The Octalysis Group Is Hiring UX Designers (with Octalysis Chops)

We are looking for UX designers with a good understanding of the Octalysis Framework. If that sentence describes you, keep reading. If it doesn’t, keep reading anyway, because I want to be specific about who fits this role and who doesn’t, and I would rather scare off a wrong-fit applicant on this page than spend an hour interviewing them on a call.

The Octalysis Group is the consultancy I founded to take the framework I have been refining since 2003 and apply it to real product, marketing, and workplace problems for some of the biggest brands in the world. We are not a UX shop with a gamification side hustle. Behavioral design is the entire spine of how we work. That is what makes the role we are hiring for unusual, and it is why I am writing this page myself instead of letting it sit as a 107-word stub on the careers section.

If you are a UX designer who has read Actionable Gamification, who has tried to map a real product to the eight Core Drives, and who has felt the difference between designing a screen that is usable and designing a screen that is motivating, I want to hear from you this week.

Speed Run Notes

• The Octalysis Group is hiring UX designers to work on client engagements with brands like LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, and Coca-Cola, redesigning onboarding, retention, community, learning, and gamification systems.
• This is not a normal UX role. Most UX optimizes tasks. We optimize motivation. The job is to translate the eight Core Drives into actual screens, flows, and copy.
• What we look for: shipped portfolio, comfort with both quantitative and qualitative work, and the ability to argue a Core-Drive-grounded design decision without folding under client pushback.
• What we don’t want: pure visual designers without behavioral framework chops, “engagement optimizers” who default to dark patterns, or anyone who has not read at least the Octalysis overview.
• How to apply: send your portfolio plus a short cover note naming the Core Drive our application UI most needs to fix to the contact form at octalysisgroup.com.

Table of Contents

About the Creator of the Octalysis Framework

Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003, years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect and Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.

Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.

His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.

This hiring page is personal for me because the designers I bring into the Octalysis Group end up shaping how Fortune 500 brands speak to billions of users. The work we do at octalysisgroup.com is not theoretical. We sit in rooms with Microsoft Learn product managers, Porsche loyalty leads, LEGO digital teams, and education platforms, and we tell them which Core Drives their experience is missing and how to fix that on the next sprint. The designer in those rooms has to think in screens and in motivation at the same time, which is a rare combination, and that is exactly the person I am trying to find with this post.

What the Octalysis Group Actually Does

The simplest version: we are a behavioral design consultancy. We help companies make their products, marketing flows, and internal tools more motivating to use. Some teams hire us to redesign an onboarding sequence that bleeds users in the first three sessions. Some hire us to fix a loyalty program that hands out points nobody cares about. Some hire us to rebuild an internal training platform that employees treat as a checkbox. The common thread: someone has built a system that works on paper, and the humans inside it are not behaving the way the system expected.

Our diagnostic tool is the Octalysis Framework. The framework sorts every possible motivator a designer can deploy into eight Core Drives: Core Drive 1 (CD1) Epic Meaning & Calling, Core Drive 2 (CD2) Development & Accomplishment, Core Drive 3 (CD3) Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback, Core Drive 4 (CD4) Ownership & Possession, Core Drive 5 (CD5) Social Influence & Relatedness, Core Drive 6 (CD6) Scarcity & Impatience, Core Drive 7 (CD7) Unpredictability & Curiosity, and Core Drive 8 (CD8) Loss & Avoidance. Most products lean heavily on two or three of these and ignore the rest, which is why their engagement curves look the way they do. Our job is to spot the gaps, design the fixes, and ship them with the client.

Our client list looks like the back cover of a textbook. LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, Tesla, government ministries, education platforms, fintechs, healthtech companies, and a handful of MrBeast-scale creators. The work is genuinely international and remote-friendly. The deliverables vary: sometimes a strategy deck, sometimes a redesigned flow with copy and components, sometimes a six-month engagement where we sit alongside the client team and ship features with them.

