Founding Brand & Product Designer (Equity)

Location

• Remote (Africa preferred, exceptional diaspora candidates welcome)

About Raum Africa

Raum Africa is building the operating system for serviced apartments and short-let operators in Africa.
We are a B2B proptech company building the software infrastructure that helps operators manage bookings, payments, operations, reporting, and growth in one place.

Raum Residence, our operating arm, gives us direct exposure to the day-to-day realities of the market. That operating experience helps us build software grounded in real workflows, real pain points, and real revenue outcomes.

At the core is the platform we are building: a system that helps operators run more efficiently, present more professionally, and scale with stronger visibility and control.

This is not a listing marketplace.
This is infrastructure for a fragmented but fast‑growing sector.

Why This Role Matters

This is a founding design role, not a support role.
You will define how Raum looks, feels, communicates, and earns trust across product, brand, and customer experience.

Your work will directly shape:

• Brand perception
• Product usability
• Booking conversion
• Customer trust
• Operator confidence
• Long‑term brand defensibility

You will help build a company that feels premium, credible, modern, and category‑defining from day one.
This role is for someone who can think beyond screens.
Someone who understands how to build a formidable brand and design product experiences people can actually use.
If you want real ownership, real influence, and the chance to shape an African category leader from the ground up, this is the role.

This Is an Equity Role

This is a founding team equity role.
It is for a high‑conviction designer who wants ownership, influence, and the opportunity to help shape a company early, not someone looking for a routine design seat.

We want someone who builds with us, not just delivers assets.

What You’ll Own

Brand & Identity

• Help define and evolve the Raum brand into something premium, distinctive, and hard to ignore
• Build a visual identity system that works across product, web, social, sales, partnerships, and operations
• Create consistency across every touchpoint so Raum feels like one strong brand
• Translate strategy into design that signals trust, quality, and ambition

Product Design / UIUX

• Design intuitive product experiences across booking flows, operator workflows, dashboards, and internal tools
• Turn messy operational problems into clean user experiences
• Design new features and improve existing flows across web and mobile touchpoints
• Think in systems, not isolated screens
• Help establish a scalable design language as Raum OS grows

Customer & Growth Touchpoints

• Design landing pages, pitch materials, campaign assets, partnership materials, and other high‑leverage surfaces
• Improve how users move from first impression to trust to action
• Ensure the brand and product experience feel connected
• Work closely with the founder and product team on high‑impact decisions tied to growth

Design Systems & Quality

• Build reusable components, patterns, and standards that keep product and brand consistent as we scale
• Raise the quality bar across typography, layout, hierarchy, interaction, and visual storytelling
• Protect the brand from becoming generic, inconsistent, or forgettable

What We’re Looking For

Core

• Strong experience in product design, UI/UX, brand design, or a blend of both
• Ability to design both brand systems and digital product experiences
• Strong portfolio showing taste, clarity, structure, and real problem‑solving
• High proficiency in Figma and modern design tools
• Strong understanding of layout, typography, interaction, hierarchy, and systems thinking
• Ability to take ambiguous ideas and turn them into clear, sharp, high‑conviction design work

Mindset

• Founder‑level ownership mentality
• You care about outcomes, not just mockups
• You can move between strategy and execution
• You know when to explore and when to simplify
• You are opinionated, but practical
• You can build from zero, not just polish what already exists
• You want to create work that people remember

What Great Looks Like

• You understand what makes a brand feel premium and believable
• You know how to make complex products feel simple
• You have strong taste, but