Staff Product Designer

Nonprofits do some of the most important work in the world, and most of them are still managing grants in spreadsheets. We're fixing that.

Instrumentl is a profitable, hypergrowth, YC-backed SaaS platform building the operating system for grant-funded organizations. More than 5,500 nonprofits use Instrumentl to discover, track, and win grant funding, from local community organizations to the San Diego Zoo and the University of Alaska. Collectively they’ve moved over $1 billion through our platform.

We're growing quickly, customers love us (check out our G2 reviews!), and we're hiring people who want to build something that matters.

About the role:

We are hiring a Staff Product Designer reporting to the Head of Design. You'll own GrantOS, the foundational layer every other product area at Instrumentl sits on top of: Platform (the data layer, MCP, BI), Core (Tracker, Tasks, Reports, Integrations), and the enterprise surfaces that connect them. This is the seat where you define how grant professionals experience Instrumentl as a system rather than a set of features, which means the data models, permissions, and interaction patterns you set get inherited by every designer and every pod after you. Much of this area is still being invented, so you will be defining problems rather than receiving specs.

What you'll do:

Platform & Systems

Own end-to-end design for GrantOS across Platform, Core, and enterprise, from discovery through ship and iteration

Define the data relationships, permission models, and integration surfaces that hold up across every workflow in the product

Set the interaction patterns and design system foundations that every other product area inherits

Design how work connects across pods, so a change in one area makes the next one smarter instead of harder

Zero to One

Drive definition in genuinely greenfield spaces where the right answer is not obvious yet

Write your own brief, frame the problem, and set roadmap direction in partnership with your PM

Make good calls with incomplete information and sequence the work so the team ships learnings quickly

Shape how grant professionals manage tasks, reporting, and integrations across the full grant lifecycle

Research & Influence

Recruit participants, run the interviews, and synthesize ambiguous user needs into clear product direction

Bring a point of view into the room and push back when something is not right for users

Align engineering, product, and GTM on direction at any level of the company

Raise the quality bar across the design team and coach the designers around you

What we're looking for:

Required

10+ years of product design experience with meaningful time at staff or principal level, having owned entire product domains rather than features inside them

Proven end-to-end ownership of a platform or core product area in complex B2B or enterprise SaaS: data models, permissions, integration surfaces, and patterns that other teams build on top of

Shipped net-new product work alongside that platform work, including 0-to-1 areas you helped define rather than received as a finished spec

Deep involvement in user research end to end, from planning and recruiting through synthesis into product decisions

Experience designing agentic or AI-powered product surfaces

Nice to have

Design systems experience where you defined the patterns, not only used them

Prototyping with AI tools, for example building working prototypes in Claude or Cursor that engineers can build from

Exposure to compliance, data integrity, or workflow-heavy domains

Startup experience where process was lightweight and you brought your own structure

Experience mentoring or coaching other designers

Familiarity with the nonprofit or social impact sector

Compensation & Benefits

For US-based candidates, the target salary range for this role is $200,000 – $230,000 USD, plus equity. Final compensation is determined based on experience, skillset, scope of responsibility, interview performance, and geographic location. We’re committed to paying competitively and equitably.
For candidates based in Canada, compensation varies by province and will be shared by your recruiter early in the process.

Benefits

100% covered health, dental, and vision insurance for employees (50% for dependents)

Generous PTO, including parental leave

401(k)

Company laptop and home-office stipend

Bi-annual company retreats

Instrumentl is evolving rapidly. You’ll always have new challenges and opportunities to grow here.