Hi! We're looking for our next Product Designer at Decoda Health, and we do design a little differently here. If that excites you, read on.
We want a versatile, intrinsically motivated designer who's excited to help rethink how modern healthcare software is built. At Decoda, you'll be part designer, part product manager, part consultant, and part design-system owner (or some combination of the four!). What matters is solving the customer's problem — the tools and process you use to get there are up to you.
We're a YC-backed team building the operating system for medical practices: software that automates the high-friction work — scheduling, payments, communications, and charting — so providers can focus on patients.
## How We Work
On most product teams, design runs like an assembly line: a product manager writes a brief, hands it to a designer, the designer produces mocks, and the mocks get handed to engineers. You've probably lived this before.
We take a more principled approach. Once you've designed software long enough, you realize design is needed in different degrees on every project. Sometimes a settings page just needs an engineer to reuse existing components and follow some documentation you wrote. Other times, a designer should effectively be the product manager and own a project from beginning to end. We don't force every project through the same pipeline.
Design at Decoda isn't owned solely by the people with "designer" in their title — it's owned by the whole product team. The design function's job isn't to make every decision; it's to equip the whole team to make better decisions themselves, while we take on the biggest design challenges ourselves. We don't settle for the status quo.
You'll get a high-ownership, fast-moving environment with as much autonomy as you can handle, working on-site in Toronto alongside a high-talent, zero-ego team.
## What We're Building
Clinics want to deliver great care while running a smooth, profitable practice. To get there, front-desk staff and providers perform thousands of small tasks every day — booking and rebooking appointments, chasing down forms, collecting payments, answering messages, and keeping charts up to date. Teams are constantly underwater.
Take something as ordinary as getting a patient in the door. A coordinator has to find an opening that fits both the patient and the right provider, confirm insurance or collect payment, send reminders, and reshuffle the whole day when a single cancellation cascades through the schedule.
Decoda automates and simplifies this work. We put a lot of effort into designing products that are approachable for newcomers but can be mastered and extended by power users — in many ways, spreadsheets set the bar here (and are often what we replace!). The surface area is enormous, and there's a lot of room to raise the bar.
## Why you should or shouldn't apply
**Your qualifications:**
- 3+ years of product design experience in desktop or web SaaS.
- Able to think from first principles instead of simply applying the "standard" UX process.
- Can break down complex user problems by asking the questions that narrow the solution space.
- Enough experience that your intuition can solve many usability problems without relying solely on data, metrics, or research.
- Curious and resourceful enough to come up with creative solutions and de-risk them appropriately.
- Strong skills in layout, navigation, information architecture, UI, and interaction design.
- Strong visual design skills and an obsession with craft and detail.
- As a bonus, experience at an early-stage startup, time as a solo designer, or work in health tech or another complex, regulated domain.
**You may want to apply if you're excited about:**
- Creating leverage and impact far above what you'd see in a typical product-team structure. You won't be a cog in the wheel — the wheel isn't very big!
- Working across a massive product surface area — many user types, jobs-to-be-done, and usability challenges — instead of one narrow problem for years.
- Helping reinvent the design model for modern healthcare software. What matters is solving the customer's problem; the artifacts you produce to get there are up to you.
- Covering all parts of the design process with a focus on craft — information architecture, navigation, interactions, and UI patterns.
- Helping build our design system from (almost) the ground up.
**Conversely, you may not want to apply if:**
- You feel uncomfortable designing independently without much guidance from a PM or design management.
- You're uncomfortable having your decisions and process challenged constantly by engineering and product.
- You prefer the assembly line: a PM gives you a brief, you do wireframes, then mocks, then pass off to engineers. Rinse and repeat.
- You dislike written documentation.
- You'd prefer a fully remote role (we work together on-site in Toronto).
- You want a set structure and rhythm to your projects, or a narrow scope — interaction design only, design system only, and so on.
## On a weekly basis you'll find yourself
- Consulting for engineers who need help structuring layout, typography, and flows.
- Digging into problems by talking to customers, partnering with go-to-market, and requesting data so you can present confident, well-supported proposals.
- Using Figma to draw out your ideas and create the visual artifacts that get stakeholders aligned.
- Writing specs that detail your design proposals — a core part of how we work and how we align on the biggest decisions.
- Taking ownership of larger features and thinking through jobs-to-be-done, navigation, information architecture, layout, and interaction.
- Taking in customer feedback and using heuristics to build your own usability backlog and propose projects for engineers to pick up.
- Consolidating and refining our design system to be functional, aesthetic, and best-in-class.
## Interview Process
Our process is designed to help you show your best self. We favor practical interviews that simulate what it's like to work together — we'll dig into past projects, talk through how you make decisions, and work through a design exercise. Expect a first conversation, a portfolio review, a design exercise, and time to meet the team. We'll walk you through the whole process and what to expect up front.
## Why join Decoda
- Compensation: CA$140,000 – CA$180,000, plus equity.
- High Impact: a high-ownership role at a YC-backed company where your work directly improves patient care.
- Craft & Ownership: you'll shape a huge product surface and help build our design system from close to the ground up.
- Team Culture: a fast-moving, on-site team in Toronto that values high talent and zero ego.
## Equal Opportunity
Decoda Health is an equal opportunity employer. We're committed to building a diverse and inclusive team and welcome applicants of all backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and abilities.
Visa sponsorship is not available for this role.
