Founding Product Designer

About GovWell

We the people (and the taxpayers) deserve efficient government - but the software powering government services is 20 years behind the private sector. GovWell builds software that helps government serve communities better. Founded in 2023, GovWell now powers critical services for municipalities and counties in 20 states serving 800,000+ residents. GovWell has raised $5.5 million from Work-Bench and Bienville Capital. Read about us in TechCrunch.

Founding Story

Our mission is deeply personal for us. Ben Cohen, CTO and Co-Founder grew up helping his father - a general contractor - to apply for hundreds of construction permits. Ben's experiences navigating clunky government websites inspired him to build better solutions for the millions of tradespeople whose livelihoods depend on getting permits fast. Prior to founding GovWell, Ben worked for Uber and Amazon as a Software Engineer, and earned his AB in Computer Science summa cum laude from Princeton.

Troy LeCaire, CEO and Co-Founder, was previously the first employee and Chief of Staff to the CEO at RippleMatch, a software startup, helping it grow from $0 to $10M in annual revenue and a $200M valuation over 5 years. Before RippleMatch, he worked for two U.S. senators from his home state of Wisconsin. Troy earned his BA in Government magna cum laudefrom Cornell.
Video: More about the Founding Product Designer role at GovWell.

Why GovWell?

Impact at scale - Every design decision you make will help governments serve millions of people more efficiently. Whether it's making it easier for small businesses to get permits or streamlining affordable housing approvals, your work will have a tangible impact on communities.

A mission that matters - Government software is notoriously outdated, frustrating, and difficult to use. You have the opportunity to change that by designing tools that are not just functional, but genuinely delightful.

A front-row seat to a startup in hyper-growth - As GovWell's first product designer, you'll set the foundation for design at a fast-growing company. You'll work closely with the founding team, define the design function, and help shape a product that scales across thousands of government agencies.

What You'll Be Designing

Click on the links for some sexy product demos :)

• Building a workflow management system that is powerful and easy to use, but flexible enough to accommodate the unique processes of 80,000+ government agencies in the United States (think: Salesforce for governments). Today, GovWell is used to process permit and license applications for everything from new affordable housing developments to small business licenses.
• Enabling a Figma-style document review experiencethat helps governments easily collaborate to review, mark up, and approve technical documents such as building and development plans.
• Developing a flexible and powerful document generation systemto automatically generate official documents including permits and licenses for thousands of unique processes (think: Canva for documents).
• Creating a payments experience that makes it easy for citizens to pay billions in annual permit/license fees, property taxes, and utility bills online.

Meet the Engineering Team!

Meet Will Henderson-Frost, engineer #1 and owner of our backend service.

Meet Eric Gratta, engineer #2 and owner of our frontend repository.

Meet Nick Vollmar, engineer #3 and owner of everything DevOps and infrastructure.

Meet Amy Wang, engineer #4 and owner of data engineering and data migrations.

Our Product Stack

• Notion for product roadmap management
• Monday.com for customer success management
• Intercom for collecting direct customer feedback and offering in-app support

Responsibilities & Primary Tasks

As GovWell's first product designer, you'll drive design across the entire platform. You will:

• Create and own our design system - Develop reusable, accessible UI components that speed up development and create a consistent user experience.
• Lead end-to-end design for core product features - From wireframing and prototyping to final UI design, you'll take ideas from 0 to production.
• Deeply understand our users - Work directly with government staff and citizens to uncover pain points and translate them into intuitive designs.
• Collaborate closely with engineering - Ensure that designs are technically feasible and contribute to a smooth design-to-development process.
• Set the foundation for GovWell's design culture - Advocate for design best practices, establish processes, and define how design functions as we scale.

Who You Are

Required:

• 4+ years of experience in product design for B2B or enterprise SaaS applications.
• Strong UX and interaction design skills, with a track record of shipping well-crafted, intuitive experiences.
• Experience building and maintaining design systems with scalable, reusable UI components.
• Proficiency in Figma, along with other design and prototyping tools.
• Comfort working in a fast-paced, startup environment, where you'll be balancing scrappiness with long-term design vision.
• Strong collaboration skills - you work well with engineers, PMs, and customers to bring ideas to life.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Nice to have:

• Experience designing workflow-heavy or form-based applications.
• Familiarity with accessibility best practices for enterprise applications.
• An interest in government technology and a desire to make civic processes more user-friendly.

Salary and benefits

Compensation within the posted salary band will be commensurate with experience. All offers will include:

• Competitive salary + meaningful equity
• Up to 100% of premiums paid by GovWell for medical, dental, and vision insurance for yourself + partner
• Unlimited / flexible PTO
• 401(k) program

GovWell is an Equal Opportunity Employer, meaning that we do not discriminate based upon race, religion, national origin, gender identity, age, sexual orientation, or any other protected class.