Great people build great agencies. That much hasn't changed in ten years. What we're hiring for has. Hiring at a small, code-first design agency doesn't look like hiring at a big company.
There's no HR department running a standardised funnel — every step, from the job description to the test task, gets built with intention. We keep the bar high because the wrong hire costs more than a bad quarter. It costs the culture.
The key to good hiring starts with setting up company values
We look for three core qualities in people — not skills, years of experience, or portfolios. These are traits that can't be taught: you either have them or you don't.
Curiosity. You want to understand how things work — everything, always. Genuine fascination with technology and AI, not because it's trendy, but because you can't help testing new tools, reading documentation, and asking why something works the way it does — including your own decisions and instincts.
Agency. You act without asking for permission. There's no one slicing up tasks and assigning them to you. You own a zone of responsibility, and what happens in it is on you, end-to-end. You see what needs to happen, and you make it happen.
Taste. You act without asking for permission. There's no one slicing up tasks and assigning them to you. You own a zone of responsibility, and what happens in it is on you, end-to-end. You see what needs to happen, and you make it happen.
The Gradient started a decade ago as three people arguing about what they believed in before they'd landed a single client. Those early arguments became the values that still guide the team today — how we make decisions on strategy, on design, on who we bring in. Ten years in, the team still describes culture the same way: not what's written on the wall, but what people say about you when you're not in the room.
Values eliminate bias. They also repel people who aren't a fit — which is the point.
What to expect from the process
You've found an open role, been referred by someone on the team, or applied through the vacancies on our website. What’s next?
Application
Most of the people who join us come through a recommendation from a colleague, a direct application, or through the recruiting agency we partner with — one that knows exactly who we're looking for. Send your CV, a link to your work, and a short cover letter — social profiles are a plus. Get it right, and you'll hear from us about booking a first call.
Culture fit interview
The first conversation is with our HR Director and CEO. It's about you: your
background, your aspirations, what you're looking for next. It's also your chance to interrogate us — ask about the culture, the process, the work. Come with questions.
Portfolio review
Next, you meet our HR Director together with a Partner or the Design Director. This is where we look at real work — not polished case studies built for an audience, but the actual decisions behind what you shipped. We want to see how you think under real constraints, not how well you present.
Test task
Different people solve problems differently, so this step flexes around how you work. You walk us through your process — how you framed the problem, what you rejected, what "done" looked like to you — again with HR and a Partner or Design Director. It's a conversation, not a grading exercise.
What we are looking for in people
Software isn't what it used to be. Experiences that weren't imaginable two years ago are becoming real — and the designer's craft is changing with them. You used to live in parallel worlds: your ideas in one material, the real product in another. Something always got lost in between. Now you can shape the material directly — own the full experience: how it looks, how it behaves, how it adapts.
That means designing around AI behavior — LLM outputs, edge cases, dynamic data, hidden logic — and turning messy, ambiguous business rules into flows people can actually use. It means understanding components, states, APIs, and platform constraints well enough to know what a design costs to build, and why.
"We're looking for people who have the ambition to grow as the company grows. If they have that drive, they'll want to tackle different problems and work across different types of projects."
Soft skills matter just as much: flexibility, adaptability, a genuine willingness to keep learning, strong communication, and the ability to work well as part of a team. We need to know how someone handles a problem they haven't solved before, how deep they go into a client's actual business — because this is service work, and the interface was never the whole job.
Why it works that way
A slower process costs us time. It buys both sides something more valuable: enough contact points actually to know each other before the first day. It also tells us where someone will grow — which shapes how we set goals with them from month one.
New hires start with a three-month trial period, with monthly check-ins alongside partners and HR. If one of our current openings looks like your kind of problem, we want to hear from you.
What does this mean for you?
Discuss with your AI.
Sonia leads people strategy at The Gradient, building scalable processes, strong leadership, and a culture where team members thrive.
