Design engineering intern - brand, web, app

This is a founding designer offer with a stipend of Rs 20,000 per month and a Rs 5,000 monthly incentive depending on performance. Immediate start. The internship converts into a founding designer role, which comes with equity.
I'm the founder of Recollia. We build AI for medical students, and I'm looking for a designer who can also build what they design.
Here's what you'd be walking into.
We have a mascot called Mnemo. He's a small axolotl with an amber glow and a lab coat, and he's the best thing about our brand right now. He shows up on the site and in the app, but nobody has given him a proper character system yet: how he looks when a student gets something right, how he moves, what his world looks like. That's yours to invent.
We also have two other products that need a face. Uyari is a platform where people build their own media empire. RAV is an AI command center with unified memory, and it has no interface at all yet. So you'd be designing three brands with almost nothing to inherit. No old design system to fight, no committee. I review, that's it, and I'd much rather send back something too bold than something safe.
Our current site is fine. I don't want fine.
You'll have Figma, Higgsfield, Seedance and Envato from day one. You'll be art-directing AI video and imagery, which most design roles never let you touch. If you need another tool, tell me and you'll probably have it the next day.
The work
• Rebuild recollia.ai
• Design the Recollia app for iOS and Android, down to the components, and see it through to shipped
• Build Mnemo out into an actual character: expressions, moods, motion
• Uyari's site and product UI
• RAV's interface, from scratch
• Brand systems for all three, and you write the code for the web yourself: Next.js, Framer Motion, R3F
What you need to already be good at
Design
• Type, color, spacing, hierarchy. You can say why a screen works in a way a developer can act on
• Product UI with every state thought through: empty, loading, error, success. Responsive. Dark mode
• Figma at a production level: auto layout, components, variants, variables, prototypes that feel real
• iOS and Android conventions, without making a generic app
Brand and character
• Identity systems: logo, type pairing, color, illustration direction, and the rules that hold it together
• Keeping a character on-model across surfaces, moods and media
• Art-directing AI-generated images and video in Higgsfield and Seedance so the axolotl is the same axolotl in every shot, and knowing when to throw the output away
• Using stock and generated assets so nobody can tell
Motion
• Easing and timing chosen on purpose, and knowing when to hold back
• Character animation in Rive or Lottie, UI motion in Framer Motion or GSAP, scroll-driven sequences
• Enough shader or WebGL (Three.js/R3F) to make glow and depth feel real. One good moment is enough
• Reduced-motion respected. 60fps.
Front-end
• HTML and CSS at a craft level: grid, fluid type, container queries, modern CSS
• TypeScript and React (Next.js or similar). Design tokens live in code
• Core Web Vitals green, WCAG AA contrast, keyboard navigation, as defaults
• Git, deploys on Vercel or similar, shipping to production on your own
No degree needed. I care about the portfolio.
Beyond skills
• Shipped work that real people used, not only shots
• You have strong references (Apple, Linear, Stripe, Rive, whoever you love) and your work still looks like yours
• You can tell me what's wrong with a screen in one sentence
• You ship a rough version fast and then polish it until it's undeniable
• You'll tell me when something is ugly, including my own decisions
How to apply
Email careers@recollia.ai with your portfolio. Point me to the one piece you're proudest of and, in three sentences, tell me what you'd change about it now. Then open recollia.ai, meet Mnemo, and tell me in one line what you'd fix first. Immediate joiners only.

Work arrangement
Yes