Why this role exists
Communications for the aging in America are broken. Seniors are isolated. Their families are anxious in ways that go far beyond "I hope mom's alright." James Graham started this company after seeing his own grandmother get taken advantage of by the large telecom hegemony.
They are checking her bank account daily because they cannot tell if she is being scammed. They are calling three times a day because she did not pick up and they do not know if she is okay. They are lying awake wondering if she is connected to anyone, or just sitting alone. And at the most basic level, a lot of their phone service is completely unreliable or breaks entirely for the family once she reaches a certain age.
There are 55 million Americans over 65 living at home. Most of them, and most of their families, are navigating this alone.
Community Phone solves that. We built a phone so simple it works out of the box, no setup required. We wrapped it with AI-powered check-in calls that surface how she is really doing. And we built a family app integrated to Mom’s phone that replaces daily dread with genuine safety and peace of mind.
It is working. We are well into 8-figure subscription ARR, pacing to 9-figure, with 30,000+ families trusting us with something that matters deeply to them. Customers stay. They refer their friends. They tell us we took away an anxiety they had carried for years.
We are a lean, product-driven team. The people who thrive here take full ownership, are mission-driven, move quickly, hyper-curious, and care deeply about the customer. One of our product engineers won an Oscar for best foreign film, one team member is a Thiel Fellow, one is a Harvard Philosophy PhD dropout, others are the first growth hires at now-unicorn companies, others of our product engineers are former leaders of 60+ person engineering organizations, and many are former founders.
What you'll own
- Set design strategy across the full customer journey - physical unboxing, mobile app, web dashboard, agentic ai voice check ins, etc - treating them as one coherent customer story end to end with clearly divided responsibilities, not surfaces competing for the same features or moments of customer attention throughout time.
- Own outcomes past first activation. At this scale, getting someone through setup is only half the job - you'll be on the team accountable for adoption impact (AI check-in calls, call forwarding, spam blocking, call monitoring & safety features) and the metrics that show whether customers actually get value, in partnership with growth and PLG-focused teams. You are constantly learning post launch about how launched design can be improved.
- Mock up full working prototypes: You should be completely fluent with modern AI development tools and be able to show full working mockups quickly. To the team. To customers in the ICP. To the CEO. You are AI optimistic and not AI psychotic.
- Build the foundations a growing design org will need: a shared component language across app, dashboard, AI & sound interface, a research and testing habit (especially with lower-tech-literacy and senior users), and documentation that lets non-designers make good small decisions without you in the room.
- Operate as a strategic partner to leadership, not just an execution arm - you'll be in the room when roadmap and prioritization decisions get made, and expected to have nonobvious points of view grounded in the reality of the product experience for customers.
What we're looking for
- 8+ years of product design experience, including meaningful senior ownership at a company operating at real scale (think $20M+ ARR, multiple interconnected products or surfaces, an active PLG or self-serve growth motion). This is probably not the right first senior role for someone whose experience so far has been entirely at seed or Series A complexity.
- Demonstrated design leadership and strategic influence - you've shaped product and company strategy as a peer to engineering and product leadership, whether or not you formally managed other designers.
- Experience improving onboarding and activation for a genuinely complex, multi-surface product (e.g., physical + app + web + ai voice interaction, or several interlocking funnels), where you had to make real trade-offs rather than apply a generic simplification playbook.
- World class UI, UX, and user research skills.
- Excellent taste.
- Superlatively high humility, intelligence, and hunger. This work reveals truths in the world that were already there. It is a pursuit of truth just as much as it is a pursuit of beauty. It is a pursuit of simplicity but not over-simplicity. It understands people as they are and how they change. It reveals parts of the user to themselves. Building products that capture these qualities is exceptionally hard. And the people who can do it seem to possess these three character qualities to a high degree.
- The judgment to operate as the entire design function today - setting your own priorities against company goals and communicating decisions clearly to non-design stakeholders.
- Ability to establish a life and death level of trust with product engineers. Some of the engineers we’ve hired have great design taste. The person right for this role will see that, take advantage of it, and push and be pushed together.
Nice to have
- Experience designing for hardware unboxing or physical + digital product setup (IoT, consumer electronics, medical devices, or similar).
- Experience with caregiving, eldercare, accessibility-focused, or health-adjacent consumer products with multiple types of users.
- Prior experience both as an early/founding designer and later at a scaled company - you understand the difference and know which muscles this stage actually requires.
How we work
We're a fast-growing, YC-backed company built on curiosity, a bias toward action, and a founder mindset - we'd rather ship something small and learn than debate it for a month. You'll report directly into the Founder CEO and have a very direct line from your design decisions to customers who will tell you, often within the same day, whether you got it right.
Compensation & benefits
- Base salary: $185,000 - $235,000
- Equity
- Health, dental, and vision coverage (U.S.-based employees)
- 401(k)
- Life insurance
- Team offsites
How to apply
Send us your portfolio with at least one case study that shows strategic thinking, not just polished screens - ideally one where you navigated real product or organizational complexity, not a green-field MVP. Tell us briefly why designing for this kind of customer, at this kind of stage, is interesting to you.