Founding Product Designer

Founding Product Designer

Department: Buckstop

Employment Type: Contract

Location: Washington, DC

Compensation: $40.00 - $50.00 / hour

Description

About Buckstop Industries

Founded in 2025, Buckstop is building the intelligence layer for the circular economy. Our mission is to create a sustainable end-of-life for every electronic device on Earth, transforming yesterday's waste into tomorrow's resources.

We're reimagining how enterprises manage electronic assets by creating a platform that identifies, tracks, and maximizes the residual value of devices at scale. In a fragmented industry where value is lost through layers of intermediaries, Buckstop provides a single source of truth and execution.

Our founding team brings together leaders from manufacturing, logistics, reverse supply chains, energy, mining, and technology who have experienced the industry's challenges firsthand and are building the future of asset recovery and circular commerce.

Your assets. One platform. Maximum value. Full stop.

The Opportunity

Buckstop is looking for a highly talented Founding Product Designer to help shape the user experience, workflows, and visual direction of our platform.

This is not a role for someone who simply executes mockups.

We are looking for a designer who can evaluate what has already been built, understand the business and customer requirements, identify opportunities for improvement, and present thoughtful design solutions.

You will work directly with the founders, engineers, and customers to create intuitive workflows and enterprise-grade user experiences that make complex data and operational processes easy to understand and act upon.

The ideal candidate combines strong visual design skills with strategic product thinking and can confidently say:

"Here's what you've built, here's what's working, here's what isn't, and here are three approaches I'd recommend moving forward."

What You'll Do

Product & UX Strategy

• Evaluate existing product experiences and identify usability improvements
• Translate business requirements into intuitive user workflows
• Create multiple design concepts and recommendations for key product initiatives
• Partner with founders to shape product direction and user experience strategy
• Help define design principles and standards across the platform

User Experience Design

• Design end-to-end user journeys and workflows
• Create wireframes, user flows, mockups, and interactive prototypes
• Conduct usability reviews and recommend improvements
• Simplify complex operational and analytical workflows into intuitive experiences
• Design for enterprise users operating in logistics, asset management, manufacturing, and sustainability environments

Product Design & Systems

• Create and maintain scalable design systems in Figma
• Establish reusable components and interaction patterns
• Ensure consistency across product experiences
• Collaborate closely with engineering to ensure designs can be efficiently implemented
• Participate in product roadmap and feature planning discussions

Founding Team Contributions

• Bring product and customer insights into company discussions
• Challenge assumptions and advocate for users
• Help establish the product culture and design standards of the company
• Work cross-functionally across engineering, operations, and leadership
• Operate with a founder mentality and ownership mindset

What We're Looking For

Required Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience in Product Design, UI/UX Design, or User Experience roles
• Strong portfolio demonstrating end-to-end product design work
• Advanced proficiency in Figma
• Experience creating wireframes, prototypes, user flows, and design systems
• Strong understanding of UX principles, information architecture, and interaction design
• Experience collaborating directly with engineering teams
• Ability to clearly communicate design decisions and rationale

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing SaaS, enterprise software, analytics platforms, operational tools, or workflow applications
• Experience in startup or early-stage environments
• Familiarity with data-heavy applications, dashboards, and reporting tools
• Experience conducting customer interviews and usability testing
• Understanding of AI-enabled products and workflow automation

Who You Are

• You have exceptional design instincts and attention to detail
• You care deeply about both usability and visual quality
• You are comfortable presenting multiple solutions to a problem
• You think strategically rather than simply executing requests
• You enjoy working directly with founders and engineers
• You thrive in ambiguity and can create structure where none exists
• You take ownership and operate with a builder mentality

Why Buckstop

• Founding-team level influence on product direction
• Direct collaboration with founders and engineering leadership
• Opportunity to define the design language of an emerging category leader
• Significant ownership and visibility across the company
• Work on meaningful sustainability and circular economy challenges
• Potential pathway into a long-term Product Design leadership role as the company scales

If you're excited about creating elegant experiences for complex enterprise workflows and helping shape a category-defining platform from the ground up, we'd love to hear from you.