UX Design Intern

Overview

We're looking for a UX Design Intern to join our design team this summer. This is a unique opportunity to work directly alongside senior designers and our design director on real product work in a fast paced, high growth environment. You'll get hands on mentorship from a small, tight knit design team that is actively pushing the boundaries of how we work by embracing AI tools and modern design practices.

This is Vantaca's first UX design internship, which means you're not filling a seat in an established program. You're helping shape what this experience looks like. You'll work on a small team where your contributions are visible, your voice matters, and you get real mentorship every day.

Description

Powered by AI, Vantaca's vision is big! We are the leading AI-native community management performance platform that enables owners and operators, community management teams, boards and associations to work smarter, faster, and with unprecedented insight. More than just accounting and management software, Vantaca is intelligent business operating software that leverages artificial intelligence to automate routine work, surface actionable insights, and help our customers increase revenue, efficiency, flexibility, and control.

Built on modern cloud architecture with a single-platform design, Vantaca combines comprehensive functionality that adapts to 100% of business processes with AI-powered automation that learns and improves over time. Our proactive AI capabilities don't just report on what happened; they predict what's coming and recommend what to do next. From intelligent document processing and predictive analytics to automated workflows and conversational interfaces, we're transforming how community management companies operate.

With seamless integrations across the software and banking ecosystem, we're building the intelligent hub for community management where AI doesn't just assist, it anticipates. Vantaca is focused exclusively on community management and is the trusted technology leader defining the AI-powered future of the community association management industry. We're building something fundamentally different, and our customers are experiencing the competitive advantage that comes from working with truly intelligent software.

Vantaca just achieved unicorn status with a $1.25B valuation, so it's safe to say we're past the "scrappy startup phase." We're not just building a successful company—we're building the category-defining platform that will transform how an entire industry operates.

What You'll Do

• Work directly with our design team on meaningful projects that impact real users and real product decisions. Your work will focus on two core areas:

• Design System Component Development: You'll work within our existing design system to audit, improve, and build components with proper variants, states, and documentation. You'll learn how thoughtful component architecture makes a product more consistent and scalable, and you'll contribute components that our team uses long after your internship ends.
• Workflow Redesign Project: You'll own a focused redesign project from discovery to final recommendation. This means researching current user pain points, identifying opportunities for improvement, designing a more intuitive workflow, and presenting your final recommendations to the team. This gives you a complete end to end UX project for your portfolio.

Beyond your core projects, you'll also participate in design critiques, collaborate with product managers and engineers, and learn what it looks like to design for a complex enterprise product in a startup environment.

Requirements

• Curiosity and a love of learning. You're the kind of person who picks up new tools and techniques on your own because you genuinely enjoy it, not because someone told you to.
• Interest in AI and new ways of working. You don't need to be an expert, but you should be excited about exploring how AI can enhance the design process. Our team actively uses tools like Claude and Cursor as part of our daily workflow, and we'll teach you how we use them.
• Strong design fundamentals. You understand core concepts like hierarchy, layout, typography, and user flows. You can look at an interface and articulate what's working and what isn't.
• Clear communication. You can explain your design decisions and walk someone through your thinking. You're comfortable asking questions when something isn't clear.
• Experience with Figma. You've worked with components, auto layout, and prototyping in Figma and feel comfortable navigating and building within it.
• Familiarity with design systems or component libraries. You understand how components work together to create consistency across a product, whether from coursework, personal projects, or previous experience.
• Comfort with a fast pace. We move quickly and things evolve. You should be energized by that, not intimidated by it.

Nice to Have

• Exposure to any AI tools (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or anything else)
• Coursework or projects in HCI, interaction design, or visual design
• Basic understanding of how designers collaborate with developers

Tools We Use

• Figma & Figma Make (design and prototyping), Cursor (AI assisted prototyping), Jira (project tracking), Microsoft Teams (communication), Databricks (data and research), Pendo (analytics)

Core Values

• Always Growing: Likes change and enjoys finding new ways to improve their knowledge and the product. Always ready to learn quickly, helping themselves and the team grow.
• Win as a Team: Builds trust and works together by making sure everyone communicates well. Actively involved in daily work, working closely with the team, listening to their ideas, and celebrating successes together.
• Accountability Starts with Me: Notices problems and takes personal action to solve them.
• Unwavering Commitment to Customer Experience: Regularly...