StartPlaying
💜 Build Community 💜
At StartPlaying, we deeply understand...
It all starts with the right team — a team that cares deeply about values, players, Game Masters, and each other.
💥 Create massive impact 💥
For our GMs: We build tools to help the small creators, not the Matt Mercer’s of the world (though we still think he’s really cool). Many of our GMs make a living running games on StartPlaying, which is creative, social, flexible, and meaningful work.
For our players: We wanted to create a world where every person, no matter where you live or what language you speak, has a place to find GMs, other players, and games they love. Many of our players have found belonging in their StartPlaying communities. They’ve written books about their experiences, reconnected with family members, and attended each other’s weddings! (Ask us to see a clip during your interview 😊)
Today, we're solving the first step: creating a great user experience for both GMs and players in the virtual space. The next few steps are doing the same in the in-person space and then eventually for kids! Over time, we will expand and innovate within and outside of the space.
🙌 Do the best work of your life 🙌
As a team, we have an eclectic group, and we love that. We’ve created delight in every aspect of life, from conventions to brick-and-mortar stores. We've made products at some of the top product-led organizations and shipped experiences millions of customers still use every day.
We love passionate people who are obsessive about what they do. We care about quality over quantity and working with people that inspire and excite us. We want to give you the tools, environment, team, and resources you need to do your best work.
💰 Our investors include💰
🎨Own Design 🎨
We are looking for an experienced product designer to lead all design at StartPlaying.
This will range from crafting an iconic brand, through producing the most beautiful TTRPG GM and Player experience ever made, to researching new features and conceiving new products. You will push both web and mobile to their limits.
As StartPlaying scales, will build and direct your own design team.
🤔 Sound like you? 🤔
Autonomous: You’re comfortable navigating through uncertainties, driving product uncertainty to clarity, and communicating product vision to the team. You are a proactive self-starter, and you drive rapid change. You fix things that are broken.
Authentic: You bring your authentic self to work and are able to have fun, don't take yourself too seriously, and genuinely love what you do.
Brand: You are very enthusiastic about certain products and can articulate why they’re incredible. You are excited to build a premium brand.
Communication enthusiast: You have strong written and verbal communication skills and can use that ability to effectively communicate and collaborate with a diverse range of people and job functions. You are concise, thorough, and have impeccable grammar.
Community Driven: You are passionate about the community you’re designing for. You deeply understand how customers think. You can accurately predict how changes will make them feel. You enjoy creating delight.
Collaboration: You enjoy high bandwidth and productive conversations with growth, engineering, and product management. You reach out to peers and cooperate with supervisors to establish an overall collaborative working relationship.
Detail-oriented: does not let important details slip through the cracks or derail a project.
Empathy: You deeply understand how customers think. You can accurately predict how changes will make them feel. You enjoy creating delight.
Have taken the Oath of Growth: You have a growth mindset. You give and receive feedback well without getting defensive, take accountability for your mistakes and choose to learn from them, and you approach subjects and issues with curiosity.
Intentional: You are able to and enjoy explaining the why of your design decisions.
Organized: Plans, organizes, schedules, documents, and budgets in an efficient, productive manner. Focuses on key priorities.
Passionate: You love design.
Product: You dig deep to understand what users really want. You explore multiple directions and relentlessly simplify. You create prototypes in Framer, Principle, HTML/CSS, etc.
Speed racer: You have a bias for speed, taking risks, and failing fast.
Visual: You are adept with color, layout, motion, and typography. You are great at transitions, animations, and micro-interactions. You create high-fidelity mockups in Sketch, Figma, etc.
💻 Role 💻
Nice to have: Product - Marketplace
Requirements
Experience:
Nice to haves:
Technologies we use:
🤔 What is it really like working at StartPlaying? 🤔
🏝 Generous Time Off 🏝
✍️ Investing in Your Growth ✍️
💯 Setting You Up For Success 💯
At StartPlaying, we value diversity. We are an equal-opportunity employer: we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. (We shouldn’t have to say that, but we, unfortunately, have to)
- We are on a mission to create belonging through intimate social gaming communities. We call the hosts of these communities Game Masters, AKA: GMs. And we believe being a Game Master is the best gig economy job in the world!
- We’re building what we know and ultimately want to use ourselves. (One of our founders is the OG San Francisco Game Master)
- We’re all passionate gamers (tabletop, video games, whatever!) who want to spread the joy we’ve known for years.
At StartPlaying, we deeply understand...
- how to incorporate fun and play
- diversity and safety in our community are of the utmost importance
- people want a fast and easy way to play awesome games with cool humans 😎
It all starts with the right team — a team that cares deeply about values, players, Game Masters, and each other.
For our GMs: We build tools to help the small creators, not the Matt Mercer’s of the world (though we still think he’s really cool). Many of our GMs make a living running games on StartPlaying, which is creative, social, flexible, and meaningful work.
For our players: We wanted to create a world where every person, no matter where you live or what language you speak, has a place to find GMs, other players, and games they love. Many of our players have found belonging in their StartPlaying communities. They’ve written books about their experiences, reconnected with family members, and attended each other’s weddings! (Ask us to see a clip during your interview 😊)
Today, we're solving the first step: creating a great user experience for both GMs and players in the virtual space. The next few steps are doing the same in the in-person space and then eventually for kids! Over time, we will expand and innovate within and outside of the space.
