Founding Product Designer

About Kernel

Agents are starting to sell, buy and operate on behalf of companies. But before an agent can close a deal, qualify an account, route a lead or assess risk, it has to answer a basic question: which company is this?

About Kernel

Kernel is building that layer: the business registry for agents. We issue a permanent KERN ID for every business, plus the context an agent needs to act on it. Ops, data and revenue teams at Gong, Legora, Mistral, Canva and Checkout already use Kernel on their own systems. Agents are next, and there will be far more of them.

We have raised

• $20M from top VCs and operators at Plaid, OpenAI, Slack and others, and we are growing 12x YoY
• We will do our best to offer you a ride of a lifetime. It will not be easy, but it will be thrilling.
• Founders Interview - A conversation with Anders (CEO) and Marcus (co-founder) focused on values alignment and long-term vision (45 minutes).

Responsibilities

• Today, that answer is messy, and no one answers it reliably. Business identity lives across CRMs, ERPs and third-party datasets full of duplicates, missing parent companies, stale addresses and incorrect enrichment. The cost shows up across the enterprise: sales teams miss revenue opportunities because they lack the right account context; operations teams take on avoidable exposure because risk signals are fragmented or wrong; and finance teams end up chasing, writing off, or defaulting on bad debt that should have been caught earlier.
• Kernel’s Founding Product Designer, shaping how people experience Kernel and building a product they’ll love to use.
• lead user interviews, synthesize fast, turn insight into shipped changes.
• use whatever gets to a high-signal prototype (Figma, v0, Figma Make, code, etc.).
• tight loops, high quality in production, iterate fast.
• principles, patterns, lightweight system - without slowing the team down.
• occasional help with decks/narrative when it moves the business.
• You can run discovery independently and get to the truth.

Requirements

• Humans have worked around that mess for years. Agents cannot. They need a reliable business identity layer they can trust.
• simplify complexity. Make a powerful product feel effortless: clearer workflows, sharper mental models, fewer decisions, more confidence.
• flows, IA, interaction design, and visual craft.
• What we’re looking for (impact > seniority)
• Founding designer experience is a plus, but not a requirement - what matters most is that you have early-stage startup experience and can point to tangible examples of transforming a business through design.
• You’re strong at
• simplifying complexity
• You move fast, communicate clearly, and collaborate tightly with engineers.
• You have taste
• Need perfect clarity before starting.

Pay

£110,000 – £150,000 base + equity

Benefits

• You’ve shipped meaningful product work and can walk through decisions + outcomes.
• 🗓️ 24 days holiday per year + bank holidays
• 🥕 £450 Monthly Office Dinner Allowance
• ✈️ 2 weeks work-from-anywhere
• 🚀 Work directly with the founders to scale the systems that power enterprise AI
• 🏆 High-autonomy, high-trust environment with a small team shipping at pace
• Visas & Relocation
• We sponsor visas for exceptional candidates and provide relocation support for those moving to London.

5% “other stuff”

(not just polishing UI).

and

execution: prototype → production details.

This role may not be for you if you

• Need other designers to work best.
• Prefer long cycles and big “reveals.”
• Want fully remote work (we move faster in-person).

Interview Process

• Stage 1:
• Introductory Call with Stefan (45 minutes)
• Stage 2:
• Founding Team Conversation with Marcus (30 min)

Stage 3

Take-Home Assessment with Remote Working Session with Stefan & Sam (60 minutes)

Following Mutual Fit: Reference checks and offer stage.