AI-Native Product Design Lead (UX/UI)
Swarmer · Kyiv
Why we exist:
Swarmer develops software that makes drones autonomous and allows them to operate together, in large, coordinated teams—no pilots needed. Our technology has been battle-tested in Ukraine—the world’s most intense proving ground for drone warfare.
In March 2026, we became the first Ukrainian defense startup to go public on NASDAQ, following a $15M Series A—the largest investment in a Ukrainian defense tech company since the start of the war.
Working at Swarmer means operating at the intersection of engineering rigor and frontline reality. The problems and environments are complex, and the stakes are very real. We built this software to enable democratic nations to defend themselves.
If you are motivated by building resilient systems that matter and by seeing the direct impact of your work, you’ll find purpose here.
Who we’re looking for:
We are looking for a hands-on AI-Native Product Design Lead to own and evolve the user experience of Swarmer's command-and-control products. Our interfaces help people plan, simulate, monitor, and execute complex missions involving multiple autonomous systems.
The challenge is not to make screens look clear. The interface is not a dashboard – it is a command surface. Decisions are made in seconds, sometimes by an operator who is tired, working in degraded conditions, and has had a few hours of training. A wrong information architecture here is not a usability defect. It is a mission failure.
You will work across the full product cycle: understanding operators and their environment, structuring workflows, defining interaction patterns, testing concepts, creating high-fidelity designs, and turning the strongest ideas into working interfaces with AI-assisted development tools.
This is a hands-on design leadership role. You will set design direction and standards, build the design system and the working practices, and personally design and build critical parts of the product. To be clear about what "lead" means here: you are the design authority and, for now, the only designer. You establish the function.
What you’ll do:
Own the end-to-end product experience across mission planning, simulation, mission execution, real-time monitoring, and post-mission review.
Turn complex operational and technical requirements into clear information architecture, workflows, interaction models, and interface states.
Create conceptual sketches, user flows, wireframes, high-fidelity mockups, and working interfaces, using tools ranging from Figma to AI-assisted coding environments. Running prototypes, not static specs, are the primary deliverable.
Apply usability principles to high-stakes workflows, including error prevention, situational awareness, cognitive load, alerting, degraded connectivity, recovery, and operator control over autonomous behavior.
Plan and conduct user research with operators, customers, and internal field teams; synthesize qualitative feedback and quantitative product data into actionable decisions. Build personas, journey maps, and workflow models where they help the team decide, not as artifacts for their own sake.
Define, maintain, and continuously improve scalable design patterns, UX standards, component libraries, and design-review processes.
Use generative AI to accelerate research synthesis, ideation, prototyping, implementation, documentation, and evaluation—and help the wider team adopt effective prompting and output-evaluation practices.
Identify opportunities where generative AI can improve the product itself, internal workflows, or the customer experience, and turn promising ideas into testable concepts.
Work closely with product, engineering, autonomy, integration, QA, and field teams to incorporate the capabilities and constraints of the technology stack from the beginning.
Balance immediate field, demo, and customer needs against long-term platform consistency, ensuring short-term solutions do not fragment the core product.
Facilitate brainstorming sessions, present work in cross-team reviews, explain the reasoning behind design choices, and drive decisions to closure.
Validate implementation quality with engineering and ensure that shipped interfaces preserve intended behavior, hierarchy, and usability.
What we need:
5+ years of experience in product design, UX design, interaction design, or design engineering, with ownership of complex digital products.
A portfolio demonstrating multiple end-to-end product or platform design cycles—from discovery and problem definition through prototyping, validation, implementation, and iteration after release.
Proven experience designing complex workflows and state-heavy interfaces used to make consequential decisions—not consumer journeys, marketing sites, or isolated screens.
Systems and components thinking, with experience defining, maintaining, and evolving design systems, UX standards, and scalable design processes. You design reusable behaviors and patterns, not a collection of disconnected screens.
Strong knowledge of usability principles, interaction design techniques, information architecture, and user research methods.
Ability to express precisely what should be built—including behavior, states, constraints, and acceptance criteria—so AI tools and engineers can produce the intended result.
Hands-on experience using Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, or similar AI-assisted development tools to build functional interfaces, not only generate concepts.
Ability to evaluate AI-generated work critically for correctness, usability, consistency, edge cases, and unintended behavior.
Strong written and verbal communication in English and Ukrainian.
Readiness to work with sensitive defense-related information and follow strict operational-security practices. This includes judgment about what does and does not go into external AI tools—we use AI aggressively, and we use it inside clear boundaries.
What would be an advantage:
Background in design engineering or frontend development.
Familiarity with prompt-engineering techniques for design, prototyping, and evaluation workflows.
A portfolio that includes AI-built prototypes, code-based design explorations, or shipped AI-assisted products.
Experience designing command-and-control, GIS, simulation, industrial-control, robotics, aviation, automotive, or other real-time operational systems.
Experience in defense tech, autonomous systems, drones/UAVs, or products that combine software with hardware.
Experience conducting research with expert users working under time pressure or in safety-critical environments.
Experience with strategy games—as a player or a designer—and an understanding of how complex systems, resources, spatial information, and changing states can be made legible to users.
Experience in a startup or fast-scaling product company where you helped establish the design function, standards, or team practices.
What you’ll get:
The opportunity to define how people interact with coordinated autonomous systems—one of the hardest and most consequential product-design problems in defense tech.
The mandate to shape Swarmer's design language, interaction patterns, design system, and AI-native product-design practice as the company scales.
Direct exposure to real users, real operational constraints, and real product impact – not abstract corporate roadmaps.
Short feedback loops between design decisions, field use, and product learning.
Close collaboration with experienced product leaders, engineers, autonomy specialists, integration teams, and field operators.
A high-ownership culture where initiative, clarity, evidence, and execution matter more than bureaucracy.
Competitive salary and a comprehensive benefits package, including insurance, paid sick leave, and 20 paid days off per year.
Benefits of the defense sector (reservation, etc.).
Flexible remote-work options where possible.
How’s the hiring process going:
✔️Recruiter Screen → ✔️ Interview with a Team →✔️ Technical Interview with Craft Session →✔️Final Interview with CPTO → ✔️Security Check → ✔️Offer Call