Product designer

About Fostr Talent Fostr Talent is a boutique Canadian staffing firm placing global professionals into long-term, embedded roles with North American companies. We handle the contract, payments, and support — you work directly with the client's team, including the 5+ Fostr contractors already at Acuity. About the Client Acuity Insights is a Canadian higher-ed technology company behind Casper, the most widely used open-response situational judgment test in higher education.

Its assessments help medical, health sciences, and other professional programs evaluate applicants beyond grades — measuring skills like ethics, empathy, and collaboration. You'd be working on high-stakes, trust-sensitive products alongside their product, engineering, and research teams. About the Role We are looking for a contract Product Designer to support priority work across two products: Casper (an admissions assessment platform) and Video Interviews (VI).

This role fills a near-term design capacity gap and supports product teams through discovery, workflow design, clickable prototyping, usability improvements, and Engineering handoff. This is not a visual design or production-only role. We need someone who can understand complex product workflows, work directly with Product Managers and Engineers, and help translate ambiguous product problems into clear, validated, buildable solutions.

You will partner with Product, Engineering, Research, Operations, and Product Marketing as needed, but you will not own overall product strategy or roadmap decisions. Hours: 9am-5pm EST Type: Contractor Rate: $22 USD / hour (8 hours per day) Product Areas Casper admissions assessment workflows Casper integrity, reporting, and "beyond the score" discovery Video Interviews operational readiness workflows Video Interviews consortium workflows Applicant, rater, administrator, and internal operations experiences Scope of Work & Key Deliverables 1. Video Interview Operational Readiness Workflows Support Video Interview General Availability readiness by improving internal workflows — rater assignment, progress monitoring, payment data export, applicant lookup, impersonation, and Support/Rating team workflows — so internal users can complete core tasks with less dependency on Engineering.

Current-state workflow maps and future-state user flows Wireframes or prototypes for agreed workflows Edge cases, states, and handoff notes for Engineering 2. Video Interview Consortium Readiness Support design work for large-scale consortium delivery and fall implementation readiness, including applicant payment workflows, distribution of VI responses to multiple institutions, rater completion, and administrator monitoring. User flows for applicant, rater, and administrator workflows Clickable prototypes where useful Usability risks, recommended improvements, and an Engineering handoff package 3.

Casper Integrity & "Beyond the Score" Discovery Support discovery on two Q2/Q3 opportunity areas: protecting test integrity and adding value to programs beyond a single score. Discovery synthesis, user journey or workflow maps, and opportunity framing (user value, business value, risks, assumptions) Concept sketches, wireframes, or prototype flows Recommendation for at least one Q3-ready opportunity 4. Casper Workflow & Usability Improvements Support priority Casper workflow improvements tied to FY27 product performance, reliability, and applicant/program experience — including admin-facing integrity insights, applicant behaviour signals, program-facing reporting, multi-country expansion workflows, and accessibility improvements.

Workflow reviews and usability recommendations Updated user flows, wireframes, and prototypes for agreed improvements Engineering handoff notes 5. Reusable Patterns for Casper and Video Interview Work with the Senior Manager, Experience Design to identify and document lightweight reusable design patterns — instructions and progress indicators, payment and completion flows, monitoring workflows, status/empty/loading/error states, and reporting presentation — that improve consistency and reduce rework across products. Required Skills & Experience Product UX & Workflow Design Map complex, multi-user workflows (applicants, raters, administrators, internal support) and identify friction, hidden functionality, and unnecessary steps Think through edge cases, error states, permissions, and operational realities Create clear user flows, wireframes, prototypes, and handoff materials Discovery & Problem Definition Comfortable working early in the product development lifecycle, before requirements are fully defined Partner with Product Managers to clarify problem statements, surface assumptions and risks, and synthesize customer, user, and internal feedback Turn discovery findings into opportunity areas and design directions — and help teams avoid jumping straight to solution mode Product & Engineering Collaboration Work inside a product pod: participate in discovery, refinement, and planning conversations Understand technical constraints, create Engineering-ready artifacts, and document states and interaction details clearly Support Engineers during implementation, review built work, and move quickly without heavy process Complex B2 B / Workflow Product Experience Experience with complex B2 B, Saa S, edtech, assessment, operations, or workflow-heavy products — e.g. admin tools, internal ops tools, reporting/analytics, testing or credentialing platforms, role-based systems, or regulated, trust-sensitive products Admissions or medical education experience is not required, but the ability to learn complex domains quickly is Prototyping & Validation Move quickly from low- and mid-fidelity concepts to clickable Figma prototypes Use prototypes to align stakeholders, support usability testing, and iterate on feedback Judgment on when rough concepts are sufficient versus when high fidelity is needed AI Proficiency Comfortable using AI tools as part of a normal design workflow: research synthesis, workflow mapping, competitive exploration, drafting interview guides, summarizing feedback, generating design options, and documenting handoff notes Communication & Ownership Clear written and verbal communication, proactive status updates, and comfort asking good questions Ability to ramp quickly, flag risks early, and work independently while staying aligned Low ego, high collaboration Tools & Software Design & prototyping: Figma, primarily Whiteboarding & collaboration: Basic knowledge of whiteboarding and collaboration tools such as Fig Jam, Miro, or others Graphics (asset): Experience in Adobe Creative Suite or Affinity may be seen as an asset Project management: Jira, Asana, or Trello Productivity: Google Workspace (Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides) Research & analytics: User research and analytics tools such as Maze and Hotjar Nice-to-Have Experience Designing applicant, evaluator, rater, or administrator workflows Payments, scoring, reporting, or integrity-related workflows Supporting product discovery in agile teams Accessibility standards Design systems and reusable patterns Working in a company moving from ad hoc design support to embedded product pods What Success Looks Like Take an ambiguous initiative and quickly clarify the user problem Map the workflow and identify the highest-risk usability issues Create practical design options and validate direction with users, customers, or internal teams Produce prototypes that Product and Engineering can react to Deliver clear handoff packages that reduce ambiguity for Engineering Help the team move faster without sacrificing usability or quality This Role Is Not a Fit For Visual, brand, or marketing designers, or Figma production-only resources Someone who waits for fully defined tickets or needs deep domain documentation before contributing Someone uncomfortable with ambiguity or unable to collaborate directly with Engineers Out of Scope The contractor will not own product strategy or roadmap prioritization, provide design support across all products, manage the design team, rebuild the full design system, or own Engineering delivery or technical architecture.