Own the problems not the tickets.

Senior design roles often quietly shrink into review-and-approve: polish someone elses direction unblock the team keep the system tidy. This one is the opposite. Youll own hard product areas end-to-end shape how a problem is framed before anyone opens a canvas and set the craft bar the rest of the team designs to. Design here is a stakeholder in what gets built not a service that makes it look good afterward.

Getting there takes craft all the way down: the transitions the states most teams never design for the edge cases that ship right instead of looking broken. As a senior designer here your work becomes the reference point for what good looks like and you help every designer around you get there faster.

Transform Education Through Design

We help schools increase their fundraising efficiency and keep their alumni communities active. As one of Indias few profitable bootstrapped SaaS companies were building lasting value for our team customers and the educational institutions we serve.

Our Impact:

• 6 million alumni connected

• 500000 students impacted

• $10M in donations raised

• 54 million engagement opportunities created

• Profitable and bootstrapped since day one.

The Role

Youll join our 25-person product team (product design engineering and quality)as the senior craft voice on a five-person design team working alongside the design lead and three product designers.

Youll design for multiple audiences with distinct needs: advancement professionals alumni students and administrators. Each brings a different level of technical comfort and an emotional relationship with their institution. The workflows are genuinely complex (fundraising campaigns event management alumni communities data-heavy admin tools) and the bar is to make them feel simple.

Design at Almabase is a key stakeholder not a service function. Youll shape how problems are framed before a single screen is drawn push back with evidence and own the direction of the product areas you work on.

Why were hiring senior now

• Complex product areas that need an owner: Permissions integrations and data-heavy workflows where the design decisions shape the products direction not just its surface.

• We want to raise the bar with a senior systems thinker: Someone who sees how flows the product the business and the design system connect and whose judgment lifts the whole teams work not just their own.

• A real accessibility remit: Our customers include publicly funded US universities and we back WCAG AA and VPATs contractually so making accessibility a default in our system is genuine resume-worthy work youll help own.
  

What Youll Own

End-to-End Product Design

• Own the complete design process from problem framing to shipped product for key product areas

• Take concepts to working prototypes in days using AI tooling and validate with real users and data

• Set the craft benchmark: interaction visual and motion quality that others reference without being asked.
  
  Systems Thinking and Design System

• Bring a systems lens to your work: how flows data the product and the design system connect so what you ship scales instead of adding one-offcomplexity

• Steward and evolve our design system (components patterns tokens docs)as the layer that keeps designers engineers and AI tools all producing consistent output

• Make accessibility a built-in property of the system with WCAG AA as the baseline

Team Leverage

• Raise the bar for the designers around you through pairing critique andproblem-framing sessions (craft leadership not people management; no direct reports)

• Build and share the AI workflows prompts and practices that make the whole team faster

Cross-Functional Influence

• Partner with PMs and engineers to define problems not just solve them; bring user evidence into roadmap conversations

• Drive alignment through clear written artifacts so decisions move fast and stay made

Were Looking For Someone Who

Frames problems before drawing boxes

You interrogate the stated problem before designing. When someone says a flow is broken or unintuitive your first move is to find out whats actually causing it and what success looks like.

Thrives in complexity without creating it

B2B products involve intricate workflows but that doesnt mean they need to feel

complicated. You find elegant solutions hidden inside seemingly chaotic requirements.

Has taste they can articulate

You dont just know whats better; you can explain why in terms a PM or engineer can act on. Your quality bar is visible in your work and contagious in your team.

Builds not just draws

Working prototypes are your default way to think and communicate. Yourecomfortable using AI tools (Claude Cursor v0 or similar) to go from idea to something clickable fast and you keep the judgment that separates good output from plausible output.

Multiplies the people around them

Youve made other designers better through critique pairing and example. You get energy from raising a teams ceiling not just your own.

Youll Be a Great Fit If You

• Want ownership not tickets: Youre looking for a seat at the table where design shapes direction

• Obsess over details: You sweat colors typography states and edge cases and you ship them right

• Iterate relentlessly: The first version is a starting point; you keep improving based on what you learn

• Love the full lifecycle: Discovery framing building shipping and measuring what happened after

• Treat AI as a daily collaborator: Its already part of how you explore prototype and polish
  

This Role Is NOT For You If

• You prefer pure strategy over hands-on craft (this role ships work constantly

• You need designs handed off and never revisited (we iterate in the open with engineers

Required Experience & Skills

Experience: 3 to 5 years or more designing software products including end-to-end ownership of a product area at a B2B or SaaS company. Were looking for at least 3 years; beyond that if your path doesnt match exactly but you can do this job wed still like to hear from you.

