We're looking for a Member of Technical Staff (Product Design) to design and ship our merchant portal from zero — a business account product for African merchants enabling global payouts. You'll create the experience that builds trust, reduces friction, and makes Zuba the obvious choice for merchants managing cross-border payments.

This is a founding designer role. You'll own the entire design surface — authentication, virtual accounts, balance management, custody and withdrawal flows, merchant onboarding, and everything in between. You'll design for real constraints: merchants on low-end Android devices with intermittent connectivity who need to trust your product with their money. You'll think about product, not just pixels.

A few reasons why you might find this exciting:

You'll design a product from zero — no legacy screens, no inherited patterns. You'll establish the design foundations, ship the MVP, and iterate based on real merchant feedback.

Design for impact, not polish — your work directly affects whether merchants can move money across borders. Every flow you ship has measurable business outcomes: conversion, retention, trust.

Real-world constraints — you'll design for users on low-end devices with unreliable internet in markets where trust in financial products is hard-won. Generic fintech patterns won't work here.

Shape product direction — you won't just execute briefs. You'll identify product opportunities through research and user insight, influencing what gets built and why.

Who you are

You've designed fintech products before — experience with payment systems, financial products, or complex multi-state flows in production. You can design for complexity without making it feel complex.

You're end-to-end — from research and wireframes to polished UI and handoff. You own the full design process and don't need a dedicated research team to understand your users.

You ship fast — comfortable with 1-2 week design sprints. You know when to polish and when to prototype, and you never become the bottleneck.

You think in systems — you build component libraries, design tokens, and patterns, not just screens. Your systems accelerate the whole team.

You think about business outcomes — you can articulate how your design decisions affect conversion, retention, and revenue. You ask "why are we building this?" before "how should it look?"

You design for the market — you understand constraints like low-end devices, poor connectivity, and users who need to trust your product with real money.

Bonus: Experience designing for African or emerging markets, familiarity with crypto/wallet UX, or background in brand and visual identity.

Some topics you'll think about

How do you design a merchant onboarding flow that maximises completion rate while meeting compliance requirements across jurisdictions?

What does trust look like in a financial product for African merchants — and how do you build it through design?

How do you make custody and multi-sig wallet flows feel simple when the underlying infrastructure is complex?

What design system foundations do you need from day one versus what can wait — and how do you build something that accelerates engineering without over-engineering?

How do you establish user feedback loops and lightweight research practices when you don't have direct access to your users yet?

What we offer

💸 Competitive salary + meaningful equity

🏢 Central London office (potential NY relocation)

🌐 Global exposure & impact

🍹 Team off-sites & regular socials

Our hiring process

We keep it fast and transparent.

Intro chat (30 mins) with Max (CTO & Co-Founder) — informal discussion about your experience, values, and what you're looking for. An opportunity to get a sense of the role, the team, and how we work.

Design deep dive (45 mins) — walk us through products you've designed end-to-end, your design process, and how you think about business outcomes. Bring your portfolio — we want to understand your thinking, not just the final screens. You'll also have the opportunity to ask about our product vision, users, and how we work.

Work trial (1 day) — the best way to see if we're a good fit is to design together. You'll spend a day with us at our Central London office, working on a real design problem alongside the team. Feel free to ask questions — you'll be part of the team for the day.

Offer. If all goes well, we'll extend an offer and can't wait to welcome you aboard!

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