As a team, we have an eclectic group, and we love that. We’ve created delight in every aspect of life, from conventions to brick-and-mortar stores. We've made products at some of the top product-led organizations and shipped experiences millions of customers still use every day.
We love passionate people who are obsessive about what they do. We care about quality over quantity and working with people that inspire and excite us. We want to give you the tools, environment, team, and resources you need to do your best work.
We are looking for an experienced product designer to lead all design at StartPlaying.
This will range from crafting an iconic brand, through producing the most beautiful TTRPG GM and Player experience ever made, to researching new features and conceiving new products. You will push both web and mobile to their limits.
As StartPlaying scales, will build and direct your own design team.
Autonomous: You’re comfortable navigating through uncertainties, driving product uncertainty to clarity, and communicating product vision to the team. You are a proactive self-starter, and you drive rapid change. You fix things that are broken.
Authentic: You bring your authentic self to work and are able to have fun, don't take yourself too seriously, and genuinely love what you do.
Brand: You are very enthusiastic about certain products and can articulate why they’re incredible. You are excited to build a premium brand.
Communication enthusiast: You have strong written and verbal communication skills and can use that ability to effectively communicate and collaborate with a diverse range of people and job functions. You are concise, thorough, and have impeccable grammar.
Community Driven: You are passionate about the community you’re designing for. You deeply understand how customers think. You can accurately predict how changes will make them feel. You enjoy creating delight.
Collaboration: You enjoy high bandwidth and productive conversations with growth, engineering, and product management. You reach out to peers and cooperate with supervisors to establish an overall collaborative working relationship.
Detail-oriented: does not let important details slip through the cracks or derail a project.
Empathy: You deeply understand how customers think. You can accurately predict how changes will make them feel. You enjoy creating delight.
Have taken the Oath of Growth: You have a growth mindset. You give and receive feedback well without getting defensive, take accountability for your mistakes and choose to learn from them, and you approach subjects and issues with curiosity.
Intentional: You are able to and enjoy explaining the why of your design decisions.
Organized: Plans, organizes, schedules, documents, and budgets in an efficient, productive manner. Focuses on key priorities.
Passionate: You love design.
Product: You dig deep to understand what users really want. You explore multiple directions and relentlessly simplify. You create prototypes in Framer, Principle, HTML/CSS, etc.
Speed racer: You have a bias for speed, taking risks, and failing fast.
Visual: You are adept with color, layout, motion, and typography. You are great at transitions, animations, and micro-interactions. You create high-fidelity mockups in Sketch, Figma, etc.
- Generate insights from user research, market/competitor research
- Use user feedback to improve our designs
- Research existing products to deeply understand the state of the art
- Present the findings of your research to the team
- Create excellent UX/UI designs.
- UX Principals
- UI principals
- Produce high-fidelity visual designs that express our brand values
- Define and operate an efficient design process
- Take ownership of the design system by incorporating new designs into the component library
- Play games and bond with the team
- Explore workflows and interactions through prototypes
- Find opportunities to simplify and ways to infuse our product philosophy
- Iterate quickly with feedback from the team
- Work closely with engineers to ship very high-quality experiences
- Own the impact of your work, and initiate follow-up to improve it continually
- (Optionally) Write and present what you learn via our blog, social media, and community events
Nice to have: Product - Marketplace
Experience:
- 5+ years of experience across both product and visual/brand design
- Proficiency with Figma
- Remote
Nice to haves:
- Startup Experience
- Nice to have: Product - Marketplace
Technologies we use:
- Tools: Figma, Notion, Discord, Zoom.
- We're a fully remote company. We don't care much about "work signaling" — we care about tangible output.
- We try not to take ourselves too seriously. Our Discord is filled with frequent memes, gifs, and music posts.
- We critique each other's work, give constructive feedback, and intently listen when others speak.
- We love to celebrate each other! Whether it's customer love, a work milestone, or a major life event — praise is fundamental at StartPlaying. The best part: figuring out how to surprise and delight your teammates!
- We come from eclectic and diverse backgrounds, and we respect and openly teach each other about those backgrounds.
- We love adding easter eggs to the site or internal documentation.
- We listen;if you have ideas on making the company better, we want to hear them.
- We are building the company and the product simultaneously. So if you want to build a cool product and help build a company, you’ve come to the right place!
✅ Taking Care of Your Future ✅
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance: 100% coverage for you, and 50% coverage for all your dependents.
- Voluntary insurance: short-term disability, long-term disability, and life insurance.
- 401(k) plan through Slavic401(k).
- Free access to OneMedical, Health Advocate, and Teladoc
- Click here for a benefits overview
🏝 Generous Time Off 🏝
- Take as much vacation as you like (no less than two weeks!)
- All Federal holidays, plus Thanksgiving and Winter Break.
- We’re flexible on individuals moving their time off to align with their celebrated holidays.
- Flexible parental leave
- One free nerd convention (of your choosing) + one company-sponsored offsite/trip per year
✍️ Investing in Your Growth ✍️
- We budget for your professional development.
- We do an optional company “book club”. We read books together and discuss if/how to implement some of the ideas into the company.
- We do team-building activities and seminars together.
💯 Setting You Up For Success 💯
- Custom MacBook Pro.
- $1000 budget for workstation setup (not including your MacBook)
- Flexible spending accounts for commuter costs, dependent care, and healthcare expenses.
At StartPlaying, we value diversity. We are an equal-opportunity employer: we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. (We shouldn’t have to say that, but we, unfortunately, have to)
Data source
We Work Remotely