Staff Product Designer
Gem
Product, Design
San Francisco, CA, USA
USD 216k-240k / year + Equity
Posted on Nov 26, 2025
Staff Product Designer
San Francisco
Design
Hybrid
Full-time
About Gem
Gem is the only AI-first all-in-one recruiting platform. It brings together your ATS, CRM, sourcing, scheduling, and analytics — plus 650+ million profiles to source from — with AI built into every workflow. By eliminating the headaches of juggling multiple tools, Gem helps customers boost recruiter productivity by up to 5x while saving 30-50% on technology costs. Over 1,000 organizations — from startups to industry leaders like Zillow, DoorDash, and Asana — trust Gem to fuel their growth. With an industry-leading 4.8/5 rating on G2, Gem is the platform recruiters actually love to use. Gem has raised $148M from renown investors including Accel, Greylock, ICONIQ, Sapphire, and Meritech.
With Gem, you can experience the power of a truly connected recruiting platform — one consistent interface, unified data, smarter AI recommendations, and simplified permissions. Our customers achieve remarkable results:
Just as we strive to help our customers find great talent, we also invest in our own people and culture. We are proud of the culture we’ve built and have recently been recognized as:
- Forbes America's Best Startup Employers 2024
- Great Place to Work Certified, 2024
- Fortune Best Workplaces for Millennials, 2023
The Team & Role
The product design team at Gem is focused on AI transformation of hiring, a decades-old practice that has long been stale. We’re fundamentally rethinking how recruiting works when intelligence is embedded everywhere.
As a Staff Product Designer, your job is to raise the bar: elevate our visual design craft, transform our design system from collection-of-components into force multiplier, and push the boundaries of what an AI-first recruiting platform looks like.
We need someone who multiplies the team's effectiveness. You'll build the infrastructure—design system, component libraries, documentation, workflows—that lets the team move fast without sacrificing quality. You'll set the aesthetic direction that makes Gem feel premium, not just functional.
But this isn't a pure systems role. You'll own a meaningful product area end-to-end because great systems thinking comes from shipping real products. You'll partner with PMs and engineers at the strategic level. You'll help us prove that enterprise B2B software can be as beautiful and delightful as consumer products.
We're small, ambitious, and moving fast. Your work will ship to thousands of recruiters at industry leading companies. You'll help define what world-class design looks like at Gem.The design team you help build now will define what Gem becomes as we scale to thousands of customers and hundreds of employees.
What You’ll Do Day-to-Day:
Elevate our design craft
- Redesign and scale our design system—build component libraries, establish token architecture, create documentation designers actually use
- Define visual design direction for the platform—set standards for typography, color, layout, motion, and information design
- Partner with marketing to unify brand and product design language
- Create frameworks and tools that multiply team effectiveness
Own a product area
- Lead end-to-end design for a meaningful product surface—from research and strategy through shipped metrics
- Design AI interactions that augment human judgment—transparent, not magical
- Design at platform scale: solutions that work for 10-person startups and 10,000-person enterprises
- Collaborate with PM and engineering as strategic partner, not service provider
Multiply the team
- Mentor designers through critique, pairing, and raising the bar on their work
- Establish quality standards and best practices the team adopts
- Build design culture—how we critique, collaborate, and continuously improve
- Attract top design talent through reputation and shipped work
About You:
You've elevated design quality at scale. You've built or transformed design systems that measurably improved team velocity and product consistency. You have strong opinions on component architecture, tokens, documentation, and what makes systems actually usable for designers.
Your visual design is exceptional. You master typography, color theory, layout, and information design. You can look at a product and immediately see 10 ways to elevate it. Your portfolio shows work that makes people say "wow"—not just functional, but beautiful.
You're a product designer, not just a systems designer. You've shipped complex products end-to-end. You do user research, frame problems strategically, understand business metrics, and design sophisticated interactions. You can own meaningful product areas, not just component libraries.
You’re a force multiplier. You've built tools, processes, or systems that made teams dramatically more effective. You've mentored designers and measurably improved their craft. You think in frameworks and principles, not just individual solutions.
You're passionate about AI and how it transforms design workflows. You actively explore how tools like Cursor, v0, Figma AI, and Code Connect can multiply designer effectiveness. You think about MCP integrations, AI-assisted prototyping, and how emerging tools can help the team ship faster without sacrificing quality. You're excited to pioneer new workflows that make designers more productive.
You communicate and collaborate exceptionally well. You've partnered at leadership level with product, engineering, and marketing. You can present to executives, facilitate workshops, build coalitions. You influence through clarity and craft, not authority.
You're excited about enterprise B2B. You see recruiting software as a fascinating design challenge, not a compromise. You want to prove that complex, powerful tools can feel simple and premium. You're energized by the idea that your work affects how thousands of companies hire.
Role Details
- Location: This role is based 3 days per week out of our San Francisco, HQ and is not eligible for full-time remote work.
- Compensation: The annual cash compensation range for this position is $216,000–$240,000 in addition to equity & benefits.
The range displayed on this job posting reflects the minimum and maximum compensation. Factors including level, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience will determine compensation.
Benefits:
- Highly competitive salary & equity
- 10-year window to exercise your stock options
- Supportive Flexible Time Off program
- 16 paid holidays, including regular company-wide wellness days
- Best-in-class medical, dental & vision insurance
- $1,200 annual stipend for learning and development opportunities
- 16 weeks of Paid Parental Leave for birthing and non-birthing parents
- New Parent Perks totaling $1,500 and flexibility upon return to work
Gem is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate our inclusive work environment and encourage folks of all backgrounds and perspectives to apply. At Gem, we’re committed to having an inclusive and transparent environment where every voice is heard and acknowledged. We embrace our differences, and know that our diverse team is a strength that drives our success.
Gem is committed to developing a barrier-free recruitment process and work environment. If you require any accommodation, please email us at accommodations@gem.com we’ll work with you to meet your accessibility needs.
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By clicking “Submit Application”, you acknowledge and agree that you have read and understand Gem’s Candidate Privacy Statement, including the information provided on how Gem processes your personal data and your related rights as set forth therein.
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Req ID: R20220329