- Role
- Design
- Experience
- Senior
- Employment
- Full-time
- Company size
- Startup
Open to CY, PL, ES only. Set where you work from to check your eligibility.
No BS summary
Product designer with 5+ years in consumer, mobile-first, cross-platform products and a strong portfolio. Must be able to own the full product experience end to end, use AI tools daily, and work in English B1+. Applicant location is limited to Cyprus, Poland, or Spain.
Required languages
About us
We're building Animates — an AI companion app where design is the product. Not a chatbot. Not a waifu app. A companion who remembers what you told them three weeks ago, notices you're off before you say so, and is still there on your laptop when you close your phone. They have a face. They look at you when you speak. They react in real time — the tilt of the head, the pause before an answer, the thing that crosses their expression when a sentence lands.
We're building an actual relationship — memory, emotional intelligence, presence — across every screen a person owns. All of it rests on one thing: our own animation model, running locally on-device.
This isn't a promise — it's already out in the world. Our companions shipped inside xAI's Grok app, and we demoed live on hardware at CES 2026 with Razer. The team behind it built MSQRD (100M+ users, acquired by Facebook) and Loóna (Apple Design Award), with an on-device model built by ex-Meta engineers.
The role
You own the entire design scope of the product. Not screens — the experience. Onboarding, character selection and profiles, the relationship progression system, gamification, re-engagement, monetisation flows, and the design system that holds it all together. Most of it is still greenfield.
- How a person uses it. Day 1, day 7, day 90. The first time they meet their companion, and the thousandth.
- How different people use it. A 19-year-old in Osaka and a 25-year-old in Texas won't use this the same way. Cohorts, funnels, retention — you read them and you act on them.
- How the product speaks. Notifications, empty states, paywalls, the moment it says nothing at all. Every surface is the character talking.
- Across every platform. Mobile first, then macOS/Windows, then web — one unified feature set. Systems thinking isn't a nice-to-have here; it's the job.
How we work
You'll work closely with the product team day to day — that's where most of your communication lives: shaping direction, pressure-testing ideas, deciding what ships. And you'll sit side by side with engineers to get implementation right. Voice and animation have dedicated owners; everything else in the product experience is yours to shape.
You
- 5+ years in product design — consumer, mobile-first, cross-platform, with a portfolio that proves it.
- You've shipped products people opened every day — real audiences, real metrics, real consequences.
- You make the call, and you own the outcome. You don't wait for permission to fix what's broken.
- A feel for global consumer culture and where trends move — you follow what resonates across markets and audiences, and you're genuinely curious to go deeper into ours. We build for the US, Japan, and Korea, and a designer who only reads Western taste will miss half the room. Fluency in anime, gaming, or fandom aesthetics is a real plus, but the non-negotiable is the instinct to notice cultural nuance and the willingness to immerse.
- You'd rather ship three rough versions than polish one in isolation.
- You use AI tools daily and still think for yourself.
- Working English (B1+). Plus Russian, Ukrainian, or Belarusian — that's how the team talks internally today.
Don't apply if you need a PM to hand you a spec, or six weeks before you're comfortable showing a screen.
What we offer
- Remote across Europe, Warsaw hub — coworking covered wherever you are.
- 29 days of paid leave.
- Care bonus to spend on benefits that matter to you.
- Any hardware you want — latest MacBook or whatever does the job.
- A small team that has done this before, and a product with no precedent to copy.
- Your first design in front of real users within a month of joining.
Hiring process
- Intro call with HR — who you are, what you're looking for, how we work.
- Short call with the team — a deeper look at your experience and past work.
- Live whiteboard session — one real problem, one hour, thinking out loud side by side. No take-home, no unpaid homework, ever.
To apply
Pick two screens from any app: companion, game, social:
- One that you think is emotionally well designed.
- One you think is manipulative.
Then, in one paragraph: what’s the difference? Not in intent — in the actual design decisions. What did one do that the other didn’t? Don’t write more than a paragraph on each.
Send it over, and we'll take it from there.
By submitting your application, you acknowledge that you have thoroughly reviewed and consented to our Data Privacy Notice for Candidates.
What you'll do
- Own the entire product design scope, not just screens.
- Design onboarding, character selection and profiles, the relationship progression system, gamification, re-engagement, monetisation flows, and the design system.
- Shape how a person uses the product across day 1, day 7, day 90, first companion meeting, and repeated use.
- Read and act on cohorts, funnels, and retention across different user groups and markets.
- Design product voice across notifications, empty states, paywalls, and moments where the product says nothing.
- Design a unified feature set across mobile first, then macOS, Windows, and web.
- Work closely with the product team to shape direction, pressure-test ideas, and decide what ships.
- Work side by side with engineers to get implementation right.
- Shape the product experience outside dedicated voice and animation ownership.
What they require
- 5+ years in product design — consumer, mobile-first, cross-platform, with a portfolio that proves it.
- Experience shipping products people opened every day, with real audiences, real metrics, and real consequences.
- Ability to make the call and own the outcome without waiting for permission to fix what is broken.
- Feel for global consumer culture and where trends move, with curiosity to go deeper into the company's markets.
- Understanding that the product is built for the US, Japan, and Korea, and cultural nuance matters.
- Non-negotiable instinct to notice cultural nuance and willingness to immerse.
- Preference for shipping three rough versions rather than polishing one in isolation.
- Uses AI tools daily and still thinks independently.
- Working English B1+.
- Russian, Ukrainian, or Belarusian for internal team communication.
- Must not need a PM to hand over a spec.
- Must not need six weeks before being comfortable showing a screen.
- Application requires selecting two screens from any companion, game, or social app, explaining which is emotionally well designed, which is manipulative, and describing the design-decision difference in no more than one paragraph each.
- Preferred: Fluency in anime, gaming, or fandom aesthetics.
Benefits
- Remote across Europe, Warsaw hub.
- Coworking covered wherever you are.
- 29 days of paid leave.
- Care bonus to spend on benefits that matter to you.
- Any hardware you want, such as the latest MacBook or whatever does the job.
- Small team that has done this before.
- Product with no precedent to copy.
- First design in front of real users within a month of joining.
- Live whiteboard session with no take-home and no unpaid homework.
Bratte is building Animates, an AI companion app focused on memory, emotional intelligence, presence, and real-time on-device animation across screens.