Fractional Full-Stack Product Designer & Design Engineer

NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA ONLY. (Please do not apply if you do not live in these territories. Thank you for understanding)

Sinima is a Creative Ownership platform for filmmakers, creators, studios, agencies, and film schools, built on a simple belief: provenance is not permission. As AI makes video easier to copy and reuse, creators need a way to prove who made their work, who owns it, who has permission to use it, and who should be paid when it is licensed. Sinima brings hosting, protection, and licensing together in one place, so every upload receives an ownership record and a digital fingerprint, work is opted out of AI training by default, and creators can choose, file by file, what to make available for licensing while keeping 85% of every license. We are based in Boulder, Colorado, were featured in No Film School, and can be found at mysinima.com.

We are not hiring a pair of hands to execute tickets. We are looking for a true creative visionary with the technical chops to bring the next chapter of Sinima to life, a product designer and design engineer who can imagine what creative ownership should look and feel like, set the design direction for the platform, and build that vision themselves in production code. You will work directly with the founders, speak directly with filmmakers and creators, and see your work ship in days rather than quarters, with your creative signature on how creators upload, protect, share, review, and earn from their work.

This role will particularly resonate if you have spent five to ten years inside a large, design-led technology, creator platform, or entertainment company building products at scale where craft, storytelling, privacy, and simplicity mattered, and you are now between chapters or choosing your next one more deliberately. Experience at a design-led creator platform, a major media or entertainment studio, or a privacy-focused consumer technology company is a strong plus, as is a desire for work that is smaller, faster, and closer to the creators it serves.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and end-to-end build of Sinima's core creator experience, including the Library, upload, and organisation of creative work

• Design and build import flows for 4K video from Vimeo, Google Drive, Dropbox, and direct upload, including progress, failure, and recovery states

• Translate ownership and protection- fingerprinting, C2PA provenance, ownership certificates, and rights status — into clear, calm product experiences

• Own the client review experience, including frame-accurate comments, voice notes, and guest review links that work without an account

• Own pricing, checkout, subscription, and creator payout experiences, with clarity and trust at every payment moment

• Design and build the licensing and consent experience, including per-file opt-in for AI training licensing, licensing collections, and creator earnings

• Create and maintain a reusable design system and component patterns across the platform

• Work directly with founders and engineers to scope, prototype, test, and ship product in short cycles

Requirements

• Shipped production experience in media or the creator economy, such as video platforms, creator tools, marketplaces, studios, or film schools

• Production experience with Stripe, including Checkout, Subscriptions, and Webhooks, and ideally Stripe Connect and split payouts or revenue share

• Experience designing API-first products, with a strong understanding of objects, permissions, states, webhooks, and integrations

• Experience with image and video processing workflows, including transcoding, thumbnails and previews, metadata extraction, fingerprinting, and adaptive playback

• Experience designing for trust, security, and privacy, including secure sharing, signed links, role-based access, workspace permissions, and abuse prevention

• Expert-level Figma skills and production front-end skills in modern React and TypeScript, with component systems such as Tailwind or equivalent

• A portfolio of live, shipped products, supported by live code, GitHub, or other builds that you both designed and built

• A strong systems mindset, with the ability to make complex concepts such as rights, provenance, and licensing feel simple for creators

Expectations

• You are a visionary and a builder in equal measure; you do not hand off your vision for someone else to interpret

• You work independently and at pace in a small, founder-led team, without needing a large team or a detailed specification to start

• You sweat the details most people will never notice, because creators will notice them

• You communicate directly, prototype quickly, and make decisions based on what serves creators best

• You are not a brand-only, handoff-only, or concept-only designer, and this role will not suit you if you have not shipped code or have not worked with payments in production

Engagement Details

• Fractional contract, 15 to 25 hours per week, starting with a four-week paid trial sprint with potential to expand

• $100 to $150 per hour, depending on experience and location

• Remote, open only to candidates based in North America or South America; applications from Europe and other regions will not be considered

• At least four hours of overlap with US Mountain Time on weekdays, working with our Boulder-based team

• Start date: as soon as possible

• Include a portfolio link showing two or three shipped products and what you owned on each one

• Include a link to a live product, GitHub repository, or other build that you designed and built

• Include a short note of three or four sentences covering your media or creator product experience, your Stripe experience, and a high-trust or security-sensitive flow you have worked on

• Confirm your location, time zone, and hourly rate within the published band $100 - $150 p/hr for a 6-week commitment at 10 - 15 hrs per week.