About
We've sat in the chair we're hiring for.
Design Strategists was built by people who have led design teams inside startups and enterprises. We know a senior hire is expensive when it's slow, and far more expensive when it's wrong.
Why we exist
The gap we kept seeing.
AI changed product design. The hard part is no longer the technical aspects. It's judgment: what to build, how high to set the bar, how to earn user trust, how to design with confidence for systems that don't behave predictably.
At the same time, hiring a designer got much harder. Applications multiplied, AI made every portfolio look credible, and fewer than one in five hiring managers is confident they could spot a fabricated one. Screening harder doesn't fix either problem, and agencies tend not to own the outcome.
So we built a small, carefully vetted network and a matching process run by people who do the work. No algorithm, no directory of ten thousand profiles, only designers we know or vet. Hire them full-time, fractionally or on contract, and change the shape of it as the work changes.
How we work
Four commitments we hold ourselves to.
Small network, high bar
We would rather tell you we don't have the right person than send you someone who isn't a fit.
Straightforward pricing
20% of first-year salary for a permanent hire. A day rate and the days a week you need for everything else. No surprise fees.
Humans do the matching
A person reads every request and every application. Matching designers to context is judgment work, not keyword work.
We stay after the handshake
We check in through the first month of every engagement. If it isn't working, we say so early and fix it.
Founder
Who's behind it.
Dolly Audit
Founder
Two decades in strategy, UX and product design, and years of it spent hiring designers and coaching managers.
I've staffed and led design work with IBM, RBC, TELUS, Canadian Tire, Ciena, Spirent, Software AG and multiple startups, across technology, finance, telecom and healthcare. Hiring hundreds of designers taught me what a portfolio hides and what an interview can't tell you, which is exactly why Design Strategists exists: every designer we introduce has already been vetted by someone who knows what those blind spots hide.
Come and work with us.
Whether you're hiring a designer or ready to be hired as one.