Founding Designer
Emergence Capital Partners · San Francisco
About the Role
We're designing the interfaces for a new generation of AI products. You'll shape how users interact with complex systems – making powerful technology feel simple, intuitive, and trustworthy.
Designing for AI presents unique challenges: How do you help users understand what the AI is doing? How do you build trust when outputs are probabilistic? How do you create workflows that leverage AI capabilities without overwhelming users? You'll be solving these problems daily, defining interaction patterns that don't exist yet.
This is a high-ownership role. You'll be the design voice in the room, working directly with founders, engineers, and customers to define what we build. You should be comfortable with ambiguity, excited by constraints, and motivated by shipping products that real people use.
What You'll Do
Own product design end-to-end: user research, information architecture, interaction design, and visual design
Define interaction patterns for AI-native workflows, surfacing AI capabilities, handling uncertainty, and building user trust
Create wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity designs that communicate product vision clearly
Conduct user research – interviews, usability testing, data analysis and translate insights into product decisions
Build and maintain design systems that enable consistent, high-quality UI across the product
Work closely with engineers through implementation, ensuring design quality in the final product
Define a clear UX vision and strategy for how enterprise users interact with AI-powered workflows, balancing innovation with usability
Contribute to product strategy and roadmap discussions as a key voice in what we build
Qualifications
4+ years of product design experience, with a portfolio demonstrating taste and end-to-end product design work
Experience designing complex workflows, data-heavy applications, or enterprise software
Strong proficiency in Figma and other AI tools, including rapid prototyping/wireframing and design systems
Solid understanding of interaction design principles and ability to create intuitive user experiences
Experience conducting user research and translating findings into actionable design decisions
Excellent visual design skills with attention to typography, color, spacing, and hierarchy
Have owned design systems and shipped features, not just concepts
Strong communication skills, ability to articulate design rationale and collaborate effectively with engineers and PMs
Comfort with ambiguity and rapid iteration in a fast-moving startup environment
Nice to Have
Experience designing AI-powered products or features
Background in designing B2B or enterprise applications
Experience at an early-stage startup or designing 0→1 products that will serve massive deployments to large enterprises
Familiarity with front-end development (HTML, CSS, React) to facilitate engineer collaboration
Domain expertise in financial services, legal, healthcare, or other enterprise verticals
Experience building and scaling design systems from scratch and have scaled it across multiple surfaces (app, web, and brand)
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