Founding Designer

About the job

kapa.ai makes technical knowledge instantly accessible through AI assistants. 200+ leading companies including OpenAI, Docker, Mixpanel, n8n, Monday.com, Grafana, Logitech, Deepgram, and Nokia already use Kapa on their websites or internally for their teams. Check out our product and docs at https://kapa.ai and https://docs.kapa.ai to see what we’re building.

We’re looking for a Founding Designer to work directly with our founders and take end-to-end ownership of design at Kapa. This is a rare opportunity to join a fast-growing AI company and design state-of-the-art AI experiences used by millions of users every month.

You’ll be the first dedicated design hire, shaping everything from core product UX to brand identity, website, and collateral. If you’re excited about high ownership, high standards, and building something from first principles, this role is for you.

Why this is an absurdly rare opportunity

You’ll work directly with the founders, who have led design so far, and help define the design function from day one. You'll work with a team of 25+ stacked with former founders and operators from NASA, McKinsey, BCG, Airbnb, Uber, CERN, and Goldman Sachs. This is a team made of insanely ambitious people who are passionate about building, shipping, and scaling.

On top of an excellent team, we are backed by absolute legends:

• Initialized Capital (Garry Tan, YC President & Alexis Ohanian, Reddit co-founder)
• Amjad Masad & Michele Catasta, Founder & VP of AI at Replit
• Douwe Kiela, Stanford Professor, co-author of the original RAG paper, founder of Contextual AI
• OpenAI engineers
• Y Combinator (S23)

What you’re actually signing up for

This role is high-stakes and high-autonomy. You will be responsible for defining how the world perceives and interacts with Kapa. You aren't just "making things pretty” and you’ll own both product design and brand design, and everything in between. From designing intuitive AI-driven workflows to refining our visual identity and marketing surfaces, your work will directly shape how customers experience Kapa. You’ll collaborate closely with founders, engineers, and customers, turning complex AI capabilities into simple, delightful experiences.

What you’ll get to do

You’ll have broad ownership and real responsibility from day one:

• Own end-to-end product design for Kapa’s core experiences (UX, UI, flows, interaction design)
• Design and evolve Kapa’s brand identity across website, docs, and marketing collateral
• Work closely with founders and engineers to quickly turn ideas into high-fidelity designs and interactive prototypes.

You might be a great fit if:

• You have exceptionally strong product and brand design skills
• You are based in Copenhagen (or EU and willing to travel at least once a quarter to Copenhagen)

Very nice to have (but not required):

• Technical chops to implement small front-end changes yourself, with strong front-end engineers available to support you.
• Strong affinity for cutting-edge AI tooling (if you’ve ever had 7 Claude code instances running in parallel, you can check this box)

*This is neither an exhaustive nor necessary list. If you think you’d bring something special to Kapa, we want to hear from you.

About the interview:

1. Intro chat with a founder
2. Paid take-home assignment based on a real design problem
3. 2–3 day paid work trial (in-office in Copenhagen) to collaborate with the team and assess culture fit