South helps growing companies find, hire, and pay top Latin American talent. Build high-performing teams in 21 days or less.
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A Product Designer designs the experience people have while using a digital product.
Their work often starts well before anyone opens Figma.
Product Designers need to understand the customer problem, explore potential workflows, test ideas, create the interface, collaborate with developers, and evaluate the experience after launch.
Typical Product Designer responsibilities include:
The exact scope depends on the organization.
At an early-stage startup, one Product Designer may handle almost the entire design lifecycle. A larger company may have UX Researchers, UX Writers, Design System Designers, and other specialists working alongside them.
A Product Designer becomes particularly valuable when product decisions and development velocity are starting to exceed your team's design capacity.
Here are some of the clearest signs.
Developers can build interfaces, but they shouldn't have to make every decision about hierarchy, workflows, interaction patterns, accessibility, and visual consistency.
If engineers are regularly inventing the UX while they code, a Product Designer can create clearer experiences before development starts.
Founders often handle early product design because they know the customer and product extremely well.
As the company grows, that becomes difficult to maintain.
A Product Designer can take ownership of research, workflows, interfaces, prototypes, and testing while continuing to work closely with the founder on product direction.
Growing products accumulate design debt.
Buttons behave differently. Components drift. Navigation patterns multiply. New screens don't quite match older ones.
A Product Designer can standardize these patterns and build or improve a design system that gives the product a more coherent experience.
If analytics, support tickets, interviews, or session recordings show users struggling with signup, onboarding, search, checkout, dashboards, settings, or another critical journey, design may be part of the problem.
A Product Designer can investigate the friction, explore alternatives, prototype improvements, and test them before engineering commits to a redesign.
New product areas involve uncertainty.
A Product Designer can help understand the customer problem, define the workflow, prototype different solutions, test assumptions, and turn the strongest direction into an interface engineers can build.
Product Managers and Product Designers work closely together, but they bring different expertise.
If your PM is constantly building wireframes, polishing interfaces, maintaining components, and running usability tests because there's no designer available, you're likely missing dedicated design capacity.
Once multiple developers and designers contribute to the same product, consistency becomes harder.
A Product Designer with design-system experience can establish reusable components, tokens, interaction patterns, accessibility standards, and documentation.
A Product Designer's portfolio is usually more important than a particular degree.
The strongest candidates can show both how they think and what they ship.
Look beyond polished final screens.
A strong portfolio should explain:
A beautiful interface tells you something about visual craft. A strong case study tells you much more about product-design ability.
Candidates should understand user flows, information architecture, navigation, interaction design, usability, and how people move through complex digital experiences.
Product Designers should also be capable of producing polished interfaces.
Look for strong visual hierarchy, typography, spacing, layout, responsive thinking, component use, and attention to interface states.
Most modern Product Designer roles require strong Figma skills.
Candidates should be comfortable with:
Product Designers don't need to be dedicated UX Researchers, but they should generally understand how to gather user insights and test design assumptions.
Look for experience with interviews, usability testing, prototype testing, customer feedback, or behavioral data.
For established products, experience working within or contributing to a design system is highly valuable.
Senior candidates may also have experience creating or scaling one.
Product Designers should understand accessibility as part of design quality rather than an afterthought.
Ask about contrast, keyboard navigation, focus states, hierarchy, form design, error handling, and inclusive interaction patterns.
Strong Product Designers don't simply wait for someone to tell them which screen to make.
They ask why a feature matters, who it's for, what problem it solves, which constraints exist, and how the team will know whether it worked.
Candidates should understand that the design process doesn't end when a Figma file is handed over.
Look for Product Designers who can discuss feasibility with developers, adapt to technical constraints, clarify edge cases, review implementation, and find reasonable tradeoffs.
Product Designers routinely present work and defend decisions.
They need to explain their reasoning clearly to Product Managers, engineers, executives, customers, and other stakeholders.
For distributed U.S. teams, strong spoken and written English is especially important.
Product Designer compensation depends on seniority, portfolio quality, product complexity, industry experience, and the scope of the role.
South's current Product Designer benchmark shows an all-in monthly rate of approximately $6,525 for Latin American talent, compared with an average U.S. salary of around $10,500 per month.
