Responsibilities
The role
ZooKeep is building a hiring platform that makes recruiting workflows simple, fast, and accessible for teams in Japan and globally. We are looking for a product designer who owns the experience end to end: someone who deeply understands how recruiters and hiring teams actually work, builds clean and scalable design systems, and holds a high bar for quality in every flow they touch.
This is not a “design to spec” role. You will work with product from the problem stage, help define the “what and why,” and turn it into simple, coherent, premium experiences: user flows, information architecture, components, and interaction details. You will be the person on the team who notices when something feels off and knows how to fix it at the root, not just on the surface.
We expect strong ownership. You should be comfortable driving work independently, making and defending design decisions, and bringing clarity to ambiguous problems without waiting for direction.
What you’ll do
Own the UX of core ATS workflows: understand how recruiters, hiring managers, and interviewers move through candidates, pipelines, and jobs, then redesign flows so the next action is always obvious
Shape problems, not just screens: partner with product to frame user problems, challenge assumptions, and propose solutions grounded in user behavior and business goals
Lead and own the design system: define the tokens, components, patterns, and rules that keep the product cohesive, and make it easy for engineering to build consistently without a designer reviewing every screen
Design for complexity at scale: dense tables, multi-step workflows, roles and permissions, bulk actions, AI-assisted features, and multi-language layouts (Japanese, English, and Southeast Asian languages)
Set and raise the quality bar: audit the product for UX debt, inconsistency, and friction, prioritize what matters most, and drive improvements through to release
Validate with real users: run lightweight research, usability tests, and customer conversations, and use product data to inform and measure design decisions
Partner closely with engineering: deliver build-ready specs covering all states and edge cases, review implementation, and make pragmatic tradeoffs without compromising the experience
Support product marketing design when needed, including launch materials, decks, and web assets that reflect the same quality as the product
Success looks like
Core ATS workflows are measurably faster and easier, with fewer steps, fewer support questions, and less user confusion
The design system is the source of truth: engineering builds new features from it with minimal back-and-forth, and the product feels cohesive across every screen
Product decisions get sharper because design brings user insight and clear options early, not just visuals at the end
New features, including AI-driven ones, feel intuitive and trustworthy from day one
Customers notice the quality of the product, and it becomes a selling point