Speak is the first & only app that lets you get real conversational practice without needing a live tutor on the other end. And we build some serious AI tech to make that possible. Backed by Accel, Khosla and Y Combinator.
About the role
We’re hiring a seasoned Designer to improve how design and engineering work together, starting with a world-class, agent-first design system. By agent-first, we mean the system is structured so humans and AI agents can make the same good decisions: choosing the right components, applying the right patterns, using consistent names, and reviewing UI against shared rules.
What they're looking for
- 6+ years in product design, with real depth in design systems built on tokens, component APIs, and a single source of truth in code (not only a Figma library)
- You’ve helped build a design system before. You’ve contributed meaningfully to components/patterns/tokens, governance, adoption, and the messy realities of getting it used
- A systems thinker. You’d rather build the thing ten people use than ship one feature yourself
- Taste you can defend. You can pinpoint what’s off (spacing, motion, interaction states) and explain what’s right for Speak and why
- Clear communication + cross-functional drive. You can write the rule, not just draw the component, and work across teams to drive adoption
- Autonomy and end-to-end ownership. You thrive with little scaffolding and drive from problem → roadmap → shipped → adopted
More about this role
Learning a language can change a life by opening doors to new cultures, careers, and communities. Two billion people around the world are actively trying to learn a language, but the best way to learn (one-on-one tutoring) is hard to access at scale and hasn’t been meaningfully improved in decades. Speak is building a human-level, AI-powered tutor in your pocket: a conversation-first experience that lets learners actually speak, get instant feedback, and progress through carefully designed lessons. The result is a complete path from beginner to confident speaker across multiple languages.
Speak first launched in South Korea in 2019, where Speak has now become the number one language learning app, and we now serve learners across many markets and 15+ languages. Speak is one of the world’s leading AI companies, with over $150m raised in venture investment from OpenAI, Accel, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, and more, with a distributed team across San Francisco, Seoul, Tokyo, Taipei, and Ljubljana.
We’re a small, high-craft team that sits at the intersection of research, invention, and product thinking. We build consumer and B2B experiences used by millions across 150+ markets — and...
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