Principal Designer

Principal Designer YOUR ROLE As a founding designer, you will define how Overtone feels—from first touch to deepest use. You’ll design the UX and UI of our core product, shaping an experience that is intuitive, elegant, and emotionally safe in a deeply intimate domain. This role is central to Overtone’s success. You’ll help invent a new category of relationship service by translating deep empathy, clarity of intent, and strong visual craft into a product people trust instinctively. You will own design end to end, working hands-on in close partnership with product, engineering, and leadership. WHAT YOU’LL DO - End-to-end product design: Design the core UX and UI of the Overtone app—from structure and flows to detailed interaction and visual execution. - Category-defining experience: Help invent a new interaction model for modern matchmaking, moving beyond familiar dating app patterns toward something more human and intentional. - Emotional design: Design experiences that make people feel comfortable, respected, and understood in moments of vulnerability. - UX clarity & intuition: Create simple, legible flows that feel obvious without feeling generic, reducing cognitive load while increasing depth. - Visual craft: Establish and execute a strong visual language—typography, color, layout, motion—that feels elegant, contemporary, and emotionally resonant. - User empathy & insight: Partner closely with research to translate user needs, behaviors, and emotions into thoughtful design decisions. - Hands-on collaboration: Work tightly with engineering to ship high-quality, well-crafted experiences, iterating quickly without sacrificing taste. WHO YOU ARE - Deep experience designing consumer-facing digital products, ideally in mobile-first or service-oriented context. - A strong portfolio demonstrating both UX thinking and visual design excellence - Proven ability to design intuitive, emotionally sensitive experiences, especially in personal or high-trust domains - Strong product instincts—you understand how design decisions shape behavior, trust, and long-term engagement - Experience working hands-on in early-stage or fast-moving environments, where you own problems end to end. COMPENSATION & BENEFITS Salary of $200k to $250k. This position will receive meaningful stock options with considerable upside potential. We provide standard benefits such as health insurance, dental insurance, etc. OUR CORE QUALITIES We look for these qualities in everyone we hire at Overtone. Curiosity: You seek to understand before you decide. You ask thoughtful questions, test assumptions, and stay open to changing your mind as new information emerges. Craft: You care deeply about quality and coherence. You simplify complexity, exercise good judgment, and take pride in work that feels intentional, thoughtful, and well-made. Collaboration: You engage with others honestly and generatively. You challenge ideas with respect, listen deeply, and help synthesize perspectives into clearer, better outcomes. Care: You take responsibility for people and outcomes. You act with integrity, follow through on commitments, and protect trust—with users, teammates, and the work itself. ABOUT OVERTONE Overtone, led by the founder and former CEO of Hinge, is building a new kind of dating service – one that cuts through the noise and helps daters find someone who truly resonates. We’re building a team who are excited to work together in person in our NYC office.