What This Role Looks Like Day-to-Day

Most UX roles in the world optimize tasks. The brief is usually some version of: users need to do X faster, with fewer clicks, with fewer errors. That is honest, useful work, and most of UX education is built around it.

This role is different. Here, the brief is almost always: users can do X, but they don’t want to, and we need them to want to. That is a different brain-muscle. You are not removing friction. You are designing motivation.

In practice, that means a typical week might look like this. On Monday you join a kickoff with a SaaS client whose 30-day retention is collapsing. By Wednesday you have mapped their current onboarding against the eight Core Drives and identified that the flow is leaning entirely on CD2 Development & Accomplishment (progress bars, level-ups) and ignoring CD1 Epic Meaning & Calling and CD5 Social Influence & Relatedness. By Friday you are presenting three concrete screen redesigns that introduce a “why this matters” moment in the first session and a peer-comparison element by session three, with copy that respects the brand and behavioral arguments that withstand pushback from the client’s product lead.

The deliverables you produce will sit in real shipped products. The arguments you make will be challenged by smart product managers who have their own opinions. The frameworks you use will not be invented on the fly; they will be the same Octalysis tooling I teach at Octalysis Prime, sharpened on years of client engagements.

What We Look For (and What We Don’t)

Here is what I want to see in your application.

A portfolio of shipped work. Not concept projects, not bootcamp exercises, not case studies of redesigns that never went live. I want to see screens that real users have actually used, ideally with some account of what changed in the metrics afterward. Bonus points if you can articulate what motivational hypothesis the redesign was testing, even if you didn’t have the Octalysis vocabulary at the time.

Comfort with both quantitative and qualitative work. The designers who thrive at the Octalysis Group can read an A/B test result, sit through a user interview, and write a behavioral hypothesis from either input. We don’t need you to be a data scientist. We do need you to not flinch when a client says “show me the funnel.”

The ability to make a Core-Drive-grounded argument that survives client pushback. This is the rarest of the three. Designing a CD7-Unpredictability moment is one thing. Defending it in a meeting where the VP of Marketing wants to remove it because “it feels too random” is another. We hire designers who can hold the line on a behavioral argument while staying respectful and collaborative.

Now, the things I don’t want.

Pure visual designers without behavioral framework chops. Beautiful Figma files don’t move retention by themselves. If your portfolio is gorgeous and your behavioral reasoning is “users will love this,” we are not a fit.

“Engagement optimizers” who default to dark patterns. We have turned down clients who wanted us to help them trick users into renewing subscriptions. The Octalysis Framework distinguishes White Hat from Black Hat motivators on purpose. If your instinct is to reach for guilt, FOMO, and forced scarcity every time engagement dips, you will not enjoy working here, and your designs will not pass internal review.

Anyone who has not read at least the Octalysis Framework overview. The single fastest way to disqualify yourself from this role is to send an application that uses the word “gamification” but does not reference any of the eight Core Drives. The framework is freely available. Read it before you apply.

How to Apply

Send three things to the contact form at octalysisgroup.com.

One, your portfolio link. Highlight two or three projects where you can describe the user behavior you were trying to change, not just the visual outcome.

Two, a short cover note (under 300 words) answering this prompt: which of the eight Core Drives do you think the application UI in your portfolio most needs to fix, and what would you change in the next sprint to address it? I am looking for one specific argument made well, not a survey of all eight drives.

Three, your timezone and rough availability. We work with clients across North America, Europe, and Asia, so we need to know how you map onto that.

One concrete first step you can take this week: read the Octalysis Framework overview end to end if you haven’t yet, then pick one product on your phone right now and write down which two Core Drives it uses well and which two it ignores. If that exercise lights you up, you are probably the person I want to hire. If it feels like homework, you have your answer too, and we have both saved a few hours.

Related Reading

• The Octalysis Complete Gamification Framework
• Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards
• Octalysis Prime: The Gamified Learning Platform
• The Octalysis Group Consultancy

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