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Think about the last time you tried to book a tennis court. Or sign your kid up for a swim lesson. Or find an open rec league that actually fits your schedule. You probably ended up on a website that looked like it was built in 2003 — or god forbid, filled out a piece of paper.
$3T is spent on recreation globally, and it's built on a completely fragmented system that's largely untouched by technology.
At Rec, we're using AI to change that — reimagining how the world plays, participates in community, and gets active. Our vision is simple: more activity for everyone. We sit at a rare intersection — a consumer product loved by everyday players and an enterprise platform trusted by the organizations that power recreation.
We're a small team with firepower. Our founders were among the first few hundred at Uber, then led teams at The Athletic and MasterClass. The rest of the team combines builders from Google, Microsoft, Strava, Hipcamp, and Airbnb.
People join Rec for two reasons: you want to build AI that gets people back in the real world, and you want to work with really smart people.
About the RoleRec's platform spans programs, facilities, memberships, payments, and the admin tools that recreation organizations run their entire business on. As Platform Designer, you'll own design for this side of the product end to end — taking ambiguous, often messy operational problems ("our facility booking is confusing," "instructors can't tell what they're supposed to do") and turning them into flows that are simple for the humans running rec centers, leagues, and facilities, while staying coherent across a genuinely complex, multi-object system underneath.
This isn't a role where a PM hands you a spec and you make it pretty. You'll go find the problem, define what v1 actually is, and stay with it through build and QA.
What You'll DoOwn features end to end: research the problem, define information architecture and flows, take designs to high fidelity, write the spec, and stay engaged through engineering handoff and QA.
Hold the full platform model in your head — programs, facilities, memberships, payments — and design in a way that keeps all of it coherent as the product grows.
Take fuzzy, undefined problems and turn them into a scoped v1, deciding what's in and what's deliberately left out, and being able to explain why.
Push for a rough version live in production over a polished one sitting in Figma, and know when that trade-off is the right call.
Use AI tools as part of your everyday process — prototyping in code, generating and evaluating variations, drafting copy, synthesizing research — and apply real design judgment and taste to what comes out of them.
Work closely with engineering and the founding team in a small, fast-moving environment where design decisions ship quickly.
Strong systems thinking: you can design for complex, multi-object domains without losing coherence across the product.
A track record of owning features end to end, from ambiguous problem to shipped, QA'd product.
Comfort operating without a spec — you can independently figure out the real problem and the right scope.
A bias toward shipping over perfecting, with the judgment to know which moments call for which.
Fluency with AI tools as part of your design workflow, paired with the taste to know what to keep and what to discard.
Genuine interest in Rec's mission: using AI to get people back into the real world, and doing it alongside people you'll learn a lot from.
Be Relentless. Move fast. Own it. Ship real value early and often.
Win Together. Speak up, go beyond the boundaries of your role. That's how we win.
Take Pride. Treat this like it's yours — because it is.
Compensation: $160,000–$200,000 base + meaningful equity (final offer will be based on your background, experience and skillset)
Benefits: Flexible PTO, top-tier health/dental/vision, and a 401(k) plan to support your future.
Work location: San Francisco — in-office most days at our FiDi SF office.
Skills Required
- Strong systems thinking and ability to design coherent experiences across complex, multi-object domains
- Track record of owning features end to end, from ambiguous problem definition through shipped and QA-tested product
- Ability to independently identify problems and determine appropriate scope without a predefined specification
- Bias toward shipping quickly, with judgment about when to prioritize speed versus polish
- Fluency with AI tools in the design workflow, combined with strong design judgment and taste
- Genuine interest in using AI to help people participate in real-world recreation and activity
What We Do
Rec is building the operating system for the activity economy. Every day, millions of people look for ways to play, learn, move, compete, and connect in their communities. Yet the technology powering recreation has been largely ignored for decades. Our platform is modernizing the $105B activity industry, powering registrations, facility reservations, instructor marketplaces, payments, permits, and operations for cities and recreation organizations across the country. While much of the tech industry is focused on capturing attention, we're focused on creating more opportunities for people to spend time away from screens via more youth sports, more recreation classes, more community events, and more ways to stay active and connected.
Why Work With Us
We're applying Silicon Valley talent and AI innovation to one of the largest, least-modernized industries in the world to create more play, movement and connection in the real world. If you get fired up by making tech that actually matters to families, coaches, and kids all over the country, come join us.
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