Backed by South Park Commons.
About the role
The founding design engineer will own how Noto looks, works, and reads. This is an opportunity to define the design foundation for a product our customers rely on all day—and to make it genuinely intuitive and delightful. You’ll combine design and engineering with strong product judgment, taste, and empathy for users, taking ideas from the first sketch through the shipped experience. Found on 1752vc Careers, the job board for startup and VC roles.
What they're looking for
- Four or more years designing and building software products
- Full-stack ability. You’re comfortable with our stack (React, Next.js, Node, and Postgres), can use AI to ship features end to end, and can tell when AI-generated code is wrong
- Product judgment. You can take a messy workflow, such as rescheduling a missed lesson for a family with three kids, and make it simple. You can explain why your version works
- Care for words and small details. Labels, error messages, empty states, and emails to parents matter to you as much as layout does
- Comfort with ambiguity. Much of what you’ll work on starts with unstructured customer call notes. You go to the source, talk to the owner or front desk, and uncover the real problem
- Bonus: you’ve been the first or only designer at a company, or you’ve designed complex operational software such as scheduling, billing, or admin tools
More about this role
Noto is the AI-native operating system for after-school businesses: tutoring centers, music schools, sports academies, and dance studios. About 180,000 of these businesses operate in the U.S., and millions of kids pass through them every week.
They’re run by people who are passionate about teaching but spend their evenings managing schedules, payroll, and parent emails—often in software built in 2011, or in spreadsheets and sticky notes.
Noto replaces the entire stack with a modern platform for scheduling, billing, payroll, marketing, CRM, communications, classroom management, and student and parent portals. We bring the whole back office into one place, with AI agents that automate manual work instead of simply tracking it.
A school that spends less time on paperwork can teach more kids, hire another teacher, and grow its business. Come help us build the best operating system for these small-business owners!
(Fall 2026 team offsite: magic shows, lawn games, trivia, friendly competition, bartender-made drinks, and a cookout 🔥)
We’re a team of about 20 in New York City: smart, collaborative, ambitious, and genuinely nice to work with.
AJ Ding (CEO) — second-time founder who...
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