Meg Rye: The Design Recruiter Behind Some of Tech’s Best Teams

Hi, I’m Meg Rye, design recruiter, coach, CEO and founder of Good Maven. As you landed on this page, you’ve probably crossed paths with me through a role I helped fill, a designer I’ve coached, or a LinkedIn post that popped up in your feed. Either way, welcome! Here’s my story, and what 20 years of recruiting designers has taught me along the way.

From Art School to Meta’s First International Design Recruiter

I never set out to become a recruiter. I studied fine art, and what I fell in love with in art school was connecting people with art and connecting people with each other. That thread has run throughout my career and drives me to find compelling matches between companies looking to hire, and people looking to do meaningful work.

I got my start building a creative staffing practice from scratch in Philadelphia, specializing in UX, visual design, and UI development roles back when “UX” was still a niche term. We quickly became sought-after nationally for deep expertise in UX hiring, from coast to coast. From there I moved into experience design consulting, managing client relationships for research- and design-heavy projects across for-profit and non-profit clients.

Then, in 2015, Facebook hired me to build their first product design recruiting function outside the US, based in London. Over the next nine years, I grew that org from four designers to 700 designers and artists, hiring across 30+ countries and building teams in the US, London, Amsterdam, Tel Aviv, Singapore, Tokyo and remotely throughout Europe. I recruited for Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, Reality Labs, Spark AR, Workplace, and Messenger, working my way up from Design Recruitment Lead to Principal Recruiter, Design + Art, International.

In April 2024, I left Meta to start Good Maven: a specialist design recruitment and coaching company built to hire and coach the world’s designers with a lot more heart than big tech recruiting usually has room for.

Clients I’ve recruited for

Since founding Good Maven, I’ve hired designers and design leaders for startups from pre-seed through Series C, including founding designers who shape the product from day one. We’re at home across domains: agentic AI fintech (Paid, where we placed the Founding Designer in a week), AI workplace communication (Slashwork), AI recruiting (Metaview), workflow automation (n8n), developer platforms (Sanity, where we built the entire design team) and finance (Vertice, Wayflyer). Our AI work goes deep, too. For Fin, we hire design engineers working right down to the model layer. Other teams we’ve hired for include Backlight, Harmonic and Monday.com, often in complex product areas that still demand consumer-grade craft and experience.

How I recruit

  • People not pipeline

    Good recruiting is about matching people with roles that are genuinely right for them, not just filling a seat. That means understanding what someone actually wants out of their career, being honest when something isn’t the right fit, and treating candidates like people, not pipeline. I like filling the hardest to find, most senior and niche roles in the industry. 

  • Walking alongside you

    I’ve now spent more than 40,000 hours hiring and coaching designers, and the thing that still gives me the most joy is walking alongside someone through their career journey, whether that’s landing a dream role, navigating a layoff, or figuring out what’s next.

  • Broadening access to design careers

    I’m particularly interested in broadening access to opportunities in design for people from underrepresented backgrounds. We are intentional in the way we recruit, looking for ways to redress the balance of power in the tech world and beyond. We routinely collect diversity information from candidates and will be using this to inform our work going forward. It’s especially important as we work towards BCorp and Employee Ownership Trust.

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Credentials & Background

  • 20+ years recruiting and coaching designers, 40,000+ hours logged

  • Founder & CEO, Good Maven (2024–present)

  • Various roles leading design and product hiring internationally, Meta (2015–2024)

  • Master of Science, Arts Administration, Drexel University

  • Associate Certified Coach (ACC), International Coaching Federation

  • Based in London; originally from the US (and yes I still have my US recruitment swerve)

  • Hiring experience includes: hardware, software, service design, content, UX and UI, brand, VR/AR and gaming, illustrators, visual effects and technical artists, AI and leadership roles.

Let’s Talk

If you’re a company looking to hire product designers, UX researchers, content designers, or design leaders, I’d love to hear what you’re building. Reach out through Good Maven and let’s find your next great hire.

If you’re a designer thinking about your next career move, check out coaching with me, I’d love to help you get there.