Job description

ABOUT US Our mission is to reinvent the way people learn, starting with language. Learning a language can change a life by opening doors to new cultures, careers, and communities. Two billion people around the world are actively trying to learn a language, but the best way to learn (one-on-one tutoring) is hard to access at scale and hasn’t been meaningfully improved in decades. Speak is building a human-level, AI-powered tutor in your pocket: a conversation-first experience that lets learners actually speak, get instant feedback, and progress through carefully designed lessons. The result is a complete path from beginner to confident speaker across multiple languages. Speak first launched in South Korea in 2019, where Speak has now become the number one language learning app, and we now serve learners across many markets and 15+ languages. Speak is one of the world’s leading AI companies, with over $150m raised in venture investment from OpenAI, Accel, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, and more, with a distributed team across San Francisco, Seoul, Tokyo, Taipei, and Ljubljana. ABOUT THE DESIGN TEAM We’re a small and mighty team of five that sit at the intersection of craft, research, invention and product thinking. We build consumer experiences used by millions, alongside B2B products that help organizations bring Speak to their teams. The design work is genuinely novel — inventing how someone talks to an AI tutor, what feedback feels like when you're learning out loud, how a roleplay session should land emotionally, and how you measure a true proficiency score. Our work shapes the future of how people learn with AI and we partner closely with Engineering, Learning Design, Product, and Analytics to do it. We stay close to our users and to how our experiences actually feel by prototyping with AI, testing conversation design and voice interaction, and getting comfortable with ambiguity. Our team takes craft seriously and has a lot of fun doing it — we developed our design principles in a multi-week offsite and iterate on them on a living board in our office. We take language classes together to ground our work in first principles. We stay close to our learners through team trips to Seoul, Tokyo, and Taipei, as well as lighter-touch interviews, surveys, betas, and AB tests. We believe in a critique and build culture with high trust, and also get a bit competitive over ping pong. We have something to prove: that learning products can be both deeply effective and beautifully crafted. If you want to do the most interesting design work of your career, let's talk. ROLE & RESPONSIBILITIES As a Product Designer focused on consumer experiences, you’ll design the core moments that help learners build real-world speaking confidence: finding the right path, practicing with AI, getting feedback, staying motivated, and building a lasting learning habit. Speak is inventing new interaction patterns for language learning — from AI tutoring and voice-first practice to roleplay, proficiency measurement, and personalized curriculum. You’ll work across ambiguous, high-impact product areas where interaction design, learning science, AI behavior, and emotional craft all matter. - Shape strategy and end-to-end product experiences for Speak’s consumer learning surfaces, bringing deep empathy for learners across cultures, motivations, and proficiency levels - Design across key growth moments — onboarding, activation, habit formation, retention, and subscription experiences — while protecting learner trust and long-term learning outcomes - Prototype quickly in AI tools, code, or interactive design tools to make new learning experiences feel real before they are fully built - Partner with Product, Data, Research, and Engineering to define opportunities, evaluate impact, and raise the quality bar for learner-facing product work - Use qualitative and quantitative signals to understand learner behavior, synthesize insights, and make strong product judgments - Invent novel interaction patterns for AI-powered learning that go beyond generic AI templates - Thrive in an ambiguous, fast-moving startup environment where the best answer often has to be discovered through making The exact product area you will work on will depend on team needs and your strengths, but likely areas include onboarding, activation, personalized learning, speaking practice, subscriptions, and learner motivation. This role is primarily anchored in our consumer experience, with opportunities to collaborate across adjacent surfaces as Speak grows. WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR - 6+ years of product design experience. You have experience designing high-quality consumer products. - You stay close to users. You think about real people learning real languages in real contexts. You actively seek out the humans using the product, not just data about them and are able to synthesize valuable insights about them that inform strategy and direction. You seek ways to put your work in front of people, before you feel it’s perfect just to learn something valuable. - Product thinking and structured judgment. You frame the problem before solving it and always know why you’re doing something. You can distill what you’re working on into simple narrative framings and key beats without being lost in the details. - AI-native workflow. You already use AI creatively in your process to unlock speed and quality and are eager to continue learning how to apply it in novel ways. - Taste and craft while moving fast. You can spot a great idea in a sea of okay ones and understand what’s worth investing in building. You do this while moving quickly and know when to stay scrappy vs invest deeply in final polish. - Communication and stakeholder collaboration. You can own a room, build trust, and push back when something isn't right. You bring people into your work along the way knowing that multiple perspectives produce the strongest work. WE ALSO LOVE TO SEE - Experience in language learning, education, or another domain with deep cross-cultural product surface area - A bias toward prototypes to communicate ideas, test assumptions, and make your thinking tangible - A strong portfolio that demonstrates user-centric thinking, high craft, and innovative interaction patterns - Contributions to design systems that scale beyond a single team - A point of view about agentic workflows you'd be excited to share with our team and ability to tinker directly in code WHY WORK AT SPEAK 1. Join a fantastic, tight-knit team at the right time: we're growing very quickly, we've most recently raised our Series C from some of the top investors in the valley, and we've achieved product-market fit in our initial markets. You'd join at a magical time when a single person could significantly change the course of the company. 2. Do your life's work with people you’ll love working with: we care strongly about our craft and want every person at Speak to feel like they're growing every day. We believe in the idea that working with people you both enjoy and have respect for makes everything better. We hire thoughtfully and only work with people we admire deeply. 3. Global in nature: We're live in over 40 countries and launching in a number of new markets soon. We have dedicated offices in San Francisco, Ljubljana, Seoul, Tokyo, and Taipei, and you’ll have the opportunity to talk to users in each of these regions on a regular basis as well as travel. 4. Impact people's lives in a major way: Learning a language is one of the single most life-changing skills one can learn, and right now 99% of people never achieve their goal because the process is broken. We’re helping millions of people achieve their goals and improve their lives. Speak does not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

Requirements

Must-haves

Shape strategy and end-to-end product experiences for Speak’s consumer learning surfaces, bringing deep empathy for learners across cultures, motivations, and proficiency levels
Design across key growth moments — onboarding, activation, habit formation, retention, and subscription experiences — while protecting learner trust and long-term learning outcomes
Prototype quickly in AI tools, code, or interactive design tools to make new learning experiences feel real before they are fully built
Partner with Product, Data, Research, and Engineering to define opportunities, evaluate impact, and raise the quality bar for learner-facing product work
Use qualitative and quantitative signals to understand learner behavior, synthesize insights, and make strong product judgments
Invent novel interaction patterns for AI-powered learning that go beyond generic AI templates
Thrive in an ambiguous, fast-moving startup environment where the best answer often has to be discovered through making
6+ years of product design experience. You have experience designing high-quality consumer products.
AI-native workflow. You already use AI creatively in your process to unlock speed and quality and are eager to continue learning how to apply it in novel ways.
Experience in language learning, education, or another domain with deep cross-cultural product surface area
A bias toward prototypes to communicate ideas, test assumptions, and make your thinking tangible
A strong portfolio that demonstrates user-centric thinking, high craft, and innovative interaction patterns
Contributions to design systems that scale beyond a single team
A point of view about agentic workflows you'd be excited to share with our team and ability to tinker directly in code

Nice-to-haves

None flagged.

Application prep

Use the role’s language and application details while tailoring your materials.

Keywords to mirror

aigodesign systems

Platform: ashby
Effort: quick