Core capabilities:

Product judgment: A track record of shaping what got built not just how it looked with evidence you can walk us through

Systems thinking: You see how the product engineering business and the design system connect and design for the whole not just the screen in front of you

Design systems: Experience working with and evolving an established design system

Visual and interaction craft: Polished considered work across states edge cases and responsive contexts

Accessibility: You treat accessibility as part of quality and youre ready to help make WCAG AA a default in our system

AI fluency: You integrate AI tools and code-assisted workflows into your own practice and you can help others adopt them

Communication: You articulate design decisions clearly in writing and in rooms and youre comfortable disagreeing with evidence

Good to have:

• Deep accessibility experience: WCAG audits remediation or VPAT /compliance documentation

• Frontend familiarity (HTML/CSS or working in a real codebase with AI assistance)

• Experience mentoring or leveling up other designers
  

Success Metrics

Youll know youre successful when:

• Your product areas are measurably better: adoption task success and support volume move because of decisions you made

• The design system is healthier than you found it: better coverage fewer inconsistencies accessibility built in by default

• The team is visibly faster and better: designers around you produce stronger work because of how you pair critique and share what you know.
  

Why Almabase

• Real ownership: Design shapes direction here. Youll frame problems challenge assumptions and own outcomes not execute tickets

• AI-forward by culture not mandate: The team already works with AI tools daily(design prototyping research synthesis) and we invest in staying at the edge. Youll have room to tinker and the expectation to share what works

• Mission-driven impact: Your design work directly enables educational institutions to better serve students and create opportunities

• Sustainable business: Profitable and bootstrapped focused on long-term value creation with the stability that comes with it

• Professional growth: A real leveling rubric honest quarterly feedback and a manager invested in your next orbit
  

Ready to Apply

Wed love to see your work and understand your thinking. Please share:

1. Portfolio with 1-2 case studies of complex B2B or workflow-heavy products: the problem the constraints the decisions and iterations and what shipped. A grid of final screens wont tell us enough.

2. Anything youve built: live prototypes shipped AI-assisted work or side projects that show how you think and build.

3. Your answers to a few short questions in the application. Theyre the same for everyone so we can review fairly and fast and they tell us how you think

The Interview Process

We keep it to a few focused rounds usually two to three weeks end to end

1. Intro conversation: to get to know each other and check for fit.

2. Portfolio and experience deep-dive where you walk us through your thinking on real work: the problems the decisions the trade-offs.

3. A collaborative design exercise where we work through a real problem together so you can see how we think and we can see how you do.

4. A conversation with our Head of Product and Design more of a motivation and values chat. If youre in Bangalore youll also meet the wider product and engineering team in person.
   

What to expect in the first year

Within the first month

• Deep-dive into the product customers and the problems each audience is trying to solve

• Take on design work from your first week to learn our processes from the inside

• Meet everyone: designers PMs engineers and customer-facing teams

• Agree on your first product area and priorities with your manager
  

Within 3 months

• Work youve designed is in production and youve watched real users interact with it

• Youve taken ownership of your first product area and the design systemshealth metrics

• Youre an active voice in critiques and designers are seeking out your feedback
  

Within 6 months

• You own design direction for your product areas grounded in research and data you helped gather

• The design system shows your fingerprints: better patterns better docs accessibility improving measurably

• Youve shipped AI workflows or practices the rest of the team has adopted
  

Within 12 months

• Your areas are the craft benchmark others reference

• Youve mentored designers in ways theyd name in their own growth stories

• Youre trusted by PMs and engineers across squads and your judgment carries weight in planning
  

Work timings

• Your day runs on India time. The large majority of your work and your collaboration with the product and engineering team happens during regular IST hours.

• Occasional evenings only for customers. Our customers are mostly in the US so if youre running a research or feedback call with them it will fall later in the day (roughly 4 PM to 2 AM IST). Those are occasional and scheduled not your default hours.

• Flexible on where you work. The team is based in Bangalore but we dontneed everyone in the office every day; it varies by team and wereincreasingly async in how we work.

Required Experience:

Senior IC