Picnic - Founding Product Designer
Picnic
Product, Design
Posted on Jun 4, 2025
Picnic - Founding Product Designer
The Opportunity
About Picnic
Our mission is simple: to make the world better friends.
Our friends matter more than we think; research has shown that our social health is just as important as our physical and mental health. That’s why we’re spearheading feel-good social media; designed for those who want to see less videos from strangers and more photos from their favourite people. We’re starting out with two-tap shared albums for close friends.
In just 2 months we have shipped a fully functioning MVP that our community are going wild for. We’re now looking for a product design genius to complete our small but mighty team of 7 and take our product to the next level.
We believe that re-calibrating social media away from the passive consumption of strangers’ content towards conversations with friends represents the most exciting opportunity in tech today. We’re not the only ones either - we’re backed by some of the world’s best investors and operators after raising a $3M Seed round from Stride VC, Seedcamp, Scott Belsky and more.
If working for an ethical B Corporation solving these kinds of problems sounds like an interesting opportunity, we’d love to meet you.
Our mission, vision and product
Our values, processes and ways of working
Our interview process in detail
About the Role
You will define, explore, and solve our most complex challenges in close collaboration with teammates from engineering, product, brand, and research.
You will design engaging, high quality outcomes that delight with their emotional intelligence as much as their simplicity
You will participate in, plan, and run user research and usability studies to develop a deep empathy and understanding of our users and their needs
You will work as fellow, mentor, and leader to your design teammates (currently this means our Creative Lead, Alex, who is filling in as our Product Designer and eager to learn) and set a high bar for design at Picnic.
Our team is low ego, values driven and highly collaborative. We’re looking for designers who are not only on a mission to build something truly amazing, but eager to grow and build lasting relationships along the way.
In summary, this role offers an ambitious designer an endless degree of scope and possibility.
What you will be responsible for
Lead design for the product, shepherding features from scoping through ideation, prototyping, testing, and production
Deliver high quality design outcomes that set a new bar for the team
Act as champion for our users and of simple, high-quality experiences
Contribute to high-level strategic decisions in collaboration with the Founders
Own the role of product design at Picnic, including culture, process, and outcomes
Own our design system
What we are looking for
5+ years of professional Product Design experience
Bachelor’s degree (or foundational education) in a related field
Experience with consumer-facing mobile products
Experience working in a fast-paced collaborative environment
Exceptional execution skills, including design thinking, UX, UI, and interaction design
A clear, strong portfolio of case studies
A strong fluency in Figma and typical prototyping tools, such as Principle and/or Origami
An avid believer in Picnic’s mission!
Nice to Have
A passion for people, their needs, and the future of social technology in general
A passion for the craft of design and of the latest best practices
A low ego mindset, with a strong desire to learn and grow
A comfort with abstraction and fast-moving, dynamic workplaces
A personal focus on visual polish and interactions
Working at Picnic 💻
What you can expect
Build social media that's actually good for people. Right now, social media is broken and every member of the Picnic team is focused on fixing it.
Autonomy and responsibility. As one of the founding members of the team, you'll have influence over the direction of the company and real ownership over your functional area.
Boss-level challenges. We’re tackling a $1 trillion industry, head on. As we enter our most exciting phase of growth to date, we’re facing new and highly complex challenges every day. You’ll get to work with some smart folks solving big problems.
Benefits
💰 Competitive salary & options package with employee-friendly equity and regular pay reviews.
🏝️ 30 days paid annual leave a year which includes 26 days holiday (excluding bank holidays) + 1 wellness day per quarter, with the option to carry over up to 5 days into the next calendar year.
🌍 Remote-first working with colleagues across Europe and a beautiful dog-friendly London office as our HQ.
🧑💻 Home workspace budget including a brand-new MacBook Pro and a generous allowance to build your ideal work-from-home setup (e.g. extra monitors, office equipment and posture-protecting chairs).
🚀 Personal growth fund renewing annually, that you can use on anything you need to further your career goals.
❤️ Personal wellbeing allowance renewing monthly, that can be redeemed against whatever you need to take care of your body and mind.
🍔 Friday lunch on us via your friendly neighbourhood Deliveroo riders.
⭐️ Team social budgets for monthly team socials and bi-annual company off-sites.
🤝 Interview Process
👋 Step 1: Initial screening
Initial Screening
📄 We will review your CV and portfolio, looking for relevant experience.
Note: we ask you to answer one question to judge suitability, as we strongly believe in doing what we can to not waste your time with an interview if the role isn’t suitable.
The question
To apply, please send your CV & your answers to the question to jobs@picnic.ventures
📹 Step 2: Interview with our CEO / Founder
Role suitability discussion (30 mins) We will use this time to talk about your experience and try to gauge how you might fit into the team and our plans. You’ll also learn more about Picnic and have the chance to discuss your expectations and ask any questions you might have at this stage.
Read more
🔭 Step 3: Panel interview with our leadership team & breakout sessions
Portfolio / experience deep dive (60 mins) We will deep dive into your most relevant past and current experiences to discuss some of the design challenges you have worked on and will be looking to probe how you approached those challenges. 1 on 1 break out sessions (60 mins) You will then break out into 2 x 30 minute 1 on 1 sessions where you will work through some hypothetical challenges to establish your core skills and competencies.
💖 Step 4: Offer (& meeting the team)
We will make you an offer and arrange an opportunity for you to meet the wider team (over a video call, or in-person if you are based locally!)
🎉 Step 5: ......Hired!
To apply, please send your CV & your answers to the initial screening question detailed above to jobs@picnic.ventures.
If a different role might suit you better, check out our other available roles at Careers at Picnic or drop us an email to introduce yourself!