We are Koru.

Koru is a first of its kind venture studio funded by Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. We partner with OTPP portfolio companies to build and invest in businesses with a clear right to win.

Founded in 2019, our mission is to drive value creation aimed at growing the overall value of OTPP’s portfolio companies by partnering with them to identify, validate, build and oversee new disruptive businesses. We go from 0-1, building ventures that address customer frictions head-on — and we leverage our corporate partnerships to gain unfair advantages in the market.

We offer a unique balance of risk and reward where startup talent can build with the backing of a $250B pension plan and the ability to impact portfolio companies all around the world, explore disruptive new opportunities and share in the upside of every business we put into the market. We promote a truly entrepreneurial mindset and a culture of fearless reinvention.

As Senior Product Designer, you will have a unique opportunity to be exposed to a wide array of industries, and be a vital voice when it comes to design, but also around all areas of the businesses you’ll launch. Since 2019, we’ve launched 9 ventures across a broad array of industries and problem spaces. Take a look at our portfolio of ventures to see for yourself.

If you get excited by building innovative products that allow new entrants to disrupt existing industries, enjoy working in a collaborative and dynamic startup environment, have an entrepreneurial spirit, and have developed strong product leadership chops, then your place may be with us!

As a Senior Product Designer, you will:

Validate business and product ideas

• Create rapid prototypes, wireframes, and other artifacts to run early experiments and validate new business concepts
• Illustrate design ideas using storyboards, process flows and sitemaps
• Help in identifying, planning, and conducting user research, both evaluative and generative, alongside our Research team
• Explore opportunities and solutions in a variety of industries and contexts to solve customer and market problems

Craft great product, business and brand experiences from the ground up

• Work with Product, Design and User Research leads to shape the user experience of startups on a 0-1 team: create wireframes, user flows, and high-fidelity designs, or anything else necessary to build and launch a new startup
• Work with brand designers on developing and validating a brand that resonates with its audience for new Koru startups
• Collaborate across the venture team with Product, Engineering, Growth and BizOps counterparts to create a holistic and simple end-to-end product and service experience

Contribute to the growing Design team at Koru and our ventures

• Establish a design system and its surrounding processes for new Koru startups to help a startup scale quickly
• Ensure design quality by giving and soliciting constructive feedback from peers and team members
• Help level up the Koru team and its ventures’ teams on best practices and methodologies for UX and design across platforms and industries

You should have:

• A strong portfolio showing your design experience on a product team, with a focus on how you’ve turned research insights into products and concepts, and how you arrived at your solutions (we love getting into the weeds of the problems you’re tackling)
• 4+ years design experience working on software products within cross-functional teams

• The curiosity and desire to jump in to learn about and tackle new challenges across a variety of different industries and products (for example, we’ve built startups in regenerative farming, reverse logistics and fintech amongst others!
• The ability to think about the big picture, with understanding and curiosity about user, technical and business goals to drive your design decisions
• The ability to extrapolate and translate research insights into your designs to create products our users love and value

• The ability to clearly and effectively communicate design processes, ideas, and solutions to teams and stakeholders
• The proficiency with popular design, prototyping and collaboration tools (e.g., Figma, Sketch, Miro, Airtable, UserTesting, Maze etc.)

It would be nice if you have:

• An interest in the design community, understanding the industry’s latest trends and technologies and a good network of other local and international designers
• Familiarity with front-end web technologies (HTML, CSS, Javascript, React)
• Experience with complex prototyping tools like Framer or Haiku
• Past startup experience

What happens next?

Once we review your application, if we’d like to move you forward in the process, here’s what you can expect:

Step 1: Introductory Interview w/ Hiring Lead (30 minutes)

Step 2: 1:1 Interview w/someone else in the team (30 minutes)

Step 3: Practical Challenge ( ~3-4 hours preparation + 60 minute panel presentation)

Step 4: 2-3 2:1 Team Interviews (30-45 minutes each)

Step 5: Hiring team conducts a Candidate Debrief

Step 6: Offer

Our commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Diversity of perspectives and experience is at the core of how we approach disruption and innovation. We believe in fostering an environment where team members of all backgrounds can feel comfortable bringing their whole selves to work every day. We aim to ensure all of our employees work in an environment that makes them feel valued, heard and supported while they strive towards career pursuits and their personal and professional growth.

We are committed to providing accommodations for all candidates that require them and in all aspects of the recruitment, selection, and/or assessment process. If you are selected to participate in any part of the selection and/or assessment process, please inform us of any accommodation(s) that you may require.

Our location.

Koru’s offices are located in downtown Toronto. We humbly acknowledge that Koru HQ is located on land that is the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the New Credit, Chippewa (Anishinaabeg), Haudenosaunee, and Wendat. This territory is covered by the ‘Toronto Purchase: Treaty 13’ which was the surrender of the lands from the Mississaugas of the Credit to the British Crown initially in 1787.

Koru staff and/or board members are made up of settlers, immigrants, descendants of immigrants, or a combination thereof. Our roots lie in continents across the world and we are grateful for the opportunity to share this land where we work and live.

Please note that this role is hybrid and requires the selected candidate to travel to Koru HQ in Toronto, Ontario as and when required by the company.  Additionally, all individuals considered for this role are required to be legally eligible to work in Canada. 

We’re flattered that you’d like to join our team, but only applicants selected to proceed in the hiring process will be contacted.