Alternate Titles: Design Engineer (̿▀̿ ̿Ĺ̯̿̿▀̿ ̿)̄

Hi there, I’m Helen Huang and I’m building a new way to measure someone’s character, values, and taste. In an era of increasingly more AI tools that uNlOcK eFfIcIeNcY — I’m building something that augments our human-ness, and I’m looking for your help!

🍊 About The Role

• Founding product designer / design engineer
  • I’m anticipating ~85% design work, ~15% frontend polish
• Fully remote work with periodic in person work sessions
  • PLEASE NOTE: we will do startup full time hours (definitely not 40 hours, probably not 80 hours, but realistically you’ll end up somewhere around the ~60 hour range)
    • I will never demand a minimum set of hours from you bc it’s not actually about the hours… but if you’re someone who prefers to hold strict boundaries with work and shut the laptop at 6 (wtf?! 6?? not even 5?? haha) or if checking your messages on the weekend is blasphemous to you (both very valid things for you to feel btw), this is not gonna be the right fit for either of us
• You've been the primary (or only) designer at a startup with a small team (not a solo project, not a 50-person design org). You've owned the full design process without a dedicated PM, UX researcher, or design manager handing you direction, but you've also shipped alongside engineers and stakeholders who challenged your thinking. Side projects are cool, but we want to see that you've navigated real constraints with real teammates.
• Figma for design. But you don't stop at the mockup — whether it's Jitter, Rive, Framer, or vibe coding with Cursor, you find ways to bring your designs to life yourself. This isn't a bonus, it's part of the job. You don't need to be an engineer, but you do need to ship beyond a static file.
• Targeting $90k - $115k CAD + 1.0% - 1.5% Equity (may be adjusted for location)
  • while this cannot compare with more established companies (cuz we barely have a product in market at this point, and will likely be way more work and stress and fun), it is important for me to know that your needs are generally covered (not ramen salary 🍜) and that there is meaningful equity for your work (aka not like 0.03%)
• Targeting start date May - June timeframe

🍎 The Big Vision

Trove is building the user-owned behavioral identity layer for the internet. This is infrastructure for people to be seen authentically - not through labels or accomplishments, but through revealed behavior.

Imagine a world if you could have x-ray vision for someone’s character. You could be celebrated for exactly who you are, hired for your traits that a resume can’t show. A world where the people you date and the friends you hang out with are trustworthy and genuine. How do we measure and quantify soft skills?

And in the future, as AI is embedded everywhere around us - what it cannot mimic is our character, our taste, our decision making, our actions. What can represent who we are at that point? What does a personal artifact of this future look like?

Those are the guiding principles of Trove.

🍈 More Details

This isn't a typical startup design / design eng role where you execute someone else's vision. You'll be building alongside me to craft what Trove ultimately becomes.