The Opportunity

We’re a well-funded pre-seed startup on a mission to improve the happiness and wellbeing of people across the globe.

Ember is a relationship wellness app that enables couples to strengthen and enhance their connection, communicate more effectively, and cultivate healthier partnerships. The app helps couples develop a deeper understanding of one another, while facilitating better communication, resolving conflicts constructively, and strengthening emotional intimacy.

Built on years of relationship coaching experience from co-founder and relationship coach Ellie Baker, and grounded in relationship science, Ember is intentionally designed to meet couples at any stage of their journey– supporting them through the good times, the bad times and the 'just okay, but it could be better' times.

Powered by AI, Ember's platform analyzes a couple's existing communication patterns to deliver personalized guidance and support, functioning as a tool that gets couples talking in real life, not just through their devices. The app helps couples create space each day to connect and grow together through structured conversations, daily rituals, and insights that help create meaningful moments.

In a world where people track and optimize every aspect of life as individuals: sleep, fitness, nutrition, productivity — Ember focuses on strengthening the thing that can have the biggest impact on happiness and personal growth: your relationship with your partner.

We’re in stealth(ish) mode, this is the chance to be one of the founding employees, working alongside an experienced founding team to significantly help shape the product and business we’re building. We have been running in beta for 6 months now and are getting amazing consumer feedback, plus extremely encouraging CACs and retention.

Who you’ll be working with

James Hind previously the founder of carwow, and ran it for 14 years. It has now had 2m+ consumers buy and sell cars through it, $100m+ annual revenues, employs 600 people and gets 1bn annual YouTube views. Backed by Accel, Balderton, Bessemer and many more. Now on the board at carwow, and Bumper (Series-B fintech).

Ellie Baker is an experienced couples coach and relationship expert. MA in Psychology from the University of Oxford.

Nick Kuh, who was Director of Engineering at ASquared and founder of multiple app startups

Rafał Radziszewski, experienced Ruby and Elixir developer, ex Team Lead at v7. Co-founded startup before

Josie Nelder, experienced Full Stack Developer at Habitual, ASquared and Matchbox Mobile

Adnan Ebrahim, founder of MindLabs (£6m+ raised) and of CarThrottle, acquired by Dennis Publishing

We’re well funded

We’re backed by a well-known VC, and multiple useful tech angels. The vast majority of Ember’s funding came from carwow’s early investors. We closed out pre-seed round in Summer 2025.

We have a big vision and mission We’re building a product that will improve the happiness and wellbeing of people around the world.

We love the fact that the bigger we get, the more people we’ll be directly helping. Our growth will directly translate to making couples happier.

The Role

As our only designer, you will be a hugely key part of the team, working very closely with all of us to shape the product.

This is initially an extremely hands-on role, and the right person will grow with us.

Areas of work:

End-to-End Ownership: Lead the entire design process from initial discovery and wireframing to high-fidelity UI and developer handoff
Strategic Leadership: Partner directly with the founders to define the "what" and "why" behind every feature we build.
Cross-Platform Consistency: Ensure a seamless, cohesive experience across our mobile apps and web platform.
User Research & Insights: Work very closely with our founders who do a lot of user research already.. Conduct user interviews, run usability tests etc..
Brand Evolution: Take our existing brand identity and adapt it as the product evolves, ensuring our visual language is modern and resonant.
Design Systems: Build and maintain a scalable design system that allows our engineering team to move fast without sacrificing quality.

What we’re looking for:

A Full-Stack Designer: Since you are the only designer, we need a "generalist-specialist." You should be equally comfortable mapping out complex user flows (UX) as you are crafting beautiful, high-fidelity interfaces (UI) and polishing our visual brand.
A Strategic Thinker: You don't just take orders; you ask "Why?" You want to understand the business goals and the "jobs to be done" before you ever open Figma.
User-Centric Rigor: You are obsessed with the "why" behind user behavior. You have a proven process for conducting lean user research, synthesizing feedback, and turning it into product improvements.
Data Literacy: You are comfortable looking at a Funnel or Heatmap. You use quantitative data to validate your design hypotheses and aren't afraid to pivot when the data shows a feature isn't working.
Leadership & Autonomy: You have experience leading design at some capacity. You can manage your own roadmap, set design standards, and communicate your vision clearly to engineers and founders alike.

What would be super impressive?

You’ve previously founded your own startup (even if it failed!) or were a founding designer at an early-stage company. You understand the "zero-to-one" phase and the need for speed.

Interview process

Initial Screen with James Hind, Founder
Technical Interview with Nick (Front End Lead) and Josie (Front End Lead)
Task Interview - James Hind (Founder) and Ellie Baker (Founder)

Why join us?

Shape the Future: Be one of our founding employees, with a real say in product and strategy
High-Impact Mission: Every user we gain is someone whose day-to-day life can be made happier
Experienced Founder and team: Learn from and grow alongside seasoned founders and team who’ve built large-scale companies
Remuneration: We can afford to pay a competitive market salary and give generous founding employee equity

Remuneration

£80-100k plus generous founding employee equity

Location

London - We meet once a week in central London, remote the rest of the week

Apply

james@embercouples.com

Ember

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