Principal Designer

Salary Range: 175000 to 225000 (Currency: USD) (Pay period: per-year-salary)

At Bellota Labs, we are a fast-paced, hypergrowth startup on a mission to revolutionize the online poker experience with ClubWPT Gold—a cutting-edge platform from the World Poker Tour. We're not building another casino app—we're creating a skill-based, strategy-driven ecosystem where players can learn, train, and compete for real prizes.

We are now looking for a Principal Designer (UX/UI) to help define and deliver the end-to-end design experience—from homepage to player dashboard, onboarding flows, and training tools. This is a high-impact role shaping the product from MVP to full-scale launch, with the potential to influence the visual identity of one of the most ambitious new gaming platforms in the market. We're looking for a designer who pairs a refined craft eye with an AI-native workflow—someone who can move at startup speed by leveraging modern tools to ideate, prototype, and ship at a pace that would have been impossible a few years ago.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design the full web experience: Own the look, feel, and flow of our mobile-first responsive web platform—from landing pages to in-app dashboards and gameplay interfaces. Use AI-assisted design tools (e.g., Figma AI, Galileo AI, Uizard, Magician) to rapidly explore layouts, generate variants, and compress the distance between concept and high-fidelity.
• Craft seamless UX: Design intuitive flows for onboarding, account creation, training modules, vanity stores, and tournament play. Leverage generative AI to quickly prototype multiple UX directions, pressure-test flows, and iterate based on data.
• Create high-fidelity UI mockups: Turn concepts into beautiful, developer-ready screens that balance usability and visual appeal. Use generative image tools (e.g., Midjourney, Firefly, DALL·E) to explore visual treatments, illustration directions, and marketing imagery that reinforce the brand.
• Collaborate cross-functionally: Work closely with product managers, stakeholders, and developers to turn business goals into elegant design solutions. Use AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude) to accelerate research synthesis, competitive teardowns, spec writing, and design documentation so more of your time goes to craft.
• Define and uphold our design system: Help establish our visual identity across products—sleek, strategic, and skill-oriented. Build and maintain a system that's optimized for both human designers and AI-assisted workflows, so components and patterns scale cleanly as the team grows.
• Deliver production-ready assets: Ensure design handoffs are clean and ready for rapid development cycles, using AI-assisted tooling to streamline specs, variants, asset generation, and dev-ready exports.
• Champion AI in the design process: Continuously evaluate new AI tools and techniques that can elevate our output or speed, and share learnings with the broader team.

Experience:

• Bachelor's in Computer Science or equivalent required
• 6+ years in UX/UI, web, or product design (with a strong emphasis on responsive web and mobile-first experiences)
• A portfolio that showcases clean visual design, complex user flows, and thoughtful UX strategy
• Proficiency in Figma and familiarity with Adobe CC
• Hands-on experience using AI tools in a professional design workflow — generative image tools, AI-assisted UI tools, and AI-powered research/writing tools — with clear judgment about where AI accelerates the work and where human craft must lead
• Strong UX instincts and a refined aesthetic that appeals to a skill-based gaming audience
• Experience designing for platforms in gaming, training, or education is a strong plus
• Bonus: You know poker—or are excited to learn

What Success Looks Like:

• A live MVP platform that's sleek, intuitive, and conversion-optimized
• A seamless onboarding flow that drives adoption and player retention
• A polished brand and product identity that builds credibility and trust with serious players
• Design systems and flows that scale as we grow into a category-defining product
• A demonstrably AI-accelerated design practice — shipping more, exploring more directions, and iterating faster than a traditional design org of similar size