That represents potential savings of up to 38% while allowing companies to hire full-time designers who work closely with U.S. product and engineering teams.
Your exact rate will depend on the person you need.
Junior Product Designers typically work best when experienced design leadership already exists.
They can contribute to wireframes, UI design, components, prototypes, research support, and established product workflows.
Mid-level Product Designers can generally own defined product areas more independently.
They may conduct research, map workflows, design interfaces, test solutions, collaborate directly with Product Managers and engineers, and contribute to the design system.
Senior Product Designers can handle more ambiguous problems and wider product ownership.
They may lead major initiatives, influence product strategy, facilitate research, establish design standards, mentor other designers, and make complex decisions involving customer, business, and engineering constraints.
Some searches require more specialized experience, such as:
Specialized experience can affect compensation, particularly when the candidate needs both strong design craft and deep familiarity with a complex product category.
Product Designer interviews should test process, judgment, craft, collaboration, and the ability to learn from evidence.
Don't evaluate candidates based on whether you personally like the visual style of their portfolio.
Start with how they solved the problem.
Ask the candidate to choose one project and explain it from beginning to end.
Useful follow-up questions include:
The strongest candidates can explain why the design evolved, rather than simply walking you through a sequence of attractive screens.
Ask:
How would you redesign a workflow when users say it's confusing?
Strong candidates should first want to understand where and why users are struggling.
They may mention analytics, customer interviews, usability testing, support feedback, recordings, current workflows, or existing research before proposing a solution.
Ask:
Tell me about a time you chose a simpler design even though a more sophisticated option looked better.
You're looking for evidence that the candidate can prioritize usability and product outcomes over decoration.
Ask candidates to walk through a real Figma file if possible.
Look at:
This can reveal much more about day-to-day proficiency than asking whether someone “knows Figma.”
Ask:
Tell me about a design that engineering couldn't build exactly as you originally proposed. What happened?
Strong candidates should be comfortable discussing tradeoffs rather than treating engineering constraints as someone else's problem.
Ask:
How do you decide whether a redesign worked?
Look for answers connected to the original problem.
Depending on the feature, they might discuss task completion, usability findings, conversion, activation, feature adoption, retention, error rates, support volume, or another meaningful outcome.
Useful questions include:
You don't need to ask all of them.
Choose questions that reflect the actual design challenges the person will encounter on your team.
The titles frequently overlap, so focus on the scope you need rather than the label alone.
A Product Designer usually has broader ownership across:
A UX/UI Designer may focus more specifically on user experience and interface execution.
If you want someone to own an entire product area and participate in product decisions, a Product Designer is usually the stronger fit.
If you primarily need additional UX/UI execution against an already defined roadmap, a UX/UI Designer may be enough.
South helps companies narrow a large talent market into a focused group of Product Designers who match the actual product and team.
Start by defining the environment the designer will join.
Useful details include:
You may need a generalist Product Designer for an early-stage SaaS company or a senior designer with specific experience in fintech, mobile apps, AI products, marketplaces, or design systems.
South searches for Latin American Product Designers whose backgrounds align with your role.
Candidates can be evaluated for portfolio quality, product experience, communication, English proficiency, work style, references, and other requirements relevant to your team.
For design roles, the portfolio should be treated as evidence of problem-solving and ownership, rather than simply a gallery of polished screens.
You receive a focused selection of candidates instead of sorting through a large volume of applications.
You can compare:
Your team interviews the candidates you want to meet.
Use the process to evaluate their portfolio, design thinking, communication, product judgment, collaboration style, and ability to handle the problems they'll actually encounter in the role.
You make the final hiring decision and manage your Product Designer as part of your team.
South provides one consolidated monthly invoice covering your teammate's compensation and South's service.
There are no minimum commitments, and South offers a free replacement if you need to make a change.
Design is collaborative.
Product Designers spend their day reviewing work with Product Managers, discussing feasibility with engineers, joining research conversations, presenting designs, responding to feedback, and refining details before and after implementation.
That makes time-zone overlap especially valuable.
Latin American Product Designers can work during hours that closely align with U.S. teams, enabling real-time:
Companies also gain access to experienced designers across markets such as Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Uruguay, Costa Rica, and other parts of the region.
For U.S. companies building distributed product teams, that combination can expand the candidate pool while preserving same-day collaboration between product, design, and engineering.
A Product Designer researches user problems, maps workflows, creates wireframes and interfaces, builds prototypes, tests potential solutions, collaborates with engineers, contributes to design systems, and improves the experience after launch.
Compensation depends on experience and specialization. South's current benchmark shows an all-in monthly rate of approximately $6,525 for a Latin American Product Designer compared with an average U.S. salary of around $10,500 per month.
Look for a strong end-to-end portfolio, UX and UI ability, Figma expertise, user research and testing experience, design-system knowledge, accessibility awareness, product thinking, and strong collaboration skills.
Usually, no.
Familiarity with HTML, CSS, responsive design, components, and front-end constraints can help Product Designers collaborate more effectively with engineering teams.
A UX Designer generally focuses more heavily on user experience, workflows, research, and usability.
A Product Designer often has broader end-to-end ownership that includes UX, interface design, product thinking, design systems, prototyping, and collaboration through implementation.
Look for case studies that explain the problem, the designer's role, research, alternatives considered, design decisions, tradeoffs, testing, final solution, and outcome.
Polished screens are useful, but the reasoning behind them is the stronger hiring signal.
A good signal is when founders and engineers can no longer give research, UX, UI, prototyping, and product-quality decisions enough attention.
You may also need one when design inconsistency grows, important workflows show usability problems, or the product team is preparing to build substantially more functionality.
Yes. Latin America has experienced Product Designers across SaaS, fintech, e-commerce, marketplaces, mobile products, AI, and other digital sectors, with working hours that can align closely with U.S. teams.
A Product Designer influences how customers understand your product, whether they can accomplish what they came to do, and how effectively ideas move from product strategy into a usable experience.
South helps U.S. companies find pre-vetted Product Designers across Latin America based on the product experience, seniority, design skills, industry knowledge, and communication ability their teams need.
Schedule a call and find your next Product Designer in Latin America with South.
The region has the perfect mix of everything you want in remote employees: English skills, shared time zones, hard-working, and depth of talent. They are already accustomed to working remotely for top US startups and Fortune 500 companies.
Absolutely! The US and Latin America have basically the same time zones. No Latin American city is more than two hours ahead of EST.
Every hire is sourced based on your exact needs. They will arrive ready to support your business right away. They can do basically any tasks done remotely, but we recommend starting them as support so your team has more bandwidth for high-value strategic tasks.
All types of roles - customer service, executive assistant, sales, accounting, email marketing, lead generation, content writers, operations, social media marketing, and more!
You can pay directly through us (most popular) or we can connect you with one of our payroll partners.
You don't have to deal with any American labor laws / taxes when hiring full-time remote contractors. They aren't US-based, so no visas or sponsorships to deal with either.
Pricing is one flat monthly rate per hire. The rate includes your teammate's compensation and South's service in a single consolidated invoice. It covers sourcing, vetting, payroll, compliance, ongoing support, and a free replacement if you ever need one. Rates vary by role and seniority. See our savings by role page for typical ranges, then we'll confirm an exact rate for your role.
There are no cancellation fees or minimum commitments, and you only pay if you make a hire.
Yes, we only recruit for full-time and we strongly recommend full-time hiring if you can. Stability (full-time & long-term) is highly sought after abroad. The top caliber candidates are only looking for full-time work.
You're also going to spend time training and getting them up to speed on your processes. It would be a waste to do that over and over again with new people all the time.
We recommend training new hires on one thing at a time.
For example, once they get up to speed on lead generation, you can add the next role writing blog posts or whatever you'd like. You can definitely overlap roles until you have enough work for multiple people.
The cost of living is much less in Latin American countries. Many of our employees are able to own homes, raise families, provide for their parents, and have in-home help of their own with their salaries.
If you aren't happy with your hire in the first 120 days, we will work with you to conduct a second round of search for the same role for free.
Just email us at Hello@HireInSouth.com and we will get back to you with an answer as soon as